The Broken Squad
— Arthea —
The sport mat slaps under Garrett's weight like a muffled gunshot.
He stays down, shoulders against the black rubber, mouth open on a cut-off breath. His golden eyes search the ceiling as if the answer to what just happened is engraved up there somewhere.
I step back. My boots make no sound.
"Dead."
The word drops between us, flat and final.
Garrett grunts, rolls onto his side, plants a hand against the mat. His solar tattoos glow faintly under the fluorescents, pathetic, really, compared to what they're supposed to do in full daylight. He gets up like a building that refuses to come down.
"Again," he says.
His voice is deep, resonant. Too calm for someone who just got humiliated in three seconds.
I cross my arms.
"No. Not again. Not until you understand what just happened."
He frowns, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. A streak of dust stays caught in his beard.
"I charged. You dodged."
"You telegraphed."
I take a step toward him, point at his right shoulder with my chin.
"Right there. Half a second before you moved. Your shoulder tipped forward. Your eyes locked onto my left leg. A twelve-year-old would've seen it coming."
Garrett's jaw clenches. His hands close, like he's looking for something to crush.
"I'm a frontline warrior. Not an assassin."
"Yeah, well, a dead frontline warrior is useless to everyone."
I turn away, grab a water bottle off the bench against the wall. The gym air clings to my skin, thick and hot, loaded with that burnt-rubber smell that reminds me too much of le Chaudron after someone set the fryer on fire. I take a sip. The water is lukewarm.
Behind me, Garrett doesn't move. I hear his breathing, slow and controlled, like he's counting internally to keep from blowing up.
I set the bottle down.
"You never telegraph against an enemy who can read shoulders, Garrett. Never. The moment you telegraph, you're predictable. And the moment you're predictable, you're dead."
He's quiet for a beat. Then:
"How do I fix it?"
His voice has shed a little of its assurance. Not much. Just enough for me to know he's actually listening.
I turn around.
"You hide your intention until the last fraction of a second. You look elsewhere. You breathe like you're going nowhere. And when you move, you move all at once. Not gradually. Not with a build-up. Direct."
I take a step toward him, hands loose at my sides. My eyes drift toward his right, like I'm tracking something on the wall behind him.
Then I pivot.
My foot catches his shin before he can react. Not hard enough to drop him. Just hard enough to punch through his balance.
I step back.
"See? You didn't see it coming."
Garrett blinks. Something flickers in his gaze: respect, maybe, or frustration. Hard to read.
He nods.
"Again," he says.
This time, I don't refuse.
Garrett straightens, wipes the back of his neck with his palm. His fingers leave a damp streak on his skin.
"I'm not used to fighting without light."
"Yeah, I noticed."
I pull on my hair elastic, redo my ponytail. My fingers snag a strand plastered against my temple. The gym air sits on me like a wet blanket.
"What are you used to, exactly? Crushing things in broad daylight?"
He doesn't answer right away. His eyes drift toward the fluorescents on the ceiling, white and harsh, giving everyone a corpse's complexion. Not exactly the midday sun.
"I fought under the sun for fifteen years. Never lost."
"Great."
I wipe my forehead with my wrist. Sweat clings to my skin, salty and sharp.
"Except Dreadmore doesn't attack in broad daylight. Neither do the creatures that crawl out of la Porte. So if you're useless the second it gets dark, you might as well stay at le Chaudron and pour beers."
Garrett's fists close. His runic tattoos glow faintly, a dull and nearly-extinguished gold under the fluorescents. A smell of ozone rises from his skin, light but persistent, like the air just before a storm that never arrives.
He's managing his magic badly.
Makes me think of an engine running too hot without oil. It'll hold for a while. Then it'll blow.
I cross my arms.
"You're leaking energy. Right now, in real time. You don't feel it?"
He frowns, drops his eyes to his hands. The runes pulse faintly, irregularly, like a heart searching for its rhythm.
"I…"
"You're compensating. Forcing your magic to run without a natural source. It'll hollow you out in ten minutes."
