Bright led the retreat with his spatial foresight blazing, mapping safe corridors through the medical bay's destroyed infrastructure.

"Duncan, rear guard! Mara, support! Bessia, keep Kora conscious and mobile!"

His group moved with desperate coordination—Duncan's Bone Guard forming a barrier between them and pursuing enemies, Mara's blades discouraging anyone who pressed too close, Bessia half-carrying Kora while maintaining healing pressure on the mutilated stumps.

The Covenant specialists and Crownhold operatives pursued with predatory certainty, sensing vulnerability, smelling blood.

We're not going to make it, tactical assessment warned. They're faster, fresher, more numerous. They'll catch us before we reach a defensible position.

Bright's spatial foresight tracked the medical bay's layout, searching for bottlenecks, chokepoints, anywhere they could force an engagement on more favorable terms.

His perception registered an opening ahead—a corridor that led toward the medical bay's storage sections, narrow enough to limit enemy numbers, close enough to reach before being overtaken.

"There!" he called, angling toward it.

They ran.

Exhausted. Injured. Desperate.

Behind them, footsteps accelerated—enemies recognizing the same tactical reality, understanding that if the Academy candidates reached that corridor, the mathematics shifted back toward survivable.

Bright's group barely made it, diving through the opening just ahead of blade strikes and techniques that would have killed them.

They entered the corridor—

—and Bright's spatial foresight shrieked.

Not about pursuing enemies. About something else.

Something beneath them.

"STOP!" he screamed. "Don't move forward! The floor—"

Too late for complete halt. Momentum carried them several meters into the corridor.

The ground beneath them erupted.

It wasn't a collapse or a structural failure.

Tunnels.

Holes that had been carefully excavated, weakening the floor's integrity, creating trap that activated under weight and vibration.

And from those holes, ants surged upward.

They were not workers, not even standard soldiers.

Initiate-tier variants.

The colony queen's elite—larger than normal soldier ants, their chitin plating thick enough to deflect casual strikes, their mandibles capable of shearing through bone and steel, their coordination suggesting intelligence beyond simple hive-mind directives.

They'd wandered from the queen's direct control during the night's chaos, operating on standing orders: hunt, feed, eliminate.

Now they'd found prey trapped in a confined corridor.

Perfect.

-----

The first ant's mandibles closed on empty air as Bright's spatial foresight gave him a microseconds of warning to dodge.

The second ant caught a Covenant specialist who'd been pursuing too aggressively—mandibles snapping closed on his leg, severing it at the knee, the man's scream echoing through the corridor before follow-up strike crushed his skull.

Chaos exploded.

Academy candidates trying to reach a defensive position. Covenant specialists pursuing them. Crownhold operatives maintaining an attack. And now Initiate-tier ants emerging from below, attacking everything indiscriminately.

In the confusion, one Covenant specialist—eyes wild with fanatical certainty—saw opportunity.

A Crownhold operative, isolated for a fraction of a moment, back turned while engaging the ants.

The Covenant specialist's blade plunged into the operative's spine, drove upward through the lungs and heart, killing him before he could register betrayal.

"For the Great One!" the specialist shouted, his religious conviction overriding any sense, fanaticism making him attack his so called ally during their multi-enemy engagement.

The lead Crownhold operative—the one who'd backstabbed Bright earlier—saw his subordinate die and understood with crystalline horror:

These people aren't rational actors.

He'd thought the Covenant was… not allies exactly, but coordinated partners. People who understood tactical necessities, who could maintain temporary cooperation when circumstances required.

But watching his operative murdered for religious sport, seeing the Covenant specialist's expression of ecstatic conviction, the lead operative realized his fundamental mistake:

They're fanatics. Actually, genuinely insane fanatics who don't care about survival or success or any normal human motivation. They care about divine purpose and nothing else.

We can't work with them. Can't predict them. Can't trust them not to kill us when it's insanely stupid to do so.

Another Covenant specialist attacked a different Crownhold operative—not for any strategic advantage, just because the fanatic's religious fervor had reached critical mass and needed expression through violence.

The remaining Crownhold operatives pulled back from the Covenant forces immediately, recognizing that their temporary alliance had become active threat.

"Disengage!" the lead operative ordered. "Crownhold forces extract! The fanatics are compromised!"

But extraction was impossible.

Because the ants had surrounded the corridor.

