[AMY IN DISPATCH (2025)] CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Six months since she introduced herself to the third Mecha Man and the building hadn’t gotten any quieter.

Blonde Blazer had been hoping for that. Silence in this line of work was rarely a good sign, so something… less would have been enough. The kind of background noise you could file away and ignore. Instead, the Torrance Branch had developed a new language.

It spoke in shifting metal and whining patchwork systems, in the low electrical buzz of temporary shielding that never quite synced with the original grid, and the soft crackle of stress fractures and impending problems.

Blazer stood at the edge of what used to be Corridor C, now best described as ‘a suggestion of a hallway,’ tablet in hand, and expression composed in the way only long practice and mild exhaustion could achieve.

A sharp clang echoed from deeper inside.

Blazer didn’t look up.

“Please tell me that was intentional,” she said into her comm.

A beat.

Then Robert’s voice came, just a little too quick to be natural. “Define intentional.”

Blazer closed her eyes briefly.

“I am revising my question,” she said. “Was that planned.”

Another beat.

“…It was anticipated.”

“That is not the same thing.”

“It is… in spirit.”

Blazer opened her eyes again. “Robert.”

“Yes?”

“If the building collapses, that phrasing is going in your performance review.”

A pause.

“…Understood.”

Progress.

Of course, the Z Team was already inside.

Blazer stepped forward into the reconstruction zone, boots crunching lightly over scattered debris that had been swept into piles and then, at some point, forgotten. The change in energy hit her immediately, from the chaos of two months ago to something almost workable. 

Golem was braced under a support beam that had absolutely no business being considered ‘temporarily stable,’ arms locked, and expression set in stubborn defiance of both gravity and common sense.

Punch Up was directing a pair of automated loaders that were very clearly not following his instructions but were, through some miracle, still accomplishing the task.

“Left—no, your other left—why do you even have two lefts—”

Malevola was arguing with a wall panel again.

“-I swear to Lucifer, if you slip again, I’m ripping you out and installing you somewhere humiliating-”

Sonar stood in the middle of it all, head bowed and eyes unfocused.

“There’s a stress ripple in the east support—no, wait, that’s just Punch Up yelling—no, wait, now it’s a stress ripple—”

Prism’s light constructs overlaid the entire section in neat, glowing geometry.

“That angle is wrong,” she muttered. “That is not how load distribution works. That is not how any of this works.”

And Invisigal—

…Blazer didn’t see her.

Which meant she was either being helpful… or setting up a problem for later.

Experience suggested both.

Hunter was on the upper scaffolding.

Blazer tracked her without moving her head, eyes moving upward just enough to keep her in peripheral vision.

Six months had done something to Hunter. She moved like someone who had already run the scenario a dozen times in her head and was now simply following through on the version that worked. There was no hesitation or wasted motion.

She dropped from one level to another, landing light in front of the structure, already reaching out… A mass of thin black wires extended from her hands, but unlike before where it lashed out at any sensory cue, now she was able to control its path. 

The structure was shredded before it could topple over. 

Blazer’s tablet pinged softly. A delay spike again.

She did not sigh.

She had learned not to.

“Hunter,” Blazer called, tone even, “please confirm you are not being intentionally slow.”

Hunter didn’t look down.

“…no.”

“That answer lacks confidence.”

“I’m having fun,” Hunter clarified, as if that helped. “I just… Control has been an issue for so long, I'm still getting used to it.”

Blazer considered that.

“…Noted.”

Blazer found Amy near what used to be an equipment station and was now a hybrid of medical triage and something that would have made the compliance department deeply uncomfortable if they’d had the energy to argue about it anymore.

A gurney had been repurposed into a stabilization platform. And one of Amy’s slimes, softly glowing, and slightly pulsing, was spread across a cracked support joint, reinforcing it from the inside like living sealant.

It shouldn’t have worked, but it did.

Amy stood over it, sleeves rolled, expression focused in that quiet, intense way that meant she was thinking three steps ahead of everyone else and only barely tolerating the present.

“You’re tracking the structural output?” Blazer asked.

Amy didn’t look up. “Mm.”

“That is not a confirmation.”

“It’s holding,” Amy said, adjusting something that didn’t exist on any standard SDN interface, but worked anyway. “Mostly.”

Blazer stepped closer, glancing at the readings.

“Define mostly.”

Amy paused.

“…It hasn’t gotten worse.”

Blazer accepted that.

Because, again, progress.

Another thud echoed from somewhere behind them, this one closer.

Blazer didn’t turn. She simply spoke into her comm.

“Status.”

Robert again.

“We’re good.” A beat. “…Probably.”

Blazer pinched the bridge of her nose. “Robert.”

“Yes?”

“I am going to need you to stop adding qualifiers that reduce my confidence in your statements.”

“That is going to be difficult.”

“I believe in you.”

“…That makes one of us.”

Blazer lowered her hand and looked out across the reconstruction zone again.

Six months ago, this team had been unstable, unreliable, and a liability wrapped in potential. Now… They were still unstable, still unpredictable, and still, objectively, a paperwork nightmare. But they worked together.

Golem shifted his stance without being asked as the beam above him settled. Punch Up redirected a loader before it could collide with Malevola. Sonar called out a fluctuation half a second before Prism adjusted her grid to compensate. Invisigal reappeared just long enough to secure something no one else had noticed was loose, then vanished again. Hunter moved where the structure needed her. Amy fixed what broke.

And Robert… He held the whole thing together from somewhere just out of sight, a commanding voice in their ears.

She tapped her comm one more time. “Robert.”

“Yeah?”

“…Status.”

A pause, short this time.

“We’re holding.”

Blazer looked at the walls. At the scorch marks that hadn’t faded. At the patched systems humming along despite themselves. At a team that had every reason to fail and hadn’t.

Six months ago, they had saved the city from the Red Ring and Shroud, surviving through something undoubtedly dangerous. 

She lowered her tablet.

“Good,” she said.

And, quieter: “So are we.”