I take a step toward him, point at his chest with my chin.
"Shut it down. Now."
"How?"
"Stop reaching for the light. Accept that it's not there."
Garrett looks at me like I just asked him to stop breathing.
"That's not how it works."
"Then change how it works."
My voice comes out sharper than I intended. The pressure rises behind my temples, not a migraine, not yet, just that familiar weight reminding me the clock is running.
Seventeen days.
Seventeen days to turn a solar warrior into a shadow fighter. To forge a team out of pieces that barely hold together.
Seventeen days before everything burns.
Garrett inhales, closes his eyes. The runes on his chest tremble, partially extinguish.
Not enough.
"Deeper," I say.
Ivy raises her left hand, fingers spread like she's pushing against an invisible wall.
Nothing happens.
She frowns, looks at the Ledger open in her right palm. The pages glow faintly, covered in symbols that dance and reorganize too fast to read. Her lips move, counting or reciting, impossible to say which.
"Manifestation probability at sixty-eight percent," she murmurs. "Optimal vector identified. Deployment in three… two…"
Her hand trembles.
The air around her fingers ripples, goes blurry, like heat shimmer off summer asphalt. A sour smell rises, not unpleasant, just wrong, like lemon mixed with burnt metal.
I step back.
"Ivy."
She doesn't hear me. Her eyes stay locked on the Ledger, on the calculations cascading across it. Her breathing accelerates, short and choppy, like someone fighting off a sneeze.
"Parameter adjustment. Recalibration to eighty-two percent. Manifestation imminent."
The distortion around her hand intensifies. Violet sparks crackle between her fingers, not light exactly, something denser, leaving phosphorescent streaks in the air behind them.
That's not a shield.
That's an unstable flare three seconds from detonating.
"Ivy, lower your hand."
My voice cracks like a whip. Same tone I use when a patron at le Chaudron is about to put a chair through the window.
She blinks, looks up at me. Confusion moves across her face, like she just woke up mid-PowerPoint.
"I… the data indicates that…"
"The data's wrong. Lower. Your. Hand."
The violet sparks sizzle, spreading up her wrist like electric roots. The burnt-metal smell thickens, coats the back of my throat.
Ivy lowers her hand.
The sparks implode with a dull pop, like a bulb bursting underwater. A wave of dry heat rolls through the gym, rattling the fluorescents.
Silence.
Ivy stares at her palm, mouth slightly open. The Ledger still glows faintly in her grip, completely indifferent to the disaster it just helped cause.
Behind her, Trent snickers, brief and dry, almost involuntary.
"Fascinating," he says. "You almost blew us up with a shield."
Ivy turns toward him, teeth tight.
"The Ledger confirmed the spell's viability. The calculations were correct."
"Yeah, except you missed one thing."
I cross my arms, feel Excalibur's weight against my back, not threatening, just there, the way it always is. A permanent reminder that everything can go sideways at any moment.
"Magic isn't math. You can't just follow a formula and expect it to obey."
Ivy opens her mouth. Closes it. Her fingers tighten around the Ledger.
I don't have time to shout.
The violet spark explodes outward like an invisible fist trying to demolish the room.
I dive sideways.
My shoulder hits the mat. The impact travels up through my collarbone, sharp and clean. I roll, come up on my knees, one hand pressed flat against the rubber.
The shockwave passes above me, hot and acrid, dragging that burnt-metal smell with it. The fluorescents shriek, a sharp and drilling sound that goes straight through my eardrums.
Then darkness.
Two tubes shatter with a crystalline crack. Glass rains down on the mat in a fine shower, tinkling like hail on tin.
I stay still, breathing shallow, eyes fixed on the ceiling where the surviving lights flicker and fight for life.
Silence.
Then a shaking exhale, somewhere to my left.
I turn my head.
Ivy is standing frozen, arms still outstretched like she's holding something that isn't there anymore. The Ledger hangs limp in her right hand, pages open but dead. Her face is bone-white, eyes wide, mouth cracked open on a word that won't come.
I get up.
My legs hold. That's something.