Dozens of Initiate-tier variants, pouring from holes in floor, walls and ceiling—the colony had excavated a three-dimensional network, could emerge from any angle, and so they made any chance of retreat or advance equally suicidal.

-----

The corridor became a nightmare.

Kids fighting for survival.

Covenant specialists attacking everyone with religious conviction.

Crownhold operatives defending against both fanatics and ants.

And the ants themselves, operating on asimple imperative: FEED.

Bright's spatial foresight was perfectly designed for this chaos.

Where normal combatants struggled to track threats from multiple vectors, his perception mapped everything—every ant position, every human movement, every attack trajectory, all processed simultaneously.

"Duncan, left flank! Three ants converging! Mara, Covenant specialist at your six! Bessia, ant emerging below Kora's position—MOVE!"

His commands kept his group functional when coordination should have collapsed completely. Kept them alive when mathematics said they should be overwhelmed.

But even perfect awareness couldn't compensate for exhaustion, injuries, depleted resources.

Duncan's Bone Guard was failing. Too many impacts, too much damage, his defensive core unable to regenerate fast enough. An ant's mandibles finally broke through, tore into his shoulder and sent him staggering.

"I'm hit!" Duncan gasped, his guard reforming but compromised. "I can't maintain full defense!"

Mara tried to cover him, her dual blades carving through ant chitin, but she was a Fledgling-tier fighting Initiate-level threats. Every exchange cost her energy she couldn't spare.

A Covenant specialist, bleeding from multiple wounds, chose a suicide charge—launched himself at Bright with a kamikaze intensity, blade aimed for mutual destruction.

Silas materialized from the shadows, his speed-enhanced strike intercepting the fanatic, driving dagger through his throat before he could complete the attack.

Then Silas vanished again, his Sense Fade making him impossible to track, his hit-and-run tactics were the only thing preventing their group's complete collapse.

The Crownhold operatives fared worse. Their training was assassination—quiet kills, strategic elimination, controlled environments. This four-way melee against fanatics and Crawlers overwhelmed their capabilities.

Another operative died—an ant mandibles closing on his torso, bisecting him at the waist, his upper body still conscious for horrifying seconds before shock claimed him.

The lead operative recognized the inevitable conclusion: We're all going to die here. In this corridor. Killed by ants we didn't know about, betrayed by fanatics we thought we could control.

The sir's plan collapsed. And we're paying the price.

A Covenant specialist, face ecstatic with religious fervor, charged an ant directly—no weapon, no technique, just faith. The ant killed him instantly, mandibles crushing skull, but the fanatic died smiling.

Insane, the lead operative thought. Completely, genuinely insane.

—-

But in the chaos—the four-way death royal that should have killed everyone—Bright's spatial foresight gave his group a critical edge.

He could see the ants before they emerged. Could track their tunneling patterns, predict breach points, position his people away from ambush locations.

He could track the Covenant specialists' attacks despite their unpredictable fanaticism. Could read their movements, anticipate their strikes, counter before they landed.

He could monitor the Crownhold operatives' positions, ensure they stayed focused on ants and Covenant rather than attacking his group.

His body enhancement, his spatial awareness, his ability to process multiple simultaneous threats—all the capabilities that had made him barely adequate in a one-on-one fights made him devastating in a free for all type battle.

"Ant emerging three meters ahead!" Bright called. "Duncan, position shift right! Mara, ready strike on my mark!"

The ant burst through the floor exactly where Bright predicted. Duncan was already clear. Mara's blades were already moving, catching the ant mid-emergence, exploiting its vulnerable position before it fully entered combat space.

"Covenant specialist flanking left! Silas, intercept!"

Silas grumbled but was there before the fanatic completed his attack, blade finding throat, another kill added to his invisible tally.

Bright's commands kept his group alive—barely, desperately, but functional when live should have been lost.

Around them, Covenant specialists and Crownhold operatives died to ants and each other, their numbers depleting, their combat effectiveness collapsing.

But Bright's group, smaller and more injured, held together through perfect spatial awareness and desperate determination.

We're still losing, Bright understood. Just losing slower than everyone else.

But the slower their defeat crept in, the more room it gave them—to adapt, to scheme, to claw for one last reversal. Time was a currency, and even in loss it could be spent wisely. Maybe they would be spared by the bell. Maybe not.

Either way, he preferred it like this.

Not mercy—control.

To keep death close enough that they could feel its breath, yet never so close that it ended things too cleanly. To let imminence do the work for him, stretching fear and hope into something sharper than any blade.

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