The class had been going for forty minutes. Alex's notes consisted of three words and a doodle that looked like a broken shield.
Professor Quill was halfway through a sentence when he stopped.
"...which brings us to the central contradiction in Sylvere's extraction model—" He paused, and looked up from his notes. "Question. Page 217, section four. The Sylvere model of Resonance extraction prioritizes which of the three core efficiencies? And why does Osseria's regulatory framework consider it predatory?"
Silence.
Quill waited. He looked around the room. The Gold Marks in the front row suddenly found their monitors fascinating. Marcus was examining his nails. Someone in the back coughed.
"Anyone?"
More silence.
Alex stared at his desk. He knew the answer. Knew it the second Quill finished the question. Textbook stuff. Page 217, section four. He'd read it twice.
Quill's gaze drifted, then paused.
"What about you, Alexander?"
Alex's jaw tightened.
Answering meant more attention. More stares. More reasons for Golds to remember his name. Not answering meant failing the one thing he was actually good at.
He couldn't afford to fail theory too. Combat was already a lost cause—R-14 against people who'd been training since birth. But theory? Theory was the one place his mark didn't matter. The one place being smart actually counted.
Alex exhaled. What the hell, right?
"Temporal efficiency," he said. His voice came out flat. "Sylvere's model prioritizes extracting Resonance as fast as possible from foreign Cores, regardless of long-term degradation. Osseria calls it predatory because it treats citizens of other Kingdoms as short-term resources rather than long-term assets. It's also illegal under the Divine Accord's third protocol, but Sylvere argues the Accord only applies to signatory states within their own borders, not to external contracts."
He stopped.
Quill raised an eyebrow. Just one.
"Correct," he said. "Someone was paying attention."
A few snickers came from the front; not friendly ones, the kind that said 'of course the Black Mark knew the answer, what else does he have to do, train?'
Alex didn't look at them, but he could feel the attention. He kept his eyes on his monitor and waited for Quill to move on.
Yep. I just raised the bounty on my head from "annoying Black Mark" to "annoying Black Mark who won't shut up in theory class." Really rounding out the resume here.
‡"‡
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The next forty minutes passed in a blur of diagrams and citations. Alex kept his mouth shut, took zero notes, and kept staring at the clock like it owed him money.
When Quill finally said "That's all for today," Alex was already gathering his tablet, ready to bolt.
Then Quill spoke again.
"Miss Croft."
Veronica looked up. Slowly, unhurried.
"I'll need to scan your Core before your first combat duel," Quill said. "Standard procedure for new transfers. Establishes your baseline R-Level for the pairing algorithm. See me after your next class, or drop by my office before Friday."
She nodded once. Just a dip of her chin. "Understood."
Quill gathered his materials and left.
The room began to empty. Chairs scraping. Voices rising. The Gold Marks near the front cast glances back at Alex's row as they filed out. Marcus lingered a second longer than necessary, eyes flicking from Veronica to Alex and back, then he was gone too.
Alex stood. Beside him, Veronica was already on her feet, tablet in hand, expression unchanged.
"That was a lot." He finally said.
She looked at him.
[Curiosity: 38% → 40% ↑]
[Boredom: 84% → 84% —]
"It was a question," she said. "You answered it."
"Yeah. And now everyone in the room hates me slightly more than they did an hour ago."
"Hm." Not quite acknowledgment, not quite dismissal. Just... hm.
She walked past him toward the door. Alex watched her go. The Black hair. The straight spine. The way the crowd seemed to part without anyone consciously deciding to move.
[Boredom: 84% → 85% ↑]
[Cognitive Engagement: 8% → 7% ↓]
She was already ten feet away, not looking back, but her boredom had gone up again. Alex rubbed the back of his neck and followed.
‡"‡
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Later that night, the door was locked. The room was empty. Alex exhaled, rolled his shoulders, and headed for the bathroom.
Hot water. Ten minutes of not thinking about Quill's class, or Marcus's stares, or the way Veronica's boredom kept dropping every time he opened his mouth. Just steam, the ache in his ribs, and the distant sound of someone's music leaking through the wall.
He stepped out twenty minutes later, towel around his neck, wearing nothing but combat shorts. Grabbed a shirt from the floor. Pulled it on. Turned around.
She was sitting on his bed.
Alex flinched, hard. His back hit the wall.
"Fuck!" His heart was suddenly very aware of his ribs. "How—the door was locked. I locked it."
Veronica tilted her head. "Yes, you did."
"That's not—" He pressed a hand to his chest, like that would slow his pulse. "That's not an answer."
[Amusement: 3% → 5% ↑]
He dragged a hand down his face, counted to three, then looked at her again.
She was still there.
"Can you," he said slowly, "at least use the front door? Like a normal person?"
Veronica considered this. Actually considered it, her gaze drifted to the door, then back to him, then—briefly—down to where his shirt had pulled tight across his chest.
"You're very lean," she said.
Alex blinked. "What?"
"Your body." She said it like she was commenting on the weather. Or the lumpy mattress. "You need more muscle. Your Resonance can't compensate for poor physical conditioning forever."
He stared at her.
[Amusement: 5% → 5% —]
[Curiosity: 35% → 36% ↑]
[Cognitive Engagement: 6% → 14% ↑]
"I—" He stopped. Then started again. "I just asked you about the door."
"And I'm telling you about your body." She said it simply. Without malice or deflection, like his question had been filed under 'irrelevant' and she'd moved on to something actually worth discussing. "You'll die faster if you don't fix it. That's inconvenient for me."
Alex opened his mouth. Closed it. Rubbed the back of his neck.
"Right. Cool. I'll add 'gain muscle' to my list of problems."
He pushed off the wall, crossed to the desk, and sat on the edge of his seat. The monitor was dark, waiting, ready to light up the moment he pressed his palm on it.
She was still on the bed. Still watching him. Still completely, utterly at ease in a space that was technically his.
He cleared his throat.
"So. What's your Resonance Level?"
She tilted her head. "My what?"
[Curiosity: 36% → 38% ↑]
[Cognitive Engagement: 14% → 20% ↑]
"Your Core. R-Level." He gestured vaguely. "Professor Quill? The scan? He needs your number for the pairing algorithm. For combat duels." A pause. "You've definitely been scanned before. Everyone has."
She looked at him for a long moment, then: "What's the highest here?"
Alex frowned. "The... highest—?"
"Resonance Level. Best student. What is it?" She cut in.
He squinted at her. Tried to read her face. Got nothing.
[Curiosity: 38% → 48% ↑]
"Jeremy Bourne. Final year. A Gold Mark with R-65. Why?"
She paused, considered something, then: "I'll put mine at... forty-four."
Alex stared at her.
"You can't just... choose." He sat forward. "The sensors. The Karma Mark. The Core scanners—they're designed to detect the literal frequency of your soul. You can't fake a frequency."
"You humans," she said, "are so obsessed with measuring the wind."
Alex opened his mouth. Closed it.
"I'm not 'faking' anything, Alexander." Her voice was quiet, patient. "I'm just... quieting the room. If I don't, your little school's infrastructure would probably melt." A pause. "Forty-four is a nice, polite number."
Right, Alex thought. Devil queen. Seventh Circle of Desolation. Threat Level infinity. She's not on the scale. The scale is on her.
"Then what is it?" he asked. "When you're not... 'quieting the room.' What's the actual number?"
She shrugged. "Dunno. I've never bothered with it."
[Amusement: 6% → 7% ↑]
[Boredom: 87% → 79% ↓]
[Cognitive Engagement: 20% → 28% ↑]
"Of course you haven't."
He looked away.
The room went quiet. Not the kind of quiet that meant nothing was happening, the kind that meant she'd stopped paying attention to him. He glanced over. She had her tablet out now, that slim glassy thing, scrolling through something with the same flat expression she did everything with.
[Boredom: 79% → 81% ↑]
[Cognitive Engagement: 28% → 21% ↓]
He stared at the wall for a moment. Then, almost quietly:
"You shouldn't actually be close to me all the time, you know."
She didn't look up from the tablet.
[Curiosity: 48% → 49% ↑]
"Why is that?"
He rubbed the back of his neck.
"Because I'm a Black Mark." He said it like it should be obvious. "And you're supposedly Gold. Golds don't hang around Blacks. It's not—" He searched for the word. "It's not done. People notice. They'll talk. They'll—"
"Your Mark has nothing to do with me." She looked up now. Her expression hadn't changed even a bit.
[Cognitive Engagement: 21% → 30% ↑]
Alex blinked. "Huh?"
She set the tablet down, then turned to face him fully.
"The universe put a color on your palm at birth," she said. Flat. Unhurried. "And your people decided that color meant something." She tilted her head. "Why would I care about that?"
Alex opened his mouth. Closed it.
"Besides," She picked the tablet back up. "Clause four, Proximity Protocol. I'm stuck with you whether I want to be or not."
She went back to scrolling, and Alex just... stared. At her.
The text flickered at the edge of his vision.
[Amusement: 7% → 6% ↓]
[Boredom: 81% → 81% —]
She wasn't looking at him. Didn't seem to care that he was still staring, but for a second—just a tiny second—he swore his heart stopped beating.
Not because of what she said, because of how she said it.
Like the Mark was nothing. Like the ceiling didn't exist. Like the whole system that had crushed him since birth was just... some human nonsense she couldn't be bothered to respect.
He didn't know what to do with that, so he did nothing.
He just sat there on the edge of his desk, watching her scroll, while trying very hard to breathe normally.
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