Re-Awakened :I Ascend as an SSS-Ranked Dragon Summoner Chapter 847: Age isn’t just numbers

Lila lowered her hands slowly once Sophie’s mace dropped a few inches, though the light in its eyes hadn’t faded yet, still pulsing that same steady blue.

"Sorry," Lila said, quieter now. "Should’ve knocked. Didn’t want anyone seeing me come in here, honestly."

Sophie set the mace down carefully, her heart still hammering against her ribs. "What are you doing here, Lila. It’s late. It’s really, really late."

"Wanted to talk. Just us." Lila stayed near the door, hands loose at her sides, none of the sharp edges from the cell conversation left in her posture tonight. Something softer had settled into her, or maybe it was just exhaustion wearing the same clothes as sincerity. "I wanted to say sorry. For the last couple weeks. Genuinely, not the version I gave you down in that cell."

Sophie didn’t say anything right away, just watched her, still catching her breath.

"I get the position you’re in," Lila continued, when the silence stretched long enough to need filling. "Making calls nobody actually wants to make. Deciding who gets trusted with what, and living with it either way it goes." She shrugged, small and tired. "I gave you every reason not to trust me sitting in that seat, and I know that. I’m not here to argue it again."

"Lila—"

"Let me get through this, please, before I lose my nerve." Her voice wavered slightly on the last word. "I get what Noah sees in you too. I mean that. Kind of hate how much I get it, honestly, if I’m being real with you for once instead of performing something."

Sophie’s stomach tightened. "Where is this actually going."

"Nowhere bad. I promise you that much." Lila’s jaw tightened, something guarded slipping back over her expression despite her best effort to hold the softer version together. "Just. Whatever happens to me, going forward. Don’t assume the worst part first. Okay? I need you to actually hear that, not just nod along at it because it’s late and you want to go to bed."

"What does that mean, Lila." Sophie took a step closer. "Say it plainly. What’s actually happening."

"It means what it means." Lila was already backing toward the door, the moment of openness closing over as fast as it had opened. "And keep the team together. Whatever else happens. We need you holding that center, more than you probably think you do."

"Lila, wait, don’t just—"

The door clicked shut behind her before Sophie finished the sentence.

Sophie stood there a long moment, staring at the closed door, the mace’s light behind her finally fading back to dormant, the room settling into an unsettled kind of quiet.

She grabbed a light jacket off the back of her chair, more out of restless need to move than any actual destination in mind, and stepped out into the hallway.

Miss Brooks was standing there, just outside, arms crossed, clearly waiting.

"Hey." Sophie startled slightly, one hand pressed briefly to her chest. "You scared me. Something wrong?"

"Saw Lila slip in behind you when you first got back," Brooks said, falling into step beside her without waiting for an invitation. "Figured I’d hang around, see how that went."

Sophie exhaled hard, rubbing at her face with both hands now. "Keep it under your hat. Whatever you’re already thinking. Lila’s been sketchy, weird, all of it, I know that better than anyone right now. But I’m not having faction members watch another leader in this building get treated like an outsider by the rest of us. That kind of thing spreads faster than anything else does around here."

"Wasn’t planning to say a word to anyone." Brooks matched her pace easily, years of soldiering making silence and stride equally natural to her. "How’d she seem to you. Really, I mean, not the polished version you’ll give the others tomorrow."

"Honestly? I don’t fully know anymore." Sophie shook her head slowly, still processing it herself. "She apologized. Told me not to assume the worst if something happens to her. Told me to keep the team together." She let out a short, humorless laugh. "That’s not exactly reassuring, is it. Doesn’t sound like someone who’s just fine."

"No," Brooks agreed. "It doesn’t."

They walked in silence a few steps, boots echoing soft against polished floor, the hour late enough that most of the building had gone dark around them, just the occasional emergency light casting long shadows down the corridor.

"How’s the Hendricks thing coming," Sophie asked eventually, needing something else to think about.

Brooks’s expression darkened immediately.

"Badly," she admitted. "My contact tried pulling his file through the usual channels. Came back completely empty. Not redacted, not flagged, nothing, like the request itself never properly registered on their end at all. Whoever built that man’s records made sure there was nothing there to pull, or made sure whoever tried would just quietly hit a wall and give up."

"So we’re stuck."

"Not entirely." Brooks kept walking, hands clasped loosely behind her back. "I reached out to some old heads too. People who’ve been in this institution longer than I have, who might actually remember things that never made it into any official file to begin with. Talked to Volkov."

"Volkov," Sophie repeated, and something in her voice shifted, memory surfacing fast. "You mean our Volkov. From Vanguard."

"That’s the one." Brooks glanced sideways at her. "You remember him better than most, I’d imagine, given how many times he had you redoing that evac drill."

"Eleven times," Sophie said flatly. "I counted. He made me and Lyra redo it eleven times because we kept flinching at the smoke charges, and every single time he’d just stand there with that clipboard, not even raising his voice, just saying ’again’ like it was the only word he knew."

"Sounds exactly like him." A small, tired smile crossed Brooks’s face. "He mentioned you too, actually, when I brought this up. Asked how you were doing. Seemed genuinely pleased to hear you’d landed somewhere real. From what I hear, it seems to me like I’m not the only one that had the desire to decamp,"

"Really? An old head like volkov? I mean he’s too deep and loves the system to want to leave. Anyways, let’s focus Brooks," Sophie said with a short laugh.