"Stop."
My voice snaps in the silence. Ivy flinches, stumbles back a step, like I slapped her.
I move toward her.
"You're forcing it. Treating magic like a muscle you can just flex harder until it obeys."
Ivy opens her mouth. Nothing comes out. Her fingers tighten around the Ledger, hard enough for the leather to creak.
"Magic isn't a muscle. It's a channel. Something that moves through you, not something you manufacture."
I stop a meter away, cross my arms.
"The second you block it, resist it, try to micromanage it with your analyst brain, it blows. Exactly like it just did."
Ivy blinks. Once. Twice. Her jaw sets, and I watch the corporate armor slide back into place, that professional facade she pulls on like a shield every time she feels exposed.
"The Ledger confirmed the theoretical viability of the spell. The parameters were correct. If I'd had more time to adjust the variables—"
"No."
I cut her off before she can finish.
"The problem isn't the variables. It's you. You ran this like a project kickoff. Identify the problem, optimize the solution, execute. Except magic doesn't care about your Excel spreadsheets."
Ivy steps back again. Her heel catches a piece of glass. The sound ricochets through the silence, too loud, too sharp.
I breathe. The pressure pulses behind my temples, not against her, exactly. Against the situation. Against the fact that I've got seventeen days to turn amateurs into fighters.
Against the fact that I'm two steps from torching the whole thing.
Behind Ivy, Trent leans against the wall, arms crossed, face unreadable. His silver-gray eyes track me, measuring, like he's deciding whether the scene is worth wading into.
He doesn't move.
Smart.
I bring my attention back to Ivy.
"You're an analyst. That's your edge. You're genuinely good at it. But down here, in this broken gym with the lights that just blew because of your flare? You're not in a boardroom."
My voice drops, each word landing separately.
"So you're going to stop treating magic like a problem to solve. You're going to listen to what this —"
Lance steps forward.
No urgency. No visible tension. He crosses the gym the way he does everything: one step, then another, smooth and unhurried, like a man who always knows exactly where he's landing.
He places a hand on Ivy's shoulder.
The violet magic dies.
Not gradually. Not with a flicker or a fade.
All at once.
Like someone pulled the plug.
The burnt-metal smell hangs in the air, but the sparks that were crawling up Ivy's wrist are just gone. Absorbed by the simple weight of Lance's palm against her shoulder.
Ivy blinks, mouth slightly open, like she surfaced from a dream she can't quite place.
Lance says nothing.
He just leaves his hand there, steady and anchored, and Ivy pulls in her first real breath in five minutes.
I don't move.
My arms are still crossed. Something burns behind my ribs, bitter and too familiar.
He just did what I couldn't do.
Not by pushing harder. Not by explaining better. Not by making it a fight.
Just by showing up.
The soul bond hums between us, not warmth, just presence. Like a hand resting on a shoulder you can't see but feel straight down to the bone.
I hate that.
No.
I hate that it works.
Ivy looks up at Lance. Then at me. Then at the Ledger in her hand. Her fingers still tremble slightly, but she doesn't drop the book.
"I… sorry."
Her voice is small, stripped bare. Nothing like the clipped, analytical tone she usually weaponizes.
Lance removes his hand, steps back.
"Breathe first. Talk after."
Three words. No condescension. No reproach.
Just a simple directive that somehow sounds like permission.
Ivy nods. Inhales. Exhales.
Behind her, Trent glances away, like he witnessed something private. Garrett stays fixed near the wall, eyes on Lance with an expression I can't quite parse.
Respect, maybe.
Or something he hasn't named yet.
I don't move.
My gaze stays on Lance, on the way he holds himself, straight without being rigid, present without performing it. The way the team orients toward him. Not out of fear. Not out of rank.
Trust.
The word settles into my chest like something cold.
They trust him.
More than they trust me.
Lance finally turns his head my way. His eyes find mine across the room.
He knows what I'm thinking.
He knows exactly what just happened.
And he says nothing.
Because he doesn't have to.
The silence pulls taut, charged, stretched close to snapping.
