THE DISCARDED LUNA‘S REVENGE

Chapter Eleven

LYRA’S POV

The transition between the worlds was always the most violent part.

At Garrison Heights, the air was conditioned to a perfect, effortless coolness, silent save for the soft scratch of stylus pens on expensive glass. At The Rusty Spoke, the air was thick, heavy, and loud. It humed with the constant, vibrating rattle of the dual-basket deep fryers and the greasy, rhythmic clatter of Mitch’s metal spatula hitting the cast-iron flat-top.

"Order up! Two double-freights, extra grease, table four!" Mitch’s voice boomed over the sizzle of the line, raw and grating.

"On it," I muttered, my voice candy-smooth despite the prickle of sweat already forming at my hairline.

I grabbed the heavy plastic baskets, the heat from the fresh lard-fries rising up to hit my face, and slid out onto the scuffed linoleum floor. Table four was occupied by three shift workers from the low-dock rail yards. Their faces were lined with the dark, embedded soot of the tracks, their heavy denim jackets smelling of diesel and old rain. They looked like my father. They moved with the same heavy, deliberate exhaustion that had settled into our apartment over the last few months.

"Here you go, gentlemen," I said, setting the baskets down with a practiced ease.

"Thanks, clear-skin," the oldest one grunted, not looking up as he grabbed a bottle of generic ketchup.

I tucked my order pad into the waist of my apron, my eyes tracking the room automatically. The dinner rush at the Spoke wasn't a civilized affair. It was a rapid-fire sequence of high-volume metrics: clear the tables, wipe the grease, refill the napkin dispensers, keep the coffee black and boiling. By 7:30 PM, my feet were already aching inside my canvas sneakers—the thin soles offering zero protection against the hard floorboards. Every time I reached for a stack of heavy ceramic mugs, the muscles in my shoulders tightened, a direct protest against the frantic sprint I had pulled down the mountain switchbacks less than four hours ago.

By 9:00 PM, the dinner crowd began to thin, leaving behind a sticky residue of maple syrup, stale tobacco smoke, and the heavy smell of burnt onions. But there was no downtime.

"Lyra!" Mitch barked from the dish pit, tossing a massive, grease-slicked iron grate into the sink. "The exhaust hoods need scraping tonight. Don't leave the soot on the back panels. The city compliance auditor is running a ledger check on the district this week, and I ain't paying a fine because you're lazy."

"I'm on it," I repeated, the phrase becoming a mechanical mantra.

I grabbed a steel-wool pad and a bucket of industrial degreaser—a chemical so caustic the sharp, lemon-ammonia fumes instantly made my eyes water. I dragged a rickety aluminum step-stool over to the back line, stepping up until my head was level with the dark, cavernous underbelly of the exhaust system.

The work was brutal. I had to reach high above my head, my fingers scrubbing with all my weight against decades of hardened, black carbon grease. Within ten minutes, my arms were trembling from the lactic acid build-up. A stray drop of the hot chemical solution leaked through my rubber glove, hitting the pale skin of my wrist with a sharp, stinging burn. I didn't cry out. I didn't drop the brush. I just gritted my teeth, locked my jaw into that same flat line I had used in front of Julian Vance, and scraped harder.

This is the price, I told myself as the black soot flakes rained down around my sneakers. This is the cost of the digital keys. This is the cost of the truth.

By the time Mitch flipped the neon 'Open' sign to dark, it was twenty minutes past midnight. My hands were red, raw, and smelled permanently of ammonia. My back was a solid sheet of dull, throbbing pain.

"Good work tonight, girl," Mitch muttered, sliding a small envelope of cash across the laminate counter. It was my weekly stipend advance, minus the tech fee allocation. "Don't be late tomorrow. The morning delivery comes at five-thirty, and I need the back bay cleared."

"I'll be here," I said, taking the envelope and tucking it deep into my denim shorts.

The walk back to the apartment was a blur of dark, sulfur-scented valley alleys. The mist had rolled in from the river, thick and damp, clinging to my skin like a cold shroud. When I finally let myself through the front door of our rooms, the silence was absolute. My parents’ bedroom door was shut, the faint, rhythmic sound of my father's heavy breathing the only sign of life.

I didn't go to bed. I couldn't.

I sat down at the small laminate kitchen table under the flickering light of a single bulb. My backpack was sitting on the chair, its heavy canvas straps looking like iron weights. I unzipped it, pulling out the massive, five-hundred-page syllabus for Advanced Macroeconomics Mr. Harrison had distributed.

Tomorrow wasn't an exam—it was day two. But at Garrison Heights, day two meant the first mandatory case study evaluation. If a scholarship student failed to submit a perfect analytical matrix on the private logistics rings by 8:00 AM, their academic file was automatically flagged for standard remediation, and remediation meant losing your digital library clearance.

