The hallway outside Testing Sector B was buzzing with restless energy. Students who had been waiting for their turn in the Holodome were now crowded around the locked vault doors, whispering frantically and craning their necks to see what had happened.
Robert pushed his way through the heavy doors, the adrenaline crash hitting him so hard his knees felt like lead. He kept his eyes locked on the floor, trying to ignore the sudden hush that fell over the corridor as he stepped out.
"Hey, Martinez."
Robert stopped, suppressing a groan. Blocking his path was Julian Vance. He wasn't related to the professor, a fact Julian constantly brought up. Julian was a purist, born with a highly coveted, hereditary form of cryokinesis. He was also the biggest jerk in their graduating class.
"Did your stolen energy fry the mainframe, Replicator?" Julian asked, his voice sharp with accusation. Two of his friends flanked him, their expressions tense. "My test was supposed to be next."
"I didn't do anything," Robert said, trying to step around him. "The simulation glitched."
Julian sidestepped, cutting him off again. The air around Julian's hands grew noticeably colder, a thin layer of frost creeping up his knuckles, a defensive reflex. "Right. A state-of-the-art Imperial Holodome just 'glitched' while the school's wildcard was inside. You Replicators are all the same, unstable ticking time bombs.
Robert's jaw tightened. He felt the familiar, hot sting of anger bubbling in his chest. It was the same old prejudice he'd dealt with his whole life. To everyone in Imperial City, Power Replicators were a liability. People saw them as dangerous anomalies who could snap at any moment and turn the city's own powers against it.
Robert instinctively cleared his mental slots, staring at Julian's frosted hands. Before Robert could make a move, a heavy, hardback textbook suddenly dropped from the ceiling and smacked squarely onto the back of Julian's head.
"Ow! What the—" Julian spun around, rubbing his skull.
Freddy strolled through the crowd, a second textbook wobbling precariously in the air just above his shoulder. He gave Julian a wide, unapologetic grin. "Oops. Sorry. My telekinesis slipped. You know how notoriously weak it is."
Julian glared at Freddy, the frost on his hands thickening. But Freddy, despite his weak powers, had a reputation for not backing down in a physical fight when his powers failed. Julian scoffed, taking a step back. "Whatever. Keep your freak friend in check."
Julian and his friends shoved their way down the hall.
Freddy waited until they were gone before dropping the hovering textbook into his hands with a heavy sigh. He turned to Robert, the amusement instantly vanishing from his face. "You okay?"
"I'm fine," Robert muttered, his voice barely above a whisper.
He grabbed Freddy's jacket sleeve and pulled him away from the lingering crowd, navigating through the academy's corridors until they reached the quiet, sunlit sanctuary of the eastern courtyard. Robert slumped onto a stone bench, burying his face in his hands.
"Talk to me," Freddy said, sitting down next to him. "Vance looked panicked. What actually happened in there?"
"The targets," Robert said, looking up. His hands were still trembling slightly. "They turned red. And… and the whole room went freezing cold. But it wasn't a system error, Fred. I swear it wasn't. Someone was in my head."
Freddy frowned, his thick brows knitting together. "In your head? Like a telepath?"
"No, not like that. It sounded weird." Robert shivered, remembering the suffocating weight of the strange energy. "It spoke in some weird language. Surge iterum ex umbris. I don't even know what that means."
Freddy stared at him for a long moment, the skepticism clear on his face. "Rob, you know the academy's mainframe is sealed off from the lower sectors. Nobody can hack the Holodome. Let alone some ghost."
"I know how crazy it sounds!" Robert ran a frustrated hand through his hair. "But I'm telling you, those targets were going to kill me before they burned out. Julian's right about one thing—I probably did break the simulation. But I didn't do it by overloading my capacity. Whatever that red energy was, it reacted to me. To my replication."
Freddy sighed, leaning back against the stone wall. He didn't say anything for a minute, just watching a group of younger Meliorates practice water-manipulation by the courtyard fountain.
"Look," Freddy finally said, his voice quiet. "Even if you did break it, you should consider it a favor. Because of you, Vance canceled the rest of the practicals for the day. Which means I get a zero for the week."
Robert blinked, pulled abruptly from his own panic. "A zero? But Vance said it wouldn't count against us since it was an equipment failure."
"Doesn't matter," Freddy muttered, staring a hole into the pavement. He picked at a loose thread on his jacket. "You know how my dad is. He doesn't care about context. He doesn't care about equipment failures. If I come home without a ranked score, he's going to lose it."
Robert felt a pang of guilt. Freddy was always the one making jokes, always the one stepping in to save Robert from bullies like Julian, but he carried a massive weight on his shoulders. Freddy's father was the Captain of the Etherion Rangers, the elite galactic space force of the Etherion Dominion. He was a Class-A gravity manipulator who could crush a commuter ship into a tin can by just closing his fist.
He never let Freddy forget how disappointed he was that his son was the only one in their entire bloodline to develop weak telekinesis instead of the family's signature gravity powers.
"He's been on me all week," Freddy continued, his voice tight with suppressed emotion. "Telling me I'm a disgrace to the uniform he wears. That I'm not trying hard enough. He thinks my weakness is just me being lazy. If I walk in there today with a 'test canceled' note, he's going to say I'm just making an excuse to back out. He might actually kick me out of the house this time."
"He wouldn't do that," Robert said, though he wasn't entirely sure it was true. Freddy's dad was notoriously ruthless.
"You don't know him, Rob. To him, and to the whole Etherion Dominion, power is everything. We live on Section 3, the very heart of the faction. If you don't have power here, you're nothing." Freddy let out a bitter, humorless laugh and glanced over at Robert. "Kind of ironic, right? You have the potential to hold any power in the galaxy, and it terrifies them. I was born into the 'right' family, and I'm a joke."
Robert looked at his best friend, the terrifying whisper from the Holodome momentarily fading to the back of his mind. They were both outcasts in a society obsessed with perfection.
"Hey," Robert said, bumping his shoulder against Freddy's. "If he kicks you out, you can always crash at my place. My mom makes better food than your personal chefs anyway."
Freddy managed a small, genuine smile. "Yeah. She does." He took a deep breath and stood up, slinging his heavy toolkit over his shoulder instead of trying to levitate it. "Come on. Let's get to the Concord accord class before Vance realizes we skipped the debriefing. We can worry about dead languages and my dad's temper later."
Robert stood, following his friend back into the academy. He wanted to believe Freddy was right. He wanted to believe it was just a glitch, a hallucination brought on by stress.
But as he walked, he could still feel a faint, cold lingering in his bones.