The warehouse lights died at 2:13 AM.Not flickered. Died. And the backup rift-lamps kicked in with that sick yellow glow that meant one thing in New Haven City.Rift energy."Aw, hell no," I muttered.I was supposed to be counting low-grade Beast cores in Warehouse 4 of the Cole Materials Depot. Night-shift courier job. $40 a night, no awakening required. Perfect for an F-Rank failure like me.Three years ago, the first Echo Rifts tore open over the city. Now 90% of us are still Unawakened civilians, and 10% are Awakened Tamers ranked F to SSS who run everything. I tested F. Unfit to Tame. Kicked out of Tamer Academy in my second year.The air in front of aisle 7 cracked.A black line split the concrete floor like someone zipped reality open. Cold wind poured out. The rift alarms I wasn't supposed to have in this cheap depot finally started screaming.D-RANK ECHO RIFT DETECTED. EVACUATE. EVACUATE.On the catwalk above, Director Grant's office light snapped on. He was doing late paper

Run.Grim didn't say it with a mouth. The word hit me straight through the bond, cold and terrified. A trash-tier slime shouldn't know fear like that.The rift behind me that had been shrinking - the one I thought I'd cleared - ripped back open. Not yellow anymore. Red. The color the Bureau uses on the evacuation boards for C-Rank and above.The energy alarm changed its pitch. From D-RANK to UNSTABLE C-RANK. EVACUATE.Grant heard it too from the catwalk. He went white and slammed his palm on the shutter control again. The steel door I was standing under started dropping.He was going to bury us inside."Grim! Hold it!"Grim understood. He shot forward, his new Battle Slime arms hardening to black stone, and caught the dropping shutter with both hands. Metal screamed against slime. His feet slid on the concrete. 2-Star strength vs. industrial shutter.He was losing.I didn't run to help him push. That's what an F-Rank would do. I ran toward the red rift.Codex snapped in my head. What

The car was a Cole Phantom. $300k, custom rift-plated. The kind of car only S-Rank corporate heirs drive in Old Tamer District because they want you to know they don't belong here.The window rolled down and Zara Cole looked out at us like we were a stain on her route.I'd seen her on the Tamer Academy billboards. Heiress and Combat Captain of Cole Conglomerate, S-Rank Prodigy Tamer at 24. Frost Wyrm bonded since she was sixteen. Face of three beast supplement brands. The girl who was born with everything I was told I'd never have.Up close she was colder. Silver hair cut short for combat, sharp eyes, academy combat jacket with the Cole crest ripped off at the shoulder - like she was trying to make a point.Her eyes went from Evelyn's contract in my hand, to Marcus, to Grim shrunk in his carrier."So it's true," she said. Her voice was dominant, sharp-tongued, used to people flinching. "The F-Rank courier made a Battle Slime. My father said you stole a core.""I didn't steal anything,

The steel door dented again.Not a knock. A beast skill. Something heavy, metal, S-Rank strength. The bolts on our side screamed.Marcus grabbed Gale - still a fist-sized, angry grey chick - and shoved him into his jacket. "Evelyn, the notebooks! The incubators!"Evelyn was already stuffing her hard drives into a duffel. Her hands were shaking, but not from fear. From rage. "That's my entire de-evolution research. Seven years. Cole wants it back."The radio crackled again, louder."...repeat, Cole HQ reports breach of sealed SSS file, subject Shaw, Liam. Threat class: Monarch. Lethal containment authorized if subject resists acquisition..."Lethal containment. For reading my own file.Codex went ice cold in my head. Host. That's a Cole acquisition team. 5-Star handler. They don't recruit, they collect.The door buckled inward. Through the gap I saw it - an Iron Hound. 5-Star, two meters at the shoulder, fur made of interlocked steel plates, jaws that could bite through a car door. And

CEO Cole didn't raise his voice. Men who own half the city's appraisal machines don't need to."Zara, step away from that F-Rank. He just destroyed fifty million credits of corporate property and you are standing in a crime scene."He said it like he was correcting a PowerPoint slide.Zara didn't move. She stood between me and three S-Rank tamers in Cole black, her torn jacket covered in Jorm's black blood from before, now melting into clean frost. Behind her, Jorm - no longer a dying wyrm, now a Winter Sovereign Dragon with wings like aurora - lowered his head and growled at his own owner. The air around him dropped twenty degrees."Dad, you ordered him put down," Zara said, and her sharp, prideful voice was shaking. "You told me he was defective. You put that collar on him.""It was a business decision," Cole said. "De-evolving beasts devalue the brand. You let sentiment compromise -""He's not a brand. He's my partner."That was the first time I'd ever heard Zara Cole sound like a