"What are you?" Mable asked as we walked back to her dormitory.
We were moving slowly, my hand at her waist, her leaning into the side of me slightly. Two people taking the long way somewhere. From the outside we probably looked like exactly what we weren't, two students who had feelings for each other and were doing something about it.
From the inside, I was a level five walking beside a level eight, and I had been a level two when she knocked on my door.
One night, I thought. Three full charges.
There was no real need to worry about being seen. Mable had everything under control. Level eight illusion creation meant that anyone looking in our direction was seeing exactly what she wanted them to see, which was presumably nothing worth investigating.
"So that's how Anna leveled up," she said. Not a question. Realization settling in, quiet and specific. She understood now that she wasn't the first.
What a surprise, I thought, without saying it.
"Benefits of spending time with Abram Nadez," I said instead.
[LEWD LEVELING SYSTEM]
[Mable: Illusion creation, Level 8.]
She walked quietly for a moment. Then she pressed herself slightly closer to my side, the kind of movement people make when they feel safe with you.
"What causes the drop?" I asked, steering the conversation where I needed it. "The ability levels. What makes them fall."
It was the question Miss Brown had smiled at and said nothing. Now I had someone who would actually answer it. Mable was quiet for a moment. Then she told me.
The life layer, the invisible barrier that made everything inside the walls possible, that kept the infected out and the city alive, wasn't a machine. It wasn't infrastructure in any conventional sense.
It ran on abilities. Specifically on the extracted abilities of every registered ability user inside the walls, drawn monthly at CGI headquarters, fed into the system that kept the barrier standing.
Every month, every ability user went in and gave something. Every month they came back a little less than they were before.
"They kept extracting," Mable said. "People kept dropping. And when they dropped below par they dropped again, and again, until there was nothing left. The government saw where it was heading. Ten percent of the population already Strays. More becoming burn outs every cycle."
I assembled the vocabulary as she spoke.
Burn outs were the ones who had given until they reached the bottom levels, one or two, numbers so low the government stopped seeing them as assets and started seeing them as overhead. No gift schools for burn outs. No second chances.
Strays were the ones at zero. The ones the walls had never been built for. The number on the machine that meant your usefulness had expired.
The gift schools were the government's attempt to fix the math. Restore levels fast enough to keep the extraction cycle running. Buy time before the life layer started to fail.
"But there was no evidence it could work," Mable said. "Until the Annabelle case."
She didn't say until you. She didn't need to.
"Doctor Reed has a plan," she added. "I don't know the details. But whatever reason brought you inside the walls, it was part of it."
I thought about Bala in the gate, the way he'd gone quiet when the machine said charger. The way he'd had me walk through twice. Doctor Reed shaking in his lab coat, watching us with sharp eyes that didn't match the rest of him. The mission nobody had explained yet.
It was always part of it, I thought. I just didn't know what it was.
"You know your history," I said as her dormitory building came into view. A raised flat block, separate apartments, a part of campus I hadn't been to yet. Older than our wing. More worn.
"I thought we were walking all night," I said jokingly.
She laughed. "Why?"
"You're a illusion creator. I know it's possible."
She laughed again, the easy kind, the kind that meant the evening had gone well enough to reach actual laughter at the end of it.
I stopped at the entrance and turned toward her. She turned toward me. I held her face gently and kissed her. Brief. A punctuation mark, not a sentence.
"Bram," she said softly. "I had such a good time."
Yeah, I thought. Post- climactic surge does that.
"I had a good one too," I said.
"I'd want more of that." Her voice was quiet. Genuine. "Anytime you need me, I'm available."
I didn't answer. I enjoyed every bit of it, that was true. But my system didn't order me to settle. It ordered me to charge, which meant that with the right strategy and enough patience, there was a new name to add to the list on a regular basis.
Mable needed to hear something that wasn't a no and wasn't a promise. I gave her a smile that she could interpret however she needed to.
"Thank you, Bram." She kissed my cheek and turned toward her apartment. I watched her go.
[Unknown Ability user watching you.]
I went still. Not Mable. The system wouldn't flag her. I moved my eyes slowly across the campus without turning my head. Old outside habit. Never let them know you've spotted them.
Nothing visible. Brown? Daphne? Someone else?
[Ability user is following you.]
[Recommendation: Return to your dormitory immediately. Possible hostile intent.]
I started moving. Then faster. Whoever was behind me hadn't come in peace. The system was clear on that and the system hadn't been wrong yet.
I pulled on everything the plain had built into me. Two decades of moving in the dark, reading environments, trusting the information my senses were sending before my brain had finished processing it. I could hear something wrong in the air behind me, a pressure, a displacement, something moving that wasn't the wind.
I ran. Survival meant running. Running had been my ability long before the system gave me anything else.
Near my door, something caught my eye mid-sprint. I almost missed it. Butterflies. Arranged in the air, holding formation, spelling two words. Thank you, Bram.
Mable. A parting illusion left behind for me to find on the way back. Beautiful, unhurried, the work of someone at level eight who had the capacity to leave gifts in the air.
I had no time for it. I filed it away for later and hit my door. I had left it open. Survival instinct. Never lock yourself into a room when something might be coming.
[Hostile ability user. Immediate proximity.]
The warning landed half a second too late. The force hit me from behind before I could get through the door.
Not a punch. Not a grab. Something concentrated and invisible that picked me up, carried me sideways through the air, and drove me into the ground with the specific intent of someone who had done this before and had feelings about it.
I hit the earth hard. The campus was quiet around me, dark and still, and whatever had just knocked me off my feet was standing somewhere nearby, not yet visible, very much not finished.
Okay, I thought, tasting dust. Different kind of night now.