Ivy inhales once more, straightens slightly, and the moment fractures.
"I'll… recalibrate my approach."
Firmer now. Almost professional. But there's a hairline crack in it, an acknowledgment she won't put into words.
Lance nods. Once. Brief.
"Good."
He doesn't look at me when he says it.
But I feel the absence of his gaze like something physical.
He leans toward Ivy, drops his voice.
I can't hear what he says.
Just the low register, the deliberate calm, the tone you'd use to talk something wounded down from a ledge. Ivy nods, and I watch the tension drain out of her shoulders, degree by degree, like each word from Lance is undoing a knot she didn't know she'd tied.
She doesn't look at me.
She looks at him.
My arms tighten across my chest. My face stays neutral.
But I calculate.
I count.
I keep one eye on the exits.
It's like watching through glass. I'm three meters away, and I might as well not exist. The hard captain who cracks people open. The steady protector who puts them back together.
Garrett pushes off the wall, moves toward Lance and Ivy with that measured, deliberate walk he uses when he's trying not to loom. Trent stays put, but his attention tracks Lance, careful, like he's filing something away for later.
Nobody looks at me.
Nobody asks if I've got anything to add.
Because Lance already fixed it.
Without shouting. Without demanding. Without leaving a mark.
Just by being there.
The soul bond tugs again, brief, a single thread-pull. His calm. His certainty. I feel it settle into my shoulders before it registers in my head.
I take a step back.
Another.
Nobody notices.
The surviving lights flicker above me, throwing restless shadows across the black mat. Broken glass grinds under my boots, a sharp and definitive sound that should turn a head.
Nothing.
Lance murmurs something. Ivy nods, pulls the Ledger against her chest like armor. Garrett drops a hand onto Lance's shoulder, says something low that I can't catch.
My shoulders hit the cold wall, damp stone, the kind that seeps even in winter. The shadow takes me in, and I let the rest of the gym blur out.
They don't need me here.
They have Lance.
That's enough.
The silence presses down like something wet.
I close my eyes.
Breathe.
Count to ten.
When I open them, Lance has finally turned toward me.
Our gazes meet across the gym.
He knows.
And he says nothing.
Because there's nothing to say.
Lance crosses the room toward me.
He's never searching for his footing. He's already there: each step set before he's decided to take it, each movement landing clean without telegraphing that it was coming. The best archer I've ever seen, and the most exhausting person to argue with when he's decided your call is wrong.
He stops two meters out, right at the edge of my space. His gaze is steady, anchored, carrying something I've learned to recognize.
Disagreement.
"They're tired, Arthea."
The word lands between us. Flat. Not an accusation. A fact he's placing on the table that he doesn't plan to move.
Tired.
As if that changes the math.
As if the countdown pauses while we catch our breath.
My hands close, nails biting into my palms.
I pull off my combat gloves.
The first one hits the concrete with a dull, flat crack that rings out too loud in the gym's silence. The second follows, lands near Lance's foot.
The echo rolls through the room, dry and final, like a door being slammed somewhere you can't take it back.
Behind Lance, Ivy looks up. Garrett goes still, one hand still against the wall. Trent cuts his eyes away, but I catch his shoulders going rigid, his posture shifting just enough.
They're listening.
Good.
Let them.
"Tired," I say again.
Each syllable weighted and deliberate.
"If they're tired here, they'll be dead in the metro."
Lance doesn't move. His jaw tightens by a fraction. His eyes narrow, barely.
He doesn't step back.
Of course not.
I move toward him, point at his chest with my chin.
"You're not their father, Lance. You're their captain."
The silence thickens, loaded with everything that's been circling for days, unspoken. The soul bond pulses low under my skin, his calm pressing against my anger, a friction I can't put out.
Lance inhales. Exhales.
"They need to recover. Not to fall apart before they ever reach the fight."
"They have seventeen days."
My voice lifts, not a shout, just an edge sharp enough to cut through the room.
