Sleep hadn’t improved Ash’s problem much.
He lay on his back and ntally catalogued each Shade in the sa sequence he had sensed on the island’s edge and twice on the bus ride ho. Most gave him physical proximity data: warmth, direction, and the faint pressure of what the person held back.
This one sent his body into alarm before his mind could catch up: his pulse spiked, his skin prickled cold, and his muscles locked rigid. The Shade itself didn’t read as a threat. His own nervous system was reacting to it as one.
He felt it first at the crowded bazaar and dismissed it. He caught it again at the island’s far periter and reacted to it without knowing what to do with it. Finally, when she walked through the processing line at the dock, with a perfectly fit blazer showing no signs of the thirty-six hours spent on the island, the hunger had stirred, instantly oriented toward her, and held.
It didn’t advance. But it didn’t clear.
He couldn’t enter soone’s Shade realm he was already retreating from. Whether her Dominion broadcast outward unconsciously, the alarm reached him before he reached her. Walking toward her psychologically unprepared ant his fight-or-flight would fire before contact.
His phone buzzed on the desk.
He reached over without sitting up.
[ Alina: There’s a café I go to near the satellite campus. Do you two want to et up before the next phase gets announced? ]
[ Alexis: A gathering of allies to commorate our shared triumph! I accept with the fullness of my heart. When do we convene, Alina? ]
[ Alina: Yes or no ]
[ Alexis: Yes ]
Ash read through it and typed back.
[ Ash: Yeah. Give a second to collect myself first. I’ll et you two by the gate ]
He called Lucia. The line rang once and picked up. She didn’t speak.
"Hello—"
The call dropped.
He set the phone on his chest carefully and counted to seven before it buzzed with her na.
He answered.
"I was wondering how long you would take until you finally called," she said.
"You know why I’m calling?"
"Clean blazer, pleated skirt, not a speck of dirt on her." She sighed heavily into the phone’s microphone. "I assu that little ability of yours threw a temper tantrum when it tracked her."
"Who is she? Why does her Shade read like—"
"Sheila," she said. The faint sound of a porcelain teacup setting down ca through the line. "She is my cousin."
Ash swallowed before answering. "That’s all you’re telling ?"
"That’s all I have for you at this price."
"Wait, what’s the pr—"
Lucia had already hung up the call.
[ Ash: Ready now. See you by the gate ]
With that, he chucked his phone onto his bed and went through his morning routine before eting up with Alina and Alexis.
After converging at the west gate, they went through the checkpoint. The attending officer looked completely disinterested in doing his job and waved the students through without a second thought.
"Is he always like this?" Ash asked.
"His sports team lost the previous night. That’s why he’s like that," Alina responded.
The café was a narrow storefront with exposed brick walls, three blocks from the west gate, tucked on a side street off the satellite campus. Six tables, a counter with a chalkboard specials board, and the sll of dark roast coffee drifting from an unseen kitchen.
Alina pushed the door open. The woman behind the counter looked up, recognized Alina, and then her eyes snagged on the dark bruising along Ash’s jawline and the linen wrap around Alina’s forearm before she caught herself.
"You brought people today," she said.
"We’ll need a table for three," Alina said, ignoring the comnt.
"Of course." She pulled three brunch nus from under the counter. "For here, or do you already know what you want?"
Alina handed her nu back without opening it. "Black coffee and the almond croissant."
The woman wrote it down. She looked at Ash.
He glanced at the chalkboard, then at Alina. "Sa."
Alexis held the nu with both hands, her eyes tracking the specials column with rigid, unblinking focus. "The seasonal latte," she said finally, "and the pain au chocolat."
The woman noted it down, collected the nus, and left them to find a table. They took the back corner. Alina sat with her back to the wall and a clear view of the door.
The drinks ca first.
Ash’s grip locked onto the ceramic mug, knuckles white. Hot coffee sloshed over the rim, but he didn’t feel the burn. The peripheral wrongness was moving past on the pavent, tracking westward.
Ash winced.
Alexis’s eyes were on him before he’d finished. Alina looked up from her coffee.
"Art thou injured?" Alexis asked.
"He was like that on the island," Alina said. "Before he went to check on Swetta."
Ash tracked the signal until it moved far enough west to drop below the threshold. When the alarm cleared, he sat back.
"I’m not hurt," he said. "I want to explain why."
He set the mug down.
"My Dominion reads Shade signatures. Proximity, temperature, and how close soone’s Shade is to cracking. When it gets to a certain point, I can enter the realm and settle it before it breaks."
Alina gripped her coffee mug with both hands, her eyes trying to look at anything but the person confessing in front of her.
"Both of you were close," Ash said. "Before I made contact."
"I know that already," Alina said, one hand tracking the scar on the other arm. "I never got to say thank you for what you did."
Ash looked at Alexis. He watched her work through it. Block E, the extension cord, the ankle contact, and the room that felt lighter after.
"Thou wert there that evening," she said slowly. "Because of ."
"Yes."
"And the room felt..." She stopped. "I thought the fluorescent lights had finally started working properly."
"The light didn’t change," Ash said.
Alexis set her latte down. She looked at her hands for a second, then at him.
"What was my realm?" she asked softly. "What didst thou find within it?"
Ash held her gaze.
"An extension of you," he said.
It wasn’t a lie. It just wasn’t the full answer.
Alexis went quiet. Alina looked at the window.
"Is this what you were about to tell us?" Alina asked. "Back on the island?"
Ash choked mid-sip of his drink, a black coffee he was drinking without any additions. "I don’t know if it’s what Davos had on ," he began, letting the steam from the drink seep into his eyes. "But that’s what I want both of you two to know."
Their food arrived. Ash pulled the plate toward him.
"There’s another student," he said. "From the preliminaries. Her Shade has been reading off-angle since the bazaar. It was the sa signal at the island’s edge and the sa one again at the processing dock. Every ti I try to approach it, my fight-or-flight fires before I’ve processed anything."
"You can’t suppress it?" Alina asked.
"It fires before I decide to read."
"Range?"
"She was on the far side of a block when it registered."
Alina rotated her coffee mug slowly on the table. "Then we don’t put you in front of her directly." She glanced at Alexis. "Two of us sit with her first, long enough that she’s settled and not scanning, then Ash closes in from further back."
"That still puts in range before contact," Ash said.
"Yes. But if she’s seated and mid-conversation, you have more ti to work with it."
"I could maintain a passive field between thee and her," Alexis said. "Not to disrupt. Just enough that thou canst track her position through rather than reading her signal directly. It may reduce what her Shade broadcasts outward."
"That’s not how it works," Ash said.
"Thou dost not know that," Alexis said.
He thought about it. She was right that he didn’t know. He’d only experienced the alarm at a distance, never with another active field running between him and the source.
"It’s worth testing though," he said.
"We still need to find her first," Alina said quietly. "The tournant resus soon."
"She has a na," Ash said. "Sheila." He turned the croissant over on the plate. "She’ll be in the next phase."
Alexis had been eyeing Ash’s croissant from the mont his plate hit the table. She looked at her own pain au chocolat, then back at his.
"I have committed a grave error in ordering," she said.
"You ordered what you wanted," Alina said.
"I ordered what I believed I wanted. Those are not the sa thing." She reached over with her fork and took a portion of Ash’s croissant without further ceremony.
"You’re going to have to pay for that," Ash said.
"My coffers are dry and inaccessible."
"Of course they are," Ash mumbled.
The morning moved at its own pace after that. The woman from the counter ca by with the water jug. Outside, a pair of students passed the window without urgency, textbooks under one arm, no sign of competing in the preliminaries on their faces.
After a while, Ash said, "Do you co here often?"
"After the satellite campus classes," Alina said.
"It’s a good place," he said.
"Yeah," she finally said after swallowing what was in her mouth. "I like it."
"We should go here more often when the tournant is over."
"Tis would be pleasant," Alexis said.
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