We were the last pair to reach our room. I stepped in and took stock immediately. White walls, white floor, white ceiling. Two chairs, a table, a timer. One window.
And cameras. Four of them, placed with real care, blended into the corners and the ceiling join with the kind of precision that assumed nobody would be looking for them. I found all four in under ten seconds.
The outside teaches you things. Not always useful but sometimes very useful.
Daphne sat down. I sat across from her. My brain ran fast to yesterday, the library, Daphne's eyes moving across the room and finding us. This session, the pairing, the private room, it might have been designed for leveling up. It might also have been designed for something else entirely.
"This is called a reflective room," Daphne said. "They were built on the theory that isolation and pressure makes ability users reach for their full capacity."
"I see," I said. Neutral. Noncommittal. The cameras could have everything I said. They were getting nothing worth having.
"Let's focus," she said. "The goal is for you to leave this room having leveled up."
I got up and walked to the window. Outside was a projection of something that had never existed, skies blue and clean, streets with no infected, buildings intact. Nothing like the light red skies the catastrophe had left behind.
"Do you believe leveling up is actually possible?" I asked her.
I already knew she was a burn out. I was beginning to think her investigation into Annabelle wasn't just professional. It was personal. A burn out watching a level four student jump to eleven overnight had reasons beyond academic curiosity.
Daphne stood and came to join me at the window. She looked at the projection for a moment.
"Personal question, Abram." She said it at full volume, standing right beside me, which told me everything. She wanted the cameras to catch every word. "What were you and Annabelle talking about in the library yesterday?"
I kept my eyes on the projection and dropped my voice to something the cameras wouldn't catch.
"With the cameras in this room, we're not discussing anything."
A pause. I didn't look at her but I felt the shift, the slight recalibration of someone who had just been told their approach had been identified. She smiled for the cameras. I didn't see it. I felt it.
"Have you toured the town yet?" she asked, at normal volume.
"No."
"Follow me."
The door opened before our time was up, automated, and I followed her out into the corridor where other pairs were still sitting in their white rooms trying to figure out how to help each other level up through the power of sitting in chairs together.
"I'm investigating Annabelle's jump," Daphne said as we walked. Direct now, no cameras in the corridor. She had understood that hiding it from someone who spotted concealed cameras in under a minute was a waste of effort.
"And how does that concern me?" I said.
"You're the only unfamiliar person seen with her on campus. We thought you might know something."
I laughed. Not forced. Genuine.
"I'm one of three boys in a class of fourteen students," I said. "My primary objective at Hogsby is finding a beautiful girlfriend. If I was with Annabelle in the library it's because she's one of the more approachable options available to me."
Daphne looked at me. I looked back pleasantly.
"It's okay, Abram," she said, letting it go. Or appearing to. "We're going outside school. I need to grab my keys."
***
The teachers' quarters were a small block I hadn't been to yet. Four apartments, two up, two down, functional and slightly tired looking. We went upstairs. Daphne pushed her door open.
"I always leave it unlocked," she said, with the tone of someone explaining something they hadn't decided whether to be embarrassed about.
That's fine, I thought. I don't mind either.
"You can come in," she said.
I entered and removed my shoes at the door where her heels already sat. The room was large by Hogsby standards and thoroughly lived in. Papers on the tiled floor. Clothes draped over the back of a chair. A bed bigger than mine with a laptop and various gadgets I didn't recognize scattered across it. A wardrobe standing open. A closed door leading to the bathroom.
Daphne didn't love the life she was currently living. The room told me that clearly. She hadn't made peace with it yet either. Everything about the space said temporary, even though she'd been here long enough for the mess to accumulate.
"Close the door," she said, already moving through the wardrobe.
I closed it and sat on the couch. She threw a black leather jacket at me without looking.
"Put that on. Hogsby isn't popular in town. Better not to advertise."
Then she pulled off her purple shirt. She was wearing a black bra that didn't try too hard, simple, fitted, but it held attention anyway.
She reached for the zipper on her skirt, stepped out of it, black underwear, moving around the room with the specific unbothered energy of someone who had stopped caring whether they had an audience.
This is a beautiful woman, I thought, with the calm of someone noting an objective fact. This is genuinely a beautiful woman.
She found a light pink dress, pulled it on, grabbed her keys from somewhere in the wreckage of the bed, and tied her hair back in a ponytail.
[LEWD LEVELING SYSTEM]
[Daphne: Burn out. Former ability unknown. Proceed with care. Investigation ongoing.]
I know, I'm watching.
"Let's go," she said.
I picked up the jacket and followed her out. She closed her door without locking it, which she had probably done for a long time and had probably stopped noticing.
Her car was parked behind the block. Small, red, the kind of car that hadn't been driven regularly in a while. She got in the driver's side, I took the passenger seat, and as she pressed the pedals the hem of her dress shifted up her thigh in the way of driving clothes that hadn't been selected with driving in mind. I looked at the road.
The car started. We drove through Hogsby and out through the gate into the town beyond, and I took in the structure of it properly for the first time, the layout, the older buildings, the way it sat at the edge of something larger without quite belonging to it.
Daphne drove and said nothing. I said nothing. We both knew what this trip was about. She was convinced I had information she needed. I was sitting in her passenger seat trying to decide exactly how much of that was a problem and how much of it was an opportunity.
[Note: Isolated environment. Proceed as appropriate.]
As appropriate, I thought. Right.