Re-Awakened :I Ascend as an SSS-Ranked Dragon Summoner Chapter 829: Rough Day - Avoiding dreams being a reality

Back on Earth, at the harbor in the Eastern Cardinal, Eclipse faction activities continued.

Sam stood at the front of the briefing room, tablet in hand, projecting a feed onto the wall behind him.

"...witnesses are reporting movement near the old shipping terminal, three separate calls in the last two hours," he said. "Local contract, low threat classification, but the client wants a visible presence during a cargo handoff tomorrow. Standard civilian control, crowd management, plus whatever shows up if it goes sideways."

Lila leaned back in her chair, already halfway to her feet. "Great. Me and Sera’ll take this one." She was already scanning names off a roster on her own tablet. "Grab a team of twenty for civilian control, split them—"

"No," Sophie said.

Lila stopped mid-motion, tablet still raised.

"Sera and Diana partner with the twenty," Sophie said, not looking up from her own notes. "Lila, I need you on something else. Solo security detail. A secretary out in the Cardinal wants protection for a diplomatic handoff, low profile, one person."

Lila’s mouth tightened. "That’s a two-person job at best. You’re benching me on crowd control?"

"It’s a real assignment," Sophie said. "Just a different one."

Lila held her gaze a second longer than she needed to, then nodded once, sharp, and walked out without another word.

Sera got up to prep, already murmuring something into her comm about medic kits, and the room emptied in pieces.

---

Sophie made it as far as the hallway before Diana caught up to her, falling into step beside her without asking.

"You got a minute," Diana said. Not really a question.

"I’m getting coffee."

"I’ll walk with you."

They moved down the corridor together, Sophie’s pace even, Diana’s matching it without effort.

"I’ve noticed something," Diana said. "Over the last week. Every contract that comes through, you find a reason to put Lila somewhere alone. Solo assignments. Small teams. Never with the group, never near you."

Sophie didn’t answer right away.

"Is that the right call," Diana asked. "Tactically, I mean. Because on paper, Lila’s the best fit for half these jobs, and you keep routing around her like she isn’t."

Sophie exhaled through her nose. She didn’t want to explain the vision. Didn’t want to put words to Seraleth on the ground, Lila standing there doing nothing, not with anyone, not yet, not until she had some idea what to actually do with it.

"You’re right," she said instead. "I’ve been careful. That’s all it is."

"Careful," Diana repeated.

"Careful."

Diana studied her for a second. "I get it. Lila’s screwed the team over before. I haven’t forgotten that any more than you have." She shrugged one shoulder. "But we’re not that team anymore. We’re prepared. We watch each other. And honestly? I don’t think she’s capable of pulling something like that again, not with everyone as locked in as we are now."

"Maybe."

"You should make calls based on tactics," Diana said. "Not emotion. Not fear."

Sophie’s jaw set. "I’m not scared."

"Okay, Reign."

Diana didn’t push it further. She turned and walked off down the opposite hallway, already calling over her shoulder toward the prep room.

"Sera! Pack medic kits for everyone, we’ve got bodies to keep in one piece!"

Sophie stood there a second longer, alone in the corridor, coffee forgotten as an actual destination now, more just an excuse to keep walking.

Kelvin came around the corner with his head bent into a tablet, thumb scrolling fast through a thread of messages, and nearly walked straight into her.

"Whoa—sorry, sorry." He looked up, blinking. "Sophie. Hey."

"Hey." She studied him a second. "Where are you headed, looking like that."

"Like what?"

"Like a man on a mission who forgot to look up."

Kelvin huffed something like a laugh. "I’ve got an errand to run. For the Lucas thing."

Sophie’s expression sharpened slightly. "What happened to what Webb promised?"

"Webb’s still working the materials problem, hasn’t found anything solid yet, so we’re chasing a couple other theories in parallel." Kelvin held up the tablet like it explained everything. "This one needs a part I can’t source through anything official. Somebody in the community’s got it. Offered to trade."

"The community?"

"Yeah, you know, the fan stuff. Pithons. Bunch of actual engineers in there, not just people posting clips of me looking cool, though there’s plenty of that too." He was already moving again, sidestepping her. "Anyway, gotta run, this guy wants an actual meet up instead of just shipping the thing, which is annoying, but whatever gets Lucas the part he needs."

"Kelvin—"

"I’ll be back before dinner," he called over his shoulder, already breaking into a light jog toward the hangar bay.

