Jason and Sophie found a quiet corner near the side of the building, away from the noise and the curious eyes still drifting their way every so often. The sound of rehearsal chatter faded behind them with every step, replaced by the low hum of distant traffic somewhere beyond the parking lot. He leaned against the wall, arms crossed loosely, and studied her for a moment before speaking. "Did the rehearsal get to you," he asked. "The whispering." Sophie shrugged, though the motion looked stiffer than she probably intended. "It would have happened either way," she said. "Raising my hand just made it official." She let out a short, humorless laugh. "Honestly, I'm more surprised by how far my reputation traveled. At this rate I won't be able to find a single party willing to take me anywhere in this country." She kicked lightly at a loose pebble near her foot, eyes following it as it skittered a few inches across the pavement. Jason watched her carefully, his expression unreadable. "

The first golem crashed backward and hit the floor in pieces. Not damaged. Not cracked. Pieces. The core, the dense crystalline heart buried deep inside its iron chest, had been punctured so precisely that the entire body lost coherence and collapsed inward, scattering across the floor like a broken toy. The second golem barely had time to turn before Sophie was already moving again. Her eyes had gone blue, not the pale blue of the hologram light, but something deeper, something that seemed to burn from the inside out. Her dagger punched through the golem's chest at the exact point where the iron plating was thinnest, directly over the core, and the second golem folded like everything that held it together had simply decided to stop. The third took four seconds longer because she had to wait for it to finish turning to face her. Then it too dropped, and the hologram room went completely silent. Sophie stood in the middle of three collapsed piles of shattered iron, her breathing s

The scoreboard was updated while Sophie was still standing in the middle of her teammates' anger. Her name jumped from 46th place to 29th. Four hundred and fifty points. The number looked modest against what she had just physically demonstrated, but the scoring system didn't care about how something looked. It measured teamwork multipliers and contribution splits, and Sophie had contributed zero to either category because her team had never gotten the chance to do anything. Jason watched the number settle on the board and made a quiet internal note. The scoring gap was a problem for later. The fact that she had moved at all was what mattered right now. Sean, sitting beside him with a printed copy of the scoresheet already in his hands, exhaled slowly. "Twenty ninth," he said. "That's not terrible considering how the points were distributed. But she basically handed her teammates a zero. They're going to be furious for the rest of the competition." "They were already planning to e

The remaining evaluations moved through without drama. Of the fifty hunters who had entered the first mission, twenty one walked out with management offers. Most agencies had used only one of their two available picks, holding the second in reserve, unwilling to commit further before they had more information. It was the cautious move, the industry standard approach, and Jason had expected it. Holt wrapped up the session with his usual warmth, announcing that the second mission would begin in one week and that hunters without management representation would have access to the show's internal training facilities in the meantime. Sophie found Jason's eyes from across the room just before the staff ushered her away for her wrap-up interview. She stood at the edge of the corridor entrance, her hood pulled up out of habit, her expression caught between something hopeful and something that hadn't yet decided whether hoping was safe. She looked, Jason thought, exactly like a fox that had

The evaluation segment opened with Jake Sanders. He walked to the stage with the unhurried confidence of someone who already knew the outcome and was mostly present as a formality. Nine agencies lit their offer buttons. He scanned the board once, nodded, and said Upstream without any particular ceremony. His expression, which had carried a faint sourness through most of the morning, shifted the moment the Upstream confirmation registered. One of the Big Three had claimed him. The sourness dissolved into something that looked almost like relief. Vivian Cross acknowledged it from the mentors' section with a gracious incline of her head, the kind of gesture that is aware of being watched. The remaining hunters moved through the evaluation in order. Most agencies used only one of their two available offers, holding the second back, unwilling to commit resources before the second mission gave them more information. The picks were careful, conservative, the choices of people managin