Five climaxes with May.
I want to be clear that I had not planned for five. The third one had been the goal. The system, apparently, had other ideas.
[Post-climactic surge active. Continue.]
[Post-climactic surge active. Continue.]
By the fifth notification I had stopped reading them and started just complying.
We sat in our chairs afterward in the specific silence of two people who had just conducted an extremely thorough detention.
"Why didn't you tell me you were a charger?" May asked, leaning back with the composure of someone who had just rearranged probability for an hour and a half.
"Can't exactly go around announcing it," I said. "Unless I want to become the most wanted man inside the walls."
She laughed. "No wonder your room is an execution."
[LEWD LEVELING SYSTEM]
[Prime Charger: Level 10.