---

He took one of the smaller transports up, autopilot mapped to an address on the edge of the Cardinal, some open-air cafe that didn’t look like much from the flight approach, tables scattered under a canopy of solar mesh.

"Of course nobody does anything for free," he muttered to himself, hands loose on the controls even though the thing was flying itself. "Not even the guy partially responsible for keeping this entire sector from getting eaten by whatever’s crawling around out there. Ask for one obscure regulator, one, and suddenly it’s a whole production. Personal meet and greet. Like I’m some kind of celebrity."

He glanced at himself in the reflective dash panel.

"Which, I guess, technically." He shrugged. "Still annoying."

The transport set down in a designated lot a block from the cafe, and Kelvin walked the rest of the way, tablet tucked under one arm, scanning the tables for anyone who looked like they were waiting for someone.

That’s when he saw someone.

He didn’t recognize her at first.

She sat near the back, hair shorter than he remembered, posture different, more closed off than the girl who used to sprawl across half a workbench arguing with him about wiring diagrams. But then she looked up, and something in her face hadn’t changed at all.

"Cora?"

She smiled, small and a little uncertain. "Hey, stranger."

"You’re—" Kelvin stopped in the middle of the walkway, genuinely thrown. "You’re the one who’s got the regulator?"

"Guilty."

He crossed the rest of the distance and dropped into the seat across from her, still processing. "I did not expect this to be you. Anonymous handle, all business in the messages, I figured you for some retired engineer with a workshop full of illegal salvage."

"I mean," Cora said, "you’re not wrong about the illegal salvage part."

Kelvin laughed, and something about the sound of it, easy, unguarded, made her shoulders drop half an inch.

"How long has it been," she said. "Actually been. Not counting streams."

"You watch my streams?"

"Everyone watches your streams." She said it plainly, no edge to it, just fact. "I mean it’s been what, three years since the academy. You disappeared into Vanguard, I did my second and third year the normal way since nobody fast tracked me anywhere. Came back and last we saw was a year ago,"

"Yeah." Kelvin’s smile faltered slightly. "That’s not fair, by the way. You were better than half the people who got pulled up early."

"Tell that to whoever makes those calls." She said it lightly, but something under it didn’t quite land as a joke. "Anyway. Drink? While you wait for your part, I mean, since I’m making you sit through this instead of just handing it over."

"Sure. Whatever you’re having."

She waved down a server, ordered two of something Kelvin didn’t catch the name of, and for a while they just talked. Easy at first, the way old friends slide back into rhythm without meaning to. Academy stories. A teacher they’d both hated. The time Kelvin had nearly burned down half a building trying to prove a point about power conduits.

"You haven’t changed," Cora said at one point, shaking her head. "Still blowing things up to prove you’re right."

"I proved my point though."

"You set off three fire suppression systems."

"Collateral damage."

She laughed, real and unguarded, and for a second the years between them folded down to nothing.

They walked after the drinks, no particular destination, just along the harbor path with the water catching afternoon light, and Cora pointed out a mural someone had painted on the side of a warehouse, half Eclipse propaganda, half genuine art, Nyx rendered mid-flight across twenty feet of concrete.

"People really love you guys," she said, looking at it.

"People love the idea of us," Kelvin said. "Real thing’s messier."

"Isn’t everything."

They kept walking. Kelvin checked the time eventually, more out of habit than urgency, and something in his posture shifted.

"I should probably head back," he said. "Got work waiting."

"Right." Cora didn’t move to follow immediately. "The regulator. Almost forgot the whole reason you’re here."

"Honestly? This was better than I expected." Kelvin meant it, and it came out a little more sincere than he’d planned. "I only put the request out because someone offered, figured I’d get a shipping label and a price, not an actual afternoon."

Something crossed Cora’s face then, quick, gone almost as fast as it arrived.

"About that," she said.

Kelvin waited.

"I was the one who offered," she said. "Obviously. But I didn’t do it for the part." She looked at the water instead of at him. "I did it because it was a reason to see you. That’s it. That’s the whole thing."

Kelvin’s stomach dropped slightly. "Cora—"

"I know you’re getting married," she said, quick, like she needed to get it out before she lost the nerve. "I know that. Everyone knows that, it’s been all over the streams for weeks, congratulations, genuinely, Diana’s incredible, I’m not—I’m not trying to make this weird."

"It’s not weird," Kelvin said carefully. "I mean. It’s a little weird."

