Divine Milking System

Chapter 409: 409 | The Roster of the Broken

Belle’s expression didn’t change, but her grip on my hand tightened. Naomi remained pressed against my side, her head resting on my shoulder in a way that couldn’t be comfortable for her but apparently provided something she needed more than comfort.

"The others," I said. "Jordan. Hikaru. Everyone who made it out. Where are they?"

Naomi shifted against me. "Jordan’s mom flew in from somewhere. Chicago, I think? She was... she was really upset."

"Hysterical is the word you’re looking for." Belle pulled her hand free to adjust her glasses, a nervous habit I’d noticed her doing whenever emotions got too close to the surface. "Mrs. Wayne arrived approximately six hours after we were extracted. She started crying the moment she saw Jordan and hasn’t stopped since. He tried to stay, but she insisted on transferring him to a private facility closer to their family home."

"She kept calling him her baby boy." Naomi’s voice carried a note of something that might have been sympathy or secondhand embarrassment. "In front of everyone. The nurses. The doctors. The Channel Four crew that was still filming outside."

Poor Jordan. The guy had survived three days in a Void Gate, fought a dimensional guardian, and taken a psychic backlash that left him bleeding from both ears. Now he had to deal with his mother’s very public emotional breakdown while cameras rolled.

Some battles you just couldn’t win.

"Misato?"

"Went with Blair." Belle retrieved a small notebook from her pocket. The same one she’d apparently been using to track my recovery projections. "When Miss Davenport discharged herself against medical advice, Misato volunteered to accompany her. Something about ensuring she didn’t collapse in a parking garage."

That tracked. Misato had spent most of the gate operating as our eyes and ears through her clones. She’d seen everything. Including Blair’s injuries, Blair’s combat performance, and probably Blair’s kiss with me in that collapsed cave since her clones had a tendency to pop up in inconvenient locations.

"Hikaru?"

"Fine." Naomi lifted her head to look at me. "She checked herself out about four hours ago. Didn’t say where she was going. Just... vanished."

Also tracked. Hikaru operated on her own frequency. The fact that she’d stuck around long enough for extraction was already more social interaction than she usually tolerated.

"Javier?"

"Physically uninjured." Belle flipped to a specific page in her notebook. "He’s been in the waiting room for the past twelve hours, writing. I believe he’s attempting to document everything that happened inside the gate before the details fade from memory. He asked me to inform him when you woke up, but I wanted..." She paused. Swallowed. "I wanted a few minutes first."

I reached over and caught her hand again. She let me.

"What about Dante?"

The silence that followed told me everything I needed to know.

"No one’s seen him since extraction." Naomi’s voice dropped. "He was there when they pulled us out. I remember seeing him get loaded onto a gurney. But after that... nothing. His family picked him up, I think. Or maybe the academy. No one’s been able to reach him."

Dante Pope. Elite Ten Rank Ten. The guy whose void nullification fields had been completely useless against the guardian. The guy who’d watched Charles Leone get impaled right in front of him after his ability failed to do anything.

That kind of experience broke people.

I’d seen it happen in my previous life. Soldiers who came back from deployments physically intact but missing pieces of themselves that no surgery could repair. Dante had entered that gate as an Elite Ten member, confident in his power and his position. He’d left it knowing that everything he’d built his identity around meant nothing against a real threat.

"He’ll need time." It sounded hollow even as I said it. Probably because I had no idea if time would be enough.

Belle nodded slowly. "I’ve attempted to contact him through the academy’s internal messaging system. No response. His family has reportedly hired private security to prevent visitors."

"That bad?"

"Worse." Naomi shifted back into view, her hands folded in her lap as if she needed to hold something to keep herself steady. "His family is talking about withdrawing him from the academy entirely. There are rumors about a lawsuit against the IHC for improper gate classification."

A lawsuit wouldn’t bring back Charles Leone. It wouldn’t undo whatever damage Dante had suffered watching his power prove worthless when it actually mattered. But wealthy families always needed someone to blame when their children came back broken, and lawyers always needed something to justify their billable hours.

I let my head fall back against the pillow. Stared at the ceiling tiles above me.

Everything hurt. My chest where that maw had clamped down on me. My arms where corruption had burned through skin and muscle tissue. My legs, still sluggish despite the healing magic pumped into them. The places where dimensional corruption had tried to rewrite my biology before Divine Overflow burned it out carried a kind of wrongness that no painkiller seemed equipped to handle.

The System pulsed again at the corner of my vision.

LIFESPAN: 1D 5H 41M

One day. Five hours. Forty-one minutes.

That’s what I had left to figure out how to not die permanently.

Belle and Naomi were both here. Both willing. Both carrying buffs I’d given them that technically qualified as ongoing physical contact for System purposes.

And I couldn’t bring myself to care about any of that right now.

I was tired. Bone-deep, soul-crushing tired. The kind of exhaustion that made even the prospect of survival feel like too much work.

"You should rest." Belle’s voice pulled me back from wherever my thoughts had been drifting. "The healer arrives in approximately four hours. Until then, your body needs to focus on stabilizing rather than entertaining guests."

"You two aren’t guests."

"We’re not medical professionals either." She stood, smoothing her uniform with hands that trembled slightly before she forced them still. "Naomi and I will be in the waiting room. If you need anything, the nurse call button is on your right side."

"Belle."

She stopped at the door.

"Thanks for staying."

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