I read for hours.
The library emptied around me 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 environment 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 prime.
The prime charger operated differently from all of them. The mechanic ran in both directions simultaneously. He charged others and charged himself through the same connection. The ability users he charged benefited directly, levels restored, gifts amplified, ceilings removed. But the charger benefited too. When his charge reached full, something 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 prime charger had existed before the catastrophe. One individual, documented across several chapters, referenced in historical records the book cited but didn't fully reproduce. Extraordinary by every measure 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 me.
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 me a lucky bastard?
It had. The system had called me a lucky bastard. I was choosing to take that as encouragement. It was right though. The prey had walked into the library and sat down while the hunter was already inside. That was not something you planned. That was something you recognized and acted on immediately.
She scanned the room, spotted someone at the far table, and wasn't sure yet if she recognized me. She sat two tables up and opened a small book, settling in like she had somewhere 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 me 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 me. 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 me Bram?" I sat across from her.
She had a beautiful face. When she lifted her eyes and looked directly at me I noticed they were shy in the specific way of someone 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 me?"
Mable didn't answer immediately. She crossed her legs first. Then she closed her book and gave me 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 come from outside," she said, like that explained everything.
"Sorry for using my ability on you," she added, before I could respond. "Anna asked me to help."
"It's okay," I said. Then she shifted slightly. "Are you two something? You and Anna?"
She asked it but her expression answered it before I did. She already didn't believe it.
"Come on," I said. "I got to Hogsby the night before last."
"Then never mind," she said, and looked away, which meant the question she hadn't asked out loud was still running. Then why did Anna specifically want to meet you?
She kept it to herself. Which meant she was going to keep pulling at that thread on her own time. 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. Something 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 someone receiving something accurate that they hadn't offered.
"Tell me 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 me with an expression that was trying to decide whether to be amused or offended. "You don't know anything about me."
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 me wrong." I didn't wait for an answer. I walked out.
Mute was coming through the library entrance as I left, probably arranged to meet 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.