"Right, sorry." Brooks straightened, the smile fading back into something more serious. "He spoke well of Hendricks. Really well, no hesitation in it at all when I brought the name up. Said he’s known him for as long as he can remember. Said Hendricks was already senior EDF back when Volkov himself was still just a cadet."

Sophie stopped walking.

"Say that again."

"Volkov’s known Hendricks since he was young. Says Hendricks was already senior by the time Volkov enlisted."

"That doesn’t add up." Sophie’s voice sharpened fast, the fatigue from the whole long day burning off in an instant. "Think about what it actually takes to reach Hendricks’s rank, Brooks. You don’t inherit that position. You earn it the slow way, decades of real service, actual deployments, people watching you climb every single rung of it personally over a career that takes half a lifetime minimum. That’s the entire point of how the system’s built, it’s supposed to be nearly impossible to fake."

"Okay."

"So if he was already senior when Volkov was a kid enlisting, and Volkov himself isn’t young now, what does that actually put Hendricks at. Sixty years in that position? Seventy?" Sophie shook her head slowly, working through it out loud. "And he doesn’t look it. Not even close. I’ve stood in a room with the man, Brooks, more than once. He looks like he’s in his fifties. Maybe fifty-five if you’re being generous. Not someone who’s held senior command since before Volkov could tie his own boots properly."

"People age differently. Genetics, easy postings, all sorts of things." Brooks argued.

"Not that differently. Not without some kind of explanation behind it." Sophie’s jaw tightened. "And he’s a combat officer. That’s the whole basis of how he earned that rank in the first place, an ability profile built around actual fighting capacity. Nobody’s ever documented anything about him tied to longevity or regeneration or anything remotely close to that. So where does that leave us. Where’s the ability that lets a career combat officer just quietly stop aging through seventy years of active field duty?"

Brooks didn’t have an immediate answer for that.

"You remember Arthur," Sophie said, quieter now, the words carrying real weight. "You were our instructor when we brought what we found on him straight to the EDF. You sat in that tribunal room with the rest of us, watched them call every single one of us liars, watched them discharge Team Seven for the crime of saying his name out loud in a briefing."

"I remember every second of that room," Brooks said. "I think about it more than I’d like to admit."

"Kelvin used to call him the angry grandpa who wants to destroy the entire universe. Half joking, obviously, but not really, because he’s not actually old in any normal sense of the word. He’s stupidly old. Imprisoned forty-seven years by the other seven originals, and that’s not even the real number, that’s just the imprisonment stretch on top of however long he’d already existed before that even happened. He’s been running operations, plotting, building whatever the Purge is now, for longer than any single human lifespan should reasonably allow, and nobody, not the EDF, not us, not anyone, has ever gotten a straight answer on how that’s even possible."

"Nobody’s ever gotten close enough to actually ask him directly." Brooks said.

"Exactly. That’s the whole problem." Sophie started walking again, faster now, energy building behind every word. "Whatever lets something exist that long without falling apart, without aging the way everything else in the universe ages, that’s not luck, Brooks. That’s not good genetics or an easy career. That’s something specific. Something tied directly to whatever the Purge actually is underneath all the recruitment and the ideology and everything else dressed on top of it."

Brooks’s expression shifted slowly, dawning realization spreading across her face. "You think Hendricks has the same thing running through him."

"I think if Hendricks has been quietly not aging inside a career that’s supposed to be the single most earned, most personally verified position in the entire EDF, that’s not a coincidence sitting there by accident. That’s a foothold. A genuinely perfect one, actually, because the institution itself vouches for him just by the rank he carries. Nobody questions a Lieutenant that senior. You question strangers. You question new faces. You don’t question the man who’s been sitting quietly in command meetings since before half the current staff were even born."

Brooks stared at her for a long moment, arms slowly uncrossing as the full weight of it settled in.

"So what do we actually do with this," she asked finally. "We already know we can’t touch his file directly. You said so yourself."

"We don’t need his file." Sophie stopped at the end of the corridor, turning to face her fully now, something sharp and alive burning behind her tired eyes despite the hour. "We pull Volkov’s instead. Find his actual enlistment date, the real one, not whatever polished version is sitting in his official bio for public consumption. If Hendricks was already senior EDF at that exact point in time, decades and decades back, and he still looks the way he looks today, standing in a room with us like nothing about him has changed in all that time, that’s not a coincidence anymore. That’s a pattern. The exact same pattern sitting underneath everything Arthur’s ever been."

Brooks was quiet, turning it over slowly.

"You know Volkov well enough to actually ask him this yourself," she said. "Not through some back channel contact who might misread the question or spook him into silence. Directly. Face to face."

"I redid an evac drill eleven times for that man because he refused to let me half-ass a single rep of it." Sophie managed a small, tired smile despite everything. "I think I’ve earned the right to one honest conversation with him."

"He might not answer honestly, even for you."

"Maybe not." Sophie’s smile faded into something more determined. "But I’ve got to try. If there’s even a chance this thread actually leads somewhere real, somewhere we can use, I’m not letting it sit untouched just because it might not pan out."

They stood there a moment longer, the corridor quiet around them, the whole building settling into the deep, uneasy stillness that came after a day that had run through joy and grief and celebration and fear all in the space of a single sunrise to sunset.

"There might be a way," Sophie said finally, mostly to herself now, staring down the empty hallway like she could already see the shape of where this led, the pieces starting to fit together in a way that felt, for the first time in weeks, like actual progress instead of just circling the same unanswerable questions. "There might actually be a way through this."