Professor Bagins stepped out briefly and returned with Miss Brown, who arrived with the energy of someone who had been interrupted mid-something and was choosing to be gracious about it. Behind her was a younger woman, early twenties, straight-backed, wearing a professional smile that was doing its best.
I noticed her immediately. No citizen tag. Bagins had one. Miss Brown had one. This woman didn't, which meant she was either a Stray or something adjacent to it, inside the walls but not fully of them. The kind of distinction that apparently carried weight here in ways I was still mapping.
What I also noticed, and could not stop noticing, were her legs. Long, straight, and shaped like they had been designed to draw attention. She stood with her weight shifted to one hip, relaxed, practiced, like she'd been looked at before and had made peace with it.
Outside the walls, that observation had been a luxury I couldn't afford. Inside, it was apparently becoming a hobby.
"Do you find her attractive?" Sherry asked.
I hadn't realized I was that obvious.
"No doubt," I said.
Sherry smiled. Not mockingly. The genuine smile of someone who found me entertaining as a person, which was still a new experience and remained not unwelcome.
Bagins and Miss Brown had moved to a corner, speaking low, the body language of people confirming something they still half couldn't believe. The young teacher waited at the front with her professional smile, comfortable with being looked at. They returned.
"Good afternoon," Miss Brown said, then caught herself. "Apologies. I haven't greeted you all."
The class replied in unison. I replied slightly behind, still calibrating. A few days in and the rhythms of the inside were becoming less foreign. Good morning. Good afternoon. Small phrases that meant the world was functioning well enough to acknowledge what time it was. Outside, the time of day had been a survival variable. Nothing more.
"Professor Bagins tells me one of our students has shown signs of leveling up." She said it carefully, like someone announcing a result they'd hoped for without fully believing in. "Miss Daphne, one of our junior teachers, will assist with the assessment."
The class clapped. Annabelle stood and walked to the front with the composure of someone who understood she was currently carrying the institutional hopes of an entire school and had decided to be steady about it. Daphne produced a rod, same design as the soldiers had used at the gate, pressed it into the floor, and the familiar blue light rose clean into the air. Annabelle walked through it.
"Pyrokinesis. Level eleven."
The room went still.
"Again," Miss Brown said, voice controlled.
Annabelle walked through a second time.
"Pyrokinesis. Level eleven."
Professor Bagins laughed. The full unguarded kind, the laugh of a man who had spent years building toward something and had just watched it arrive ahead of schedule. He turned to Miss Brown and hugged her, and she let him, and over his shoulder her face was doing something complicated. Proud, yes. But also calculating. Working through something the numbers had produced that she hadn't yet resolved and wasn't going to let go of.
The class clapped for Annabelle. Genuinely. Even the students who had been outshone today understood what this meant for everyone in the room.
Annabelle received it and looked at me. Who are you? Her eyes said it exactly. The same question from last night, still open, still unanswered.
I looked back at her and gave her nothing. Warmly, but nothing.
"You may sit, Anna," Miss Brown said softly, watching her best result walk back to her seat with the pride of someone seeing the full size of what they've built for the first time. She turned to the class.
"Annabelle came to Hogsby at level four," she said. Bagins standing behind her, Daphne to the side. "She is now at a level most high officials in this city have never reached. That did not happen by accident. It happened because this institution works. Because the research works. Because you work when you commit to it."
She looked toward the back of the room. At us.
"You cannot enter Hogsby and leave the same," she said. "That is not what this place does."
Aimed at the whole class. Directed at two people. I received it accordingly and said nothing. But my eyes were focused entirely on Daphne.
"You cannot stop staring at Daphne," Sherry whispered beside me.
"I'm not staring."
"You absolutely are." She kept her voice low. "Go introduce yourself. Tell her if she lets you close enough she might end up moaning through my wall at night." A pause. "If she doubts you, tell her to ask May."
I looked at her. She looked back with the expression of someone who had thought this through, found no flaws in the logic, and was presenting it as a public service.
"Sherry."
"I'm being strategic," she said. "Consider it a friend standing in for a friend." She glanced around the room. "There are only three boys in this class. Think about what that means."
I sat with that for a moment. She wasn't wrong. Three boys. Eleven girls. An entire junior school below us.
I hadn't thought about it that way, I admitted to myself. I'd been reacting. I should have been hunting.
The demand wasn't something I needed to manufacture. It already existed. The last thing I was ever going back to was a low life on the plain. Leveling up required sleeping with female ability users. That was the system. That was the mechanic. That was the job.
Then that's what I'm doing, I decided. Professionally. Strategically. With full commitment.
"We'll now conduct ability assessments for the rest of the class," Miss Brown announced. "New students excluded. Everyone else, let's see where we are."
I settled back and watched the assessments run. In a city full of depleted ability users slowly burning out. And one Prime Charger sitting on a bench at the back of the room pretending to be a level four healer. My secret was safe with Annabelle.
Who utters the source of their own strength? I thought. Nobody. That's who. Some secrets keep themselves.