The avalanche ended like a slamd door.
Half the mountain lay smooth and hard, a white sheet drawn over its own face. The other half was ripped and dirty where rocks ca through. The air felt hollow, like sound had been scraped out of it.
Drones circled above the camp. Their rotors buzzed, lights casting slow halos over tents and equipnt. Search beams crawled up the slope and fell away in the drifting snow. Soone had dragged a line of body bags to the lee side, black shapes turning gray as powder settled.
Hikari sat on a crate with a blanket around her shoulders and didn’t feel it. Her hands were clean. That looked wrong. A dic kept trying to press a cup into them. She didn’t take it.
The d tents were full. Heaters throbbed. Orders snapped. People moved with that careful speed you only use when the next ten minutes decide a life. A pair of transports had found the road before it collapsed and now squatted at the edge of camp, their doors open like mouths, stretchers going in and out.
"Na?" a dic asked without looking up from a tablet.
"Raize-" she said, because it lived on the tip of her tongue. Then she corrected. "Hikari..."
The dic glanced up. "Hikari, division 3" they said gently, and moved on.
Lynea sank down beside her. The purple shine at her ankles was gone. The line of dried blood at her thigh had been cleaned to a rust shadow. She held out a packet. "Eat."
"I’m not hungry."
"I don’t care."
Hikari took it and held it without opening it. The wind shifted. Snow lifted off the avalanche face and drifted like smoke. It glittered once, stupidly beautiful, and fell.
Across the way, Esen tried to laugh and turned it into a cough. Ichiro sat on a crate with his hands jamd under his arms like he was keeping them from building by force. Arashi stared at his pistols the way you stare at your own hands after a fight, as if they might have done sothing you didn’t tell them to. He was quiet. That was new.
Keahi stood. Not sitting, not pacing. Standing. Her right shoulder plate was wrapped in a layer of new bandage that kept darkening at the edges from heat that wasn’t there anymore. She kept her eyes on the slope the way a person watches a door.
"Sit down" Hikari told her.
"No."
The drones’ beams swept across the white again. Nothing moved. A small cornice sloughed off high up and slid ten ters, then froze. The sound that followed ca late and small.
Soone near the heaters whispered, "He’s not coming back."
Hikari fixed her eyes on the ridge, because looking anywhere else would make her hear it.
Alteea’s voice ca through the general channel - thin, controlled. "Drones en route to upper sectors. Everyone hold position. dical triage: report numbers on the half-hour."
Static nipped the end. Then, after a breath, softer: "Division three and four... Are you alright?"
Keahi answered. "Alive."
"Good." Alteea said, and let the line go.
Hikari tried to organize her thoughts and they slumped out the side like bad soup. She replayed the last seconds before the world broke: Keahi’s hand closing on her arm hard enough to bruise and drag. Snow going sideways. The sky becoming a wall. Raizen not looking back.
Don’t be late, she had said to him that morning.
She shut her eyes, opened them again. The slope stayed blank.
Iris moved past with two dics and a stretcher, hair pinned up, face pale and set. "Pulse?" she asked. "Response?" She didn’t wait for the answers. Her hands were steady, even when the man on the stretcher wasn’t.
"Take the next one" she told the transport crew without turning. "I don’t care about the order. Take the ones who can live."
Hikari stood and sat again. The blanket slid off and she didn’t bother putting it back on. Lynea pressed the ration into her hand. "Eat" she said again.
"I can’t."
"You can. You do it now, so I don’t have to pour soup in your mouth later."
Hikari opened the packet and took a bite. It tasted like salt and cardboard. She finished it because Lynea was watching.
Obi showed up with two cups of sothing hot. He set one on Hikari’s crate and the other on Lynea’s knee and didn’t say anything.
"Thanks" Hikari said.
He nodded, eyes still on the mountain.
"Any word?" Arashi asked Keahi without looking over.
"No."
He made a small sound that wasn’t a word and went quiet again.
The Lighthouse cut in - new channel, the sound thinner, like the wire was stretched. Alteea this ti, closer to the mic. "Drones scanning sectors near the peak. I don’t have anything... We lost teletry at the mont of impact. Raizen’s vital monitor burned out with the surge. I don’t have anything."
"So you don’t know" Arashi said.
"No" Alteea said. "I don’t know. I am trying to."