"Seventeen days to learn how to survive against creatures that will tear them apart if they flinch wrong. Seventeen days to become a team that can hold a line against Dreadmore and whatever crawls out of that cursed Porte."
Another step. My boot comes down on a shard of glass that crunches under my weight.
"So no, Lance. They don't rest. Not now. Not until they can stand on their own without you propping them up."
The word propping lands like I meant it to.
Behind Lance, Garrett looks away. Ivy presses the Ledger flat against her chest, jaw tight, holding back something she won't say out loud.
Trent snickers, short and reflexive.
"Interesting," he murmurs.
Lance barely glances at him. Just enough. Trent closes his mouth and retreats half a step.
Lance brings his attention back to me.
"You're pushing too hard."
"Not hard enough."
Our voices collide, ricochet off the stone.
The silence that follows is the kind that has weight.
Lance doesn't move.
No retreat. No flinch. He isn't using the quiet to think. He's using it to measure.
He doesn't answer.
He doesn't need to.
His presence says it.
Behind him, Garrett rolls his shoulders back. Ivy lets out a breath, her grip on the Ledger softening. Trent crosses his arms, something shuttered moving across his face, like he's logging what he just saw.
They pull together.
Not physically. Not overtly.
But I see it in the way their bodies angle, tilting toward Lance, not me.
The captain who listens. The one who holds things together.
Not the one who breaks them.
My feet move before I decide to let them.
I step back.
My boots grind over broken glass, and the sound should pull focus. It doesn't.
Because I don't matter here right now.
Lance took my place without trying.
My hand finds Excalibur's guard on reflex, automatic. The cold metal steadies something in me that was starting to come loose.
I turn.
"Arthea."
Lance's voice carries across the gym, low and even, loud enough for all of them to hear it.
I stop.
I don't turn around.
"We finish this tomorrow. Six o'clock."
Not a question.
An order.
Directed at me.
In front of all of them.
The silence stretches out, thick with everything that won't ever get said.
Garrett grunts his approval. Ivy says something I don't catch. Trent snickers, short and dry, the sound bouncing off the stone.
They agree.
Not because it's the tactically correct move.
Because Lance said so.
I don't answer.
I push through the gym door, take the stairs up to le Chaudron's ground floor, and let the stairwell's dark swallow me whole.
Behind me, their voices resume, low and measured, a closed current that doesn't include me.
The glass wall between us just set.
Thick.
Transparent.
Solid.
I climb one step at a time. Each one echoes against the wet stone. My fingers stay locked around Excalibur's guard like letting go would mean going down.
Maybe it would.
The pub's smell reaches me before I hit the door: old wood, craft beer, decades of woodsmoke worked into the walls. Familiar. Grounding.
Empty.
I push the door open.
The pub is dead quiet.
Tables in order, chairs flipped up on the tabletops. The lanterns are out, all except one near the bar, throwing low light across the dragon carvings in the dark wood.
Silence.
Just the faint creak of old beams, the far-off murmur of traffic out on Saint-Paul, and my own breathing, too loud in all that empty space.
I stand in the middle of the room and look at the old mirror behind the bar.
My phone goes off against my hip.
Once. Twice. Three quick pulses, the staggered pattern that means priority.
I pull it out. The screen flares in the dimness, too blue, too sharp after the dark.
Gen: Berri-UQAM. Now. Look at the photo.
An image follows.
I press my thumb to it. The screen opens up.
A body.
Lying on the metro platform, curled against the white-tiled wall. Male, maybe thirty, ordinary clothes: jeans, unzipped winter jacket, gray t-shirt. Face turned toward the ceiling, mouth open on a scream that never made sound.
Gray.
All of him, gray.
Not pale. Not the washed-out look of blood loss.
Ash gray. Like every bit of color had been pulled out of his skin, his hair, his lips. Like a charcoal sketch that had figured out how to be a person, and then stopped.
His eyes are open. Glass. Locked in an expression I know too well.
Terror.
My thumb slides right. A second photo loads.
Close on the neck.
No wound. No bite. No sign he fought back.
