Chapter 17
1302 Words
Harper
The room didn't move. I made sure of that. Checked the walls, the floor, the ceiling. Everything stayed exactly where it was, which meant the lurch in my stomach was a me problem.
"Cool." My voice came out light as air. "Saves the paperwork on my end."
Sherman kept typing. Noah sat motionless in the chair beside me, cables still attached to his arm. I felt his gaze land on me and stay there.
"Who'd they assign him?"
"A-class. Lyra. Transfer went through this morning."
My fingers stopped on the cuff.
Lyra. 98.6 percent average match success rate. The woman who'd announced, I'm the Guide he should have, to a packed mess hall while I stood there holding a tray like a coat rack with feelings.
"Good for her." I smiled. Employee-of-the-month smile. "She wanted it."
Sherman looked up. Not the way a person looks at someone they feel sorry for. The way a person looks at a slide under a microscope when the culture does something unexpected.
I held the smile until it held itself, then hopped off the exam table. "Same time tomorrow?"
"Seven sharp."
"Great. Love mornings."
The lab door sealed behind me. The corridor was empty. White walls, cool light, the hum of climate control filling the silence like cotton.
I made it six steps before my shoulders dropped.
He agreed.
My chest folded in on itself. I shut it down.
Think. Sherman could be lying. Sherman lied the way other people breathed.
But if she wasn't, then either Lucas had pulled another move, or Vane had done the math and arrived at the same conclusion I had.
That an A-class Guide was the smarter bet.
I pressed my palms flat against my thighs and kept walking.
_________
The next morning I took the long way to B-block's cafeteria.
Not because I missed the food. Camp rations hadn't improved since I'd left. But the research wing's dining area was a sterile box where every bite I took got logged, and I needed ten minutes of eating like a normal human being who wasn't someone's science project.
Also, I wanted information. The cafeteria was the fastest newswire in Camp 07.
Priya spotted me from three tables away and shrieked.
"Harper!" She launched out of her seat and grabbed me in a hug that nearly took us both out. Bex and Sonia materialized from nowhere, firing questions faster than I could swallow my first bite of toast.
"Where have you been? They said you transferred."
"Research wing. Sherman needed a new lab rat, I fit the cage."
"Is it true you matched with the Destroyer?"
"His name is Noah. And technically he matched with me. I was busy trying not to die at the time."
"Is he hot?"
"Bex, I was hemorrhaging from the face."
"That's not a no."
God, I'd missed them.
For ten minutes I sat in my old world. Bad coffee, loud voices, Priya stealing food off my plate. It felt like coming up for air after being underwater so long I'd forgotten what the surface looked like.
Then the cafeteria doors opened and the air changed.
Vane walked in first. Clean uniform, collar pulsing a steady amber. Behind him, half a step to his left, was Lyra. She was saying something, hands moving.
Our eyes met.
Two seconds. Maybe less. My body did every stupid thing nine days of proximity had hardwired into it. Heart rate up. Skin warm. The bond humming faint and thin like a phone ringing in an empty house.
I stood up.
I don't know what I was going to say. Something. Anything.
But before I opened my mouth, he walked past me like I was furniture.
They sat at a far table. Lyra leaned in, said something. Laughed. Her fingers landed on his forearm and stayed there. He didn't move them.
Priya's hand found my wrist under the table. The whole table had gone quiet in the way people go quiet at car accidents.
I laughed.
It just came out. Small, soft, the kind of sound that escapes before your chest gets the memo. I'd spent the whole night constructing theories. Lucas did this. It's a setup. He has a reason.
Turns out the reason was an A-class Guide with a hand on his arm.
I'd made the deal with Sherman on the premise that he'd be better off. Looked like the math checked out.
I sat down. Bit into my toast. It tasted like cardboard, but that was a rations problem, not an emotional one.
A shadow the size of a small building fell across the table.
Noah set a cardboard tray of coffee cups in front of my roommates like a man presenting diplomatic credentials at a foreign border.
"Good morning. I'm Noah. Harper's new partner." He nodded at each of them in turn. "Peace offering."
Priya looked up at him. Then at the coffee. Then at me. Then back at him.
"He's hot," Bex whispered. At full volume. Because Bex.
My roommates swarmed the coffee like seagulls on a dropped sandwich. Noah sat beside me, one arm slung along the back of my chair, shoulder blocking my sightline to the far table like a human curtain.
"You don't strike me as a cafeteria person."
"I'm not." He dropped his voice. "Field mission next week. Multi-day. Botanical survey, outer sectors. Plant samples, soil readings. No combat."
"Absolutely not."
"You haven't heard the details."
"I heard field mission. Last time I went outside these walls, I hit a werewolf in the foot. That's my field record. I'm retired."
"No suppression sweeps. No kill zones. Just trees, dirt, and three days outside the range of Sherman's sensors."
That hit me.
I glanced past his shoulder without meaning to. Vane's head was turned toward our table. Toward Noah. Toward Noah's arm, resting on the back of my chair.
I looked away so fast my neck almost filed a complaint. Then immediately hated myself, because that was the body language of someone with a guilty conscience and I had nothing to be guilty about.
Noah followed where my eyes had been. His mouth curved. He leaned in, draping his arm across my shoulders.
"One more perk." Just loud enough. "Fresh air's great for getting over people."
I shoved his arm off. "I'm not getting over anyone. Don't touch me."
"So you'll come?"
"I'll come because Sherman's sensors are making me lose my mind. That is the only reason. Write it down."
"Noted." He stood. "Sign-up's at the mission desk. Slots won't last."
I grabbed my bag, mouthed "don't" at Priya's face, and followed him out.
The mission desk was a window counter at the end of the main corridor, staffed by a clerk who looked like he'd rather be literally anywhere else. Noah slid our IDs across. The clerk pulled up the roster.
Behind us, the click of heels on the polished floor. Then a second set of footsteps. Heavier. Slower.
The clerk looked past my shoulder and straightened in his chair like someone had plugged him in.
I turned.
Lyra stood three feet away, mission form in hand, already filled out. Smile locked and loaded, aimed at the clerk.
Behind her, close enough that I could smell rain and woodsmoke and something my whole nervous system still recognized before my brain could stop it, stood Vane.
"We'd like to register for the same assignment," Lyra said.
Nobody moved. The clerk's eyes bounced between the four of us. He looked like a man who'd just realized he was standing in a minefield and every direction was wrong.
Noah's hand settled on the small of my back. He didn't look at Lyra. He spoke to the clerk.
"Make it four, then."
Vane's jaw tightened.
This was going to be a fun trip.
- Writer