I opened my notebook, my raw, ammonia-scented fingers struggling to hold the plastic pen firmly. My eyes felt like they were full of sand. Every time I read a line about private corporate manifests or capital reallocation structures, the letters seemed to drift across the page like gray smoke.

3:14 AM. The digital clock on the stove stared back at me, cold and green.

I forced myself to write, filling the grid lines with the cold, precise data metrics my father had taught me before his ledger was erased. I analyzed the corporate rings not like a student worshiping their power, but like a mechanic looking for the flaw in the engine. I worked until the ink on my thumb was black, my head dropping twice against the hard wood of the table before I finally closed the book.

The transition back up the mountain was even worse.

When the transit bus dropped me at the grand gates of Garrison Heights at 7:45 AM, the sun was rising over the ridge with that same cold, blinding precision. My body felt hollow, light, as if I were made of dry paper. My uniform blazer felt twice as heavy as it had yesterday, the stiff wool rubbing against the chemical burn on my wrist with every step.

I walked into Advanced Macroeconomics with three minutes to spare. The classroom was already pristine, the legacy students looking rested, radiant, and smelling of expensive shower soaps and linen.

I climbed the tiers, my knees shaking slightly from the sheer physical exhaustion of the midnight grind. I took my seat in the center of the highest row, sliding my completed case study matrix into the digital terminal queue before Mr. Harrison even reached his podium.

"Good morning, class," Mr. Harrison said, his silver hair immaculate. "We will begin today by reviewing the student metrics for the private logistics ring analysis. Please ensure your terminals are synced."

Down in the front row, Gabriel Jakes was already leaning back in his leather chair. He hadn't submitted a paper matrix; his terminal was already cleared, his family’s name likely granting him an automatic waiver for the preparatory work. He looked completely detached, his long fingers spinning a sleek, heavy silver stylus across his mahogany desk.

As Mr. Harrison began to drone on about the capital structures, the warmth of the room hit me like a physical blow. The steady, low hum of the climate control was a dangerous contrast to the freezing valley wind I had spent the night in. My eyelids grew impossibly heavy. The silver hair of the teacher began to blur into the white light of the digital board.

Stay awake, I screamed internally, my nails digging hard into the palms of my hands. Do not blink.

But my hand slipped.

The exhaustion caused my fingers to twitch, losing their grip on the cheap plastic pen I had been holding. It slid off the edge of my mahogany desk, hitting the tiered wooden floorboards with a sharp, plastic clack that sounded like a gunshot in the silent room.

It didn't just stop. Because of the amphitheater design, the pen began to roll.

Clack. Clack. Clack. It rolled down the first tier. Then the second. It bypassed Julian’s desk, skipped past Benny’s neat leather folio, and finally came to a dead stop right against the heel of Gabriel Jakes’s pristine, hand-tooled leather shoe.

The silence in the room was instantaneous.

Mr. Harrison stopped speaking. Every head in the middle tiers turned backward, forty pairs of legacy eyes tracking the trajectory of the cheap, blue plastic pen back up to the highest row where I sat, my face completely pale, my shoulders stiff.

Gabriel didn't look up immediately. He paused, his stylus stopping mid-spin. Then, with an agonizing, fluid slowness, he leaned down and picked the cheap pen up between two long, elegant fingers. He turned it over once, evaluating the scuffed plastic and the clear valley hub stamp on the side with a look of quiet, unreadable curiosity.

He stood up, turning around to face the upper tiers.

The classroom held its breath. Julian was already grinning, waiting for Gabriel to toss the piece of trash into the bin or make a comment that would set off another wave of sycophantic laughter.

But Gabriel didn't laugh. He ascended the tiered steps, his long strides effortless, his amber eyes fixed entirely on my face. He stopped right at the edge of my desk, towering over me, his presence casting a long shadow across my notebook.

He dropped the pen onto my paper.

As he did, his sleeve pulled back a fraction of an inch, and his gaze dropped—not to my face, but to my raw, red hands. His sharp eyes locked onto the distinct, angry red chemical burn mark running down the side of my wrist, still smelling faintly of The Rusty Spoke’s industrial ammonia.

For a fraction of a second, his amber eyes narrowed, a flicker of something sharp, calculating, and entirely too observant passing through his expression. It wasn't irritation. It was the look of a hunter realizing the prey wasn't what it appeared to be.

"You dropped this, transfer," Gabriel murmured, his voice low, gravelly, and entirely exclusive to my row. "Try to keep a better grip on your assets."

Before I could answer, he turned on his heel and descended the steps, leaving me sitting in the silence of the top row with forty people staring at my burned wrist, the clock above the board ticking steady toward the next shift.