Just skin, dried and shriveled, pressed against the bones like crumpled paper. The veins mapped underneath, black and dead, traced across his throat like something rotted from the inside.
Empty.
Not a drop of blood.
The phone shakes in my hand.
No.
My hand shakes.
I lock my fingers around the case, feel the hard plastic biting into my palm. The screen's blue light catches my dilated pupils in the mirror behind the bar, throws moving shadow across my face.
My heart hammers. Even. Hard. A forge piston working in my chest.
Adrenaline comes up cold and clean, sweeping out the low burn of anger that's been sitting in my ribs for the past half hour. My thoughts sharpen, sort themselves, drop into combat mode without being told.
Calculation. Analysis. Move.
Berri-UQAM. One of the busiest stations in the city. Day or night, hundreds of eyes down there. If the body's still on that platform, someone locked it down.
Gen.
Or someone I don't know yet.
A second message hits.
Gen: STM shut the station. Police on-site. They don't know what they're looking at. You do.
I stare at the screen for five seconds.
The gray body. The black veins. The mouth that opened for a scream and didn't get to finish it.
I pocket the phone, turn around, and head for the basement door.
The theory just died.
The war is already here.
I hit the basement door hard enough that it cracks against the wall.
The sound explodes through the stairwell, sharp and brutal, like a gunshot in an empty church.
The voices below cut off instantly.
I take the stairs two at a time, boots driving into the damp stone. Every step rings out, tight acoustics amplifying each one. No need to announce myself. They already know.
The gym door is open.
Lance is near the wall, arms crossed, head angled toward the stairs. He clocks me before I've cleared the threshold. Behind him, Garrett comes to attention. Ivy pulls the Ledger against her chest. Trent wheels around, one hand already on the guard of his twin blades, mercenary reflex hardwired in.
I stop at the center of the gym.
Pull out my phone.
Hold it toward Lance.
The screen throws blue light across his face, across the sharp angles of it. His eyes narrow, tracking down to the image.
The gray body. The black veins. The open mouth.
Silence.
Lance doesn't move. His expression holds, but I catch the slight tightening along his jaw, the way his fingers press into his own forearm, one notch deeper.
He gets it.
Right away.
"Berri-UQAM," I say.
Flat. Cold. Each syllable dropped like a verdict.
"Twenty minutes ago."
Garrett moves closer, looks over Lance's shoulder. His breathing shifts, slower and deeper, like he's already loading up for a fight. His solar tattoos stay dark under the broken lights.
Ivy steps forward. Stops. Her eyes fix on the screen and widen just slightly.
"Is that… is that actually real?"
Her voice catches. Not badly. Just enough to show the corporate shell just took a dent.
"Yeah."
I drop the phone and slide it into my pocket.
"The Void doesn't stay in legend. It takes the metro. It kills in the middle of the day. And it just left a body behind that the STM has absolutely no explanation for."
Trent lets out a short, tight laugh that bounces off the walls.
"Fascinating. What's Plan B?"
I look at him. My eyes catch his, silver-gray and watchful, always running the angles, always mapping the nearest exit.
"There's no Plan B. We move."
Lance uncrosses his arms, steps toward me.
"Police are on-site. Gen too, probably."
"Right."
"So we hold until she secures the scene."
"No."
The word lands clean between us.
"We go now. Before the scene gets contaminated. Before someone else puts their hands on that body. Before the Void decides to come back and finish what it started."
Lance watches me, and something moves in the space between us: his disagreement, that quiet and immovable resistance of his, the certainty that there's a smarter play here. The bond carries it straight to me, whether I want it or not.
Maybe he's right.
But we're out of time.
"They're exhausted," he says.
His voice stays steady, deep, but something in it has shifted, a tension, a fracture running just under the surface.
"So?"
I take a step toward him, point my chin at the ceiling, toward le Chaudron above us, toward the city pressing in on all sides.
"There's a body in the metro. Drained. Gray. Dead in a way the police don't have language for. You think we have the luxury of waiting for a good night's sleep?"
The silence thickens until it has edges.