"Yeah." She let out something between a laugh and a breath. "I know I don’t have time with you. I know that. You’ve got a wedding, a whole life, people depending on you every single day. I just." She stopped walking. "I just wanted to see you. Once. In person. Not through a screen."

Kelvin stopped too, turning to face her properly.

"Cora, what’s going on."

She was quiet for a second, jaw working like she was deciding how much to actually say.

"I washed out," she said finally. "About eight months after graduation. Deployment didn’t go the way anyone expected. I couldn’t—" She shook her head. "I froze, twice, in situations I should’ve handled fine, and that was it, they pulled me from active duty. Reassignment, then a psych eval, then eventually just out."

"I didn’t know that."

"Why would you." Not bitter, just stating it. "I stopped posting anything after it happened. Didn’t want anyone from the old crowd asking questions."

"So what have you been doing since."

"Joined a faction." She said it vaguely, deliberately not naming it. "Smaller. Nothing like Eclipse. It’s fine. It pays, it’s stable, it’s not what I trained for but it’s something."

Kelvin didn’t push on the name. He could feel there was more underneath it that she wasn’t ready to hand over yet.

"And the streams," he said quietly.

Cora’s mouth twisted. "Yeah. The streams." She finally looked at him again. "I watch every single one. I know that’s not healthy, I know exactly how that sounds, but I do it anyway. And when the wedding announcement went up, it was everywhere, everyone in my faction was talking about it like it was the biggest thing that happened all month, and I just." She pressed her lips together. "I was happy for you. I want you to know that first. Genuinely happy. But man, it was a rough week."

Kelvin felt something heavy settle in his chest, guilt with nowhere obvious to go.

"I had no idea," he said. "Any of this. I would’ve reached out if I’d known."

"That’s exactly why I didn’t tell you." Cora managed a small, tired smile. "You’d have felt obligated. Dropped by out of guilt instead of wanting to. I didn’t want that version of seeing you."

"You could’ve just talked to me," Kelvin said. "Instead of, I don’t know, engineering an entire fake transaction just to get five minutes."

"Would you have come, if I’d just messaged and said hey, I miss you, can we get coffee?"

Kelvin opened his mouth. Closed it.

"Yeah," Cora said. "That’s why."

They stood there a moment, the harbor noise filling the space neither of them was using.

"I owe you something real, then," Kelvin said eventually. "Since you gave me that."

"You don’t owe me anything."

"I do." He rubbed the back of his neck. "The streams don’t know this. Nobody outside the team does, actually, not even most of Eclipse. Lucas is in cryo. One did something to him, some kind of drain, permanent, and we don’t know if he wakes up. That’s the real reason I need this regulator. Not some side project. It’s the only lead I’ve got that might actually save him."

Cora’s expression shifted entirely, all of it, guilt and old feelings pushed aside by something more immediate.

"Kelvin. I didn’t know."

"Nobody does. That’s the point." He met her eyes. "I’m telling you because you just told me something real. Figured you deserved the same."

She didn’t say anything for a second, just studied him, something soft and sad moving behind her eyes.

"That’s rough," she said finally. "I’m sorry."

"Yeah."

"Is there anything I can do? Beyond the part, I mean."

"Just this was already more than I expected today," Kelvin said. "Come on. Walk me to my ride. I’ll take the regulator and get out of your hair."

They walked back toward the lot in quiet, comfortable in a way that hadn’t been true five minutes earlier, something cleared out of the air between them even if neither of them said so directly.

Cora’s own vehicle sat a few spots down from his transport, sleek and older, the kind of thing someone kept running out of stubbornness rather than budget. She popped the trunk and reached inside, pulling out a small case, and inside it sat a compact synthesizer unit, dense with wiring Kelvin recognized immediately as exactly what he needed and exactly the kind of thing that never showed up through legal channels.

"This took some doing," she said, handing it over. "Black market contact, three different middlemen, more credits than I want to admit."

"I’ll pay you back."

"You will not."

Kelvin turned the case over in his hands, then looked up at her.

"Thank you," he said. "For this. And for today."

"Yeah." Cora shoved her hands in her jacket pockets. "Today was good."

"I’d love to catch up again sometime," Kelvin said, and meant it, no hedge in his voice at all. "Not like this. Just, actually catch up. Properly."

Something flickered across her face, hope and caution tangled together.

"I’d like that," she said.

Kelvin gave her a small nod, tucked the case under his arm, and headed for his own transport. He glanced back once before climbing in.

Cora was still standing by her open trunk, watching him go, and she lifted one hand in a small wave before turning back to close it.