Chapter 15: Lucky Bastard.
I read for hours.
The library emptied around
in stages. Junior students first, pulled away by schedules I wasn’t part of. Then seniors drifting out in pairs. Then silence, the specific silence of a large room with old books and nobody left in it, which was the best reading environnt I had ever encountered. The bar was low. I had never previously been in a library.
The book was dense. Old language, academic in places, but the core of it was clear once I stopped fighting the vocabulary and started following the logic.
Different types of chargers. Sub-classifications, variations, historical records of ability users who could transfer energy in limited ways. Situational chargers. Proximity chargers. Contact chargers. Each with their ceiling and their constraints. And then the pri.
The pri charger operated differently from all of them. The chanic ran in both directions simultaneously. He charged others and charged himself through the sa connection. The ability users he charged benefited directly, levels restored, gifts amplified, ceilings removed. But the charger benefited too. When his charge reached full, sothing shifted. He didn’t just restore. He grew.
That’s exactly how I level up, I thought.
I read it again to make sure. I had it right. The book was also clear on one other thing. The last recorded pri charger had existed before the catastrophe. One individual, docunted across several Chapters, referenced in historical records the book cited but didn’t fully reproduce. Extraordinary by every asure the records captured. And then gone. No death recorded. No succession. Just absence, and eventually the ability itself classified as extinct. Until apparently now.
Extinct, I thought. And then .
I was still sitting with that when I heard footsteps. I looked up. Mable walked into the library.
[Abram you lucky bastard.]
I stared at the notification for a full second. Did the system just call
a lucky bastard?
It had. The system had called
a lucky bastard. I was choosing to take that as encouragent. It was right though. The prey had walked into the library and sat down while the hunter was already inside. That was not sothing you planned. That was sothing you recognized and acted on imdiately.
She scanned the room, spotted soone at the far table, and wasn’t sure yet if she recognized . She sat two tables up and opened a small book, settling in like she had sowhere to be but not yet.
I closed book and slid it back onto the shelf exactly where I’d found it. No record. No trace. Then I walked slowly toward where she was sitting.
She heard the footsteps. Lifted her head. Saw
coming. Then looked back at her book like she hadn’t.
Those little details, I thought.
"Hey," I said when I reached her table. "Mind if I join you?"
I already knew she didn’t mind. She’d helped Annabelle send that illusion to the classroom. She was investigating the level jump. She’d been asking herself since this afternoon why Annabelle had specifically wanted to see . I was the answer to a question she hadn’t finished forming yet. This was not going to be as difficult as it could have been.
"It’s okay, Bram," she said.
"You call
Bram?" I sat across from her.
She had a beautiful face. When she lifted her eyes and looked directly at
I noticed they were shy in the specific way of soone who observed everything and wasn’t used to being the one observed.
"That’s what the girls call you," she said, slightly defensive. But I had learned one thing about building a connection. Whatever a person said, you used it.
"Great," I said, settling in. "So the girls gossip about ?"
Mable didn’t answer imdiately. She crossed her legs first. Then she closed her book and gave
her full attention, which was either a good sign or a sign that she was about to shut the conversation down. I was betting on good.
"You co from outside," she said, like that explained everything.
"Sorry for using my ability on you," she added, before I could respond. "Anna asked
to help."
"It’s okay," I said. Then she shifted slightly. "Are you two sothing? You and Anna?"
She asked it but her expression answered it before I did. She already didn’t believe it.
"Co on," I said. "I got to Hogsby the night before last."
"Then never mind," she said, and looked away, which ant the question she hadn’t asked out loud was still running. Then why did Anna specifically want to et you?
She kept it to herself. Which ant she was going to keep pulling at that thread on her own ti. I had to move now.
"You’re the only person in this school," I said, looking directly at her face, "who looks like they’re actually paying attention to everyone else."
She lifted her eyes. Sothing shifted in them. Interested. Waiting to see where this went.
"I know everyone has noticed us," I continued. "The outsiders. Hard not to." I held her gaze. "But I noticed you too. From the first minute in that classroom. You don’t perform. You don’t try to be seen. You just watch, and you already know more than anyone else in the room."
She smiled. Small. Slightly uncomfortable in the way of soone receiving sothing accurate that they hadn’t offered.
"Tell
more," she said.
"I bet you’ve never done anything impulsive in your life," I said, with an easy smile. "Everything calculated. Everything safe. Every move considered three steps before you make it."
She looked at
with an expression that was trying to decide whether to be amused or offended. "You don’t know anything about ."
Not a bad tone. A proving tone. There it is, I thought. I stood.
"Tonight," I said. "After lights out. Knock on my door, or I’ll knock on yours. Just a conversation." I held her eyes for one second. "Prove
wrong." I didn’t wait for an answer. I walked out.
Mute was coming through the library entrance as I left, probably arranged to et her, probably trying to close whatever distance had grown between them lately.
Good luck with that, I thought, walking past him into the corridor.
She has a conversation to think about.
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