Hikari wrapped her fingers around the warm cup and couldn’t feel anything. She pictured him under all that white, breathless - No. She stopped picturing anything.
"Sector thirteen... scanning" Alteea said, to soone on her end. "Sector four. Again."
The camp moved around the silence: seals checked, belts replaced, a cracked pole swapped for a new one. The second-years leaned against gear in ugly postures that ant they didn’t want to sit. Rune had both hands wrapped around his spear and glared at the ground as if it had provoked him personally. Keita dozed standing, fans tucked at his sides. Oren kept turning his shield over in his hands, checking for cracks that weren’t there. Ryuu stared at a drone’s blade and got lost, then jolted back like he’d fallen.
Hikari watched the line where white t cloud.
A voice near the d tent said, "We’re out of clean gauze."
Another: "Use the blankets. Tear them."
Iris again: "Press here. I know it hurts. Just stay with ."
The drones banked and drifted higher. Their lights made tiny moons on the snow.
"Movent" soone said, too loud, and half the camp flinched toward the slope.
"Where?" Hikari asked, out of reflex.
"False" the spotter said, deflating. "Drift."
Hikari’s hands shook. She put the cup down because it was either that or spill it in her lap. Lynea didn’t touch her. She let the space be there. That help was better than words.
The general channel popped. Alteea again. "Division Three" she said, voice even, "ignore any echoes. If you hear your na twice, don’t answer. We still have dirty lines."
The wind shifted again. The ridge wore a scarf of cloud that moved a little and then returned to its place.
"Alteea" Keahi said. "Any heat signatures?"
A tech’s voice, faint on her end: "One blip, then gone."
"Which sector?" Alteea asked.
"Three. Or two. The numbers aren’t... The signal’s dirty... Now the signal flatlined..."
"Scan two and three again. Tight. Give contrast."
Hikari stood up without noticing she had. Keahi shot her a look and said nothing.
The drones shifted positions. Their lights lifted off the lower slopes and crawled up the high face, turned small and then smaller. The beams found nothing and kept looking.
"Contact" Alteea said. The word ca out flat, like she was afraid of scaring it. "Possible movent on three. Repeat: possible."
"Define possible" Keahi said.
"A silhouette" Alteea said. "It doesn’t look like... It looks like a person."
The camp froze without needing orders. A dic held a bandage in the air and forgot to finish wrapping it. The generator coughed and was the only thing that sounded alive.
"Where" Keahi said again, already moving to the front of the line.
"Above the split ridge. Two hundred ters west of the old marker" Alteea said. "My feed is - hold - stabilizing."
Rune shaded his eyes. "Debris doesn’t move like that."
Oren lifted his shield and then set it down again because it felt like a stupid thing to do.
"Heat signature?" Arashi asked.
"Intermittent" Alteea said. "Weak. Could be a body with surface heat. Could be... moving."
Hikari stepped forward before she decided to. The snow squeaked under her boots like old wood. She walked to where the periter lights ended and the world began.
There was a figure up there.
At first it was just a darker shape on white, a trick of depth and hope. Then it leaned, staggered, and kept coming. Slow. Not like a fall. Like a person who had decided that moving forward was the only thing left to do.
The drones drooped to et it. Their lights pinned it from two angles. The caras zood and lost focus, zood again. The image on the portable monitor near the d tent shook, steadied, and broke into squares.
"Sharpen" Alteea said, calm as a knife.
The outline gained edges. A shoulder. A head. One arm bent wrong. The other dragging sothing that left a thin line in the snow.
Hikari stopped breathing.
"Is it... No, it can’t be." Alteea said to the operator standing beside her screens.
The operator squinted at the jagged feed, mouth opening without sound. The drone corrected one last ti. The lens clicked. The figure looked up and the light caught a face beneath a broken hood.
A small pulse of gold blinked at the chest, then went out.
"It’s -" the operator started.
But Hikari didn’t wait to hear the rest.
She ran.
The cold bit her lungs. The snow grabbed at her ankles. Soone shouted her na. She didn’t turn. She ran through the blinding lights. Behind her, boots pounded as Keahi and Arashi and half the camp moved without agreeing to.
The figure kept walking. Close enough now to see the torn uniform. Close enough to see the blood down one side. Close enough to see the way his eyes were barely open, not seeing much, and still stubborn.
She didn’t know if she said it out loud or if the world said it for her.
It took one more step.
Raizen.
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