Lunch at Hogsby was my favorite hour of the day.
Not because of the food. Bread and beans, served with the confidence of an institution that had decided nutrition was sufficient and presentation was optional.
As someone from the outside, I had no complaints. I had eaten significantly worse things in significantly worse conditions. Last Tuesday I had eaten nothing at all.
The hall was long and narrow, built for a student population that had never materialized. High windows let in the afternoon light, dust drifting through the beams like slow snow. The walls were bare except for a single banner with the school crest, faded at the edges.
Tables ran in two rows, most of them half empty, students scattered like pieces after a game no one was winning. The clatter of trays and the low murmur of conversation filled the space.
Sherry and I had shared lunch together both days we'd been here. It had assembled itself into a routine without either of us deciding on it.
"Where were you?" she asked, dipping her bread with the focused care she brought to everything.
"Went out of school." I kept it short.
"Really?"
"Nothing much." I closed the door on the subject before she could find the handle.
I took stock of the dining hall.
Annabelle, Isabelle, and Mable were at a table near the entrance. Three of them. One empty seat completing their circle. I noted it and set it aside for later. I didn't like it when situations moved without me but I had more immediate priorities.
Mute was eating alone. He didn't look particularly dangerous sitting there with his bread and beans. He looked like a person having lunch. I knew better. Last night had taught me that level three teleportation plus motivation was considerably more trouble than it looked.
On the table directly across from us, May settled into her seat alone. Sherry's eyes followed her.
"That girl is crazy," Sherry said.
"Yes," I agreed. "How did the pairing go?"
"Ask her how it went," Sherry said, with the tone of someone who had survived something and was choosing to find it funny.
I looked at May. Sitting alone, one leg crossed over the other, eating without looking at anyone, completely self-contained. The most direct person I had encountered inside the walls, which was a category that included a government official, a school administrator, and a guy who asked a girl dying of the plague for sex to cure her on the seventh day.
She was alone. Lunch was one hour. I had a list and a system and no patience for wasted time.
"Oh," I said, as if responding to Sherry. "Let me go ask her."
I picked up my tray. Sherry watched me stand up with a smile that had worked something out.
"Good luck," she said, and went back to her bread.
***
I crossed the dining hall and stopped at May's table.
"Mind if I join you?" I said, and put my tray down and sat before the sentence was finished.
"Yes, I actually mind," she said, in a voice that meant the opposite. "But you're already sitting."
"Noticed you were alone," I said. "Seemed unkind not to fix that."
"Very noble." She looked across the hall at Sherry. "And very cruel to leave your girlfriend sitting by herself."
"Yeah," I said, because denying things during a one hour lunch window was an inefficient use of available time.
She looked at my tray. "You haven't touched your food."
"I'm from outside the walls," I said. "I can survive weeks without eating. The outside is excellent training for intermittent fasting."
She looked at me with the expression of someone who had genuinely forgotten for a moment where I was from, and then remembered, and didn't know what to do with that information.
"What actually made you come sit here, Abram Nadez?" she asked, the first person in years to address me by my full name. It surprised me as well.
"Wanted to give you company."
"Fuck company," she said, pleasantly, the way other people say sure or of course, just part of the vocabulary.
"Fair enough." I looked at her directly. "You've got the highest skirt on campus, blonde hair, dimples, and you've been the center of attention since day one. I wanted to try my luck."
"Come on," she said, with the tone of someone who expected better material.
"I know exactly what you want," she said, a beat later.
"Tell me," I said.
"You want to fuck."
I glanced left. Sherry was tearing her bread with quiet focus. The twins and Mable were done eating, plates pushed aside, talking among themselves. Mute was staring at his soup like it had personally offended him. The rest of the hall was minding its own business.
"Your girlfriend told me about you," May continued, like she hadn't just said what she'd said. "Said your room is an execution."
I laughed. She smiled. Dimples. The real ones, not the polite ones.
Sherry, I thought. Doing me favors she doesn't know are favors.
"Is it true?" May asked.
"I don't keep score," I said. "But I haven't had any complaints so far."
"I love honesty," she said. Then: "When do you want it?"
Just like that. The whole journey from sitdown to when do you want it in under three minutes. I finally understood why the system had flagged her as a priority from the first day. May operated at a frequency that skipped all the steps most people spent days navigating.
"What's the probability," I said, keeping my voice level, "that you and I find somewhere private, five minutes from now, and nobody knows about it until after it's already happened?"
May was quiet. Her eyes went slightly distant. Not vacant. Calculating. She blinked once. Twice. The specific rhythm of someone running actual numbers through something that wasn't metaphorical.
"Ninety nine point nine percent," she said.
[LEWD LEVELING SYSTEM]
[May: Probability manipulation, level 4. First encounter.]
[The point one percent is just for balance. This is happening]