They didn't give us a day. They barely gave us a minute.
Sherry was already in the car by the time I made it out of the building. I was two steps from the door when Max Donman called out behind me.
"Bram."
I turned. He was crossing the distance between us with the purposeful stride of someone who had rehearsed this and was now committed to it. I waited.
He stopped close enough that the conversation was just ours.
"Bruh." He held my eyes. "I'm putting Sherry in your hands. She's vulnerable. Please take care of her." A pause. "I'll be in your debt. Forever."
Then he turned and walked back inside, like he hadn't just handed me a responsibility the size of a building.
I stood there for a moment, letting the words settle.
Well, shit, I thought. This is the best news I've had all week.
I didn't reply because I didn't know what to say. I didn't know if Sherry was his girlfriend, his closest friend, something in between, something more complicated than either. What I knew was the weight in his voice. I recognized it. It was the same weight my mother's voice had carried every time she told me to be careful.
But inside my head, the Lewd Leveling System was already doing calculations. Sherry was a female ability user. She was going to be close. She was vulnerable. And Max had just officially handed her to me with a lifetime IOU.
Don't mess this up? I thought. No. Don't waste this. I filed it under unexpected jackpot and got in the car.
Sherry was in the back seat. White shirt, navy blue mini skirt, tall black body socks. She sat with her hands folded in her lap and her eyes on the window and the particular posture of someone who has decided that stillness is a form of armor. I sat beside her. Neither of us said a word.
The driver pulled out and we left the city behind, the tall buildings shrinking in the rear window, the streets giving way to smaller roads, the lights thinning out. We drove for hours. The city's version of civilization faded gradually into something older, quieter, more worn at the edges.
Eventually the driver said, "This is your destination," and stopped the car.
We got out into the night. A woman was waiting. Late twenties, sharp suit, the posture of someone who had somewhere to be and was choosing to be here instead. She stepped forward with a professional smile.
"Miss Brown. Caretaker and Dean at Hogsby. Nice to meet you."
One name, I noted. Again. Everyone inside the walls introduces themselves with one name. Is this a cultural thing? A class thing? Is there a handbook I wasn't given?
"Abram Nadez."
"Sherry Vayne," Sherry said, the first words she'd spoken in hours.
"Lord Bala told me about you both," Miss Brown said warmly, already walking, already expecting us to follow. "It's a pleasure."
We followed her into the dark. The town was small. Noticeably smaller, noticeably older than where we'd come from. Buildings that had been built before the catastrophe and had simply stayed, maintained but not updated, functional but not proud of it. I could feel the difference even at night, the way you feel the drop in temperature before you see the clouds.
"You should understand," Miss Brown said, with the careful tone of someone preparing us for a disappointment, "that this isn't where citizens live. This is a place for Strays."
She said it gently. Like she thought we might need softening.
Lady, I slept outside for twenty years. This town looks like a resort full of girls who can help level me up.
"Who are Strays?" I asked.
Sherry said nothing. I was starting to understand that Sherry's default was silence, and that questions were apparently going to be my department.
Miss Brown actually smiled. Like it was a good question. "After years inside the walls, some things shifted. Rich families lost their money. Gifted people failed to develop past the minimum threshold. Some pushed their abilities too hard and burned out. And those people..." She paused, searching for a word that meant became useless without saying became useless. I watched her search.
"Why did they burn out?" I asked, mostly to help her move forward, but also because the question had edges I wanted to follow. There was something they weren't telling us. The shape of the gap in her explanation was too deliberate to be accidental.
Miss Brown's smile held but her eyes recalibrated. "I'll answer that. Just not tonight. I was still explaining." She smoothed it over professionally. "Those people are called Strays. Most of them live here."
Noted, I thought. She's not lying. She's just not finished telling the truth.
[Charge 2%. Recharge required.]
The system chose this moment to check back in. Probably reminding me the only reason that could make me relevant inside the walls.
The gates of Hogsby College of Gifted Students opened in front of us.
Old buildings. Pre-catastrophe architecture, the kind that had survived not because it was built to last but because nothing had gotten around to knocking it down yet.
Miss Brown led us past the main dormitory blocks toward a separate wing, smaller, set slightly apart.
"Since you're from outside," she said, producing two keys, "I thought it was only fair to give you your own space. Away from the locals." She said it kindly. I received it as what it was, a polite way of saying you're different from the students here and we're not sure yet how that will go.
She handed us each a key. "I'm always available if you need anything."
'Anyhting?' And then she walked back the way we'd come, heels quiet on the old stone path.
Sherry looked at me. She didn't say anything. She just looked at me for one second, something unreadable in it, and then she opened her door and went inside.
I stood in the corridor for a moment. Long way to go, I thought. But she's next door. And I'm the only person she knows in this town. Proximity will do the work eventually. Survival always finds a way.
I opened my room. It was neat. Spare but functional. Bed, small table, fridge, a private bathroom, which I was choosing to treat as a luxury because compared to the plain, it was. The walls were old, wood panel on one side where my room shared a border with Sherry's.
It was stupid risking losing this new life. I needed to charge, and to charge I needed a female ability user, and the closest ability user was six inches of old wood panel away, currently not speaking to me.
Great, I thought. Fantastic. I lay back and looked at the ceiling. And that's when I noticed the hole.
Small. About the width of a finger. In the wood panel, low and to the right, the kind of thing you'd miss if you weren't the sort of person who'd been trained by years of survival to notice every detail of every environment they entered.
I was exactly that sort of person. I looked at it for a moment from the bed. Then I got up, because I am who I am, and went to look.
Through the hole I could see a sliver of Sherry's room. The edge of her bed. The faint light she'd left on. The shape of her sitting there, still in her white shirt and navy skirt, staring at nothing.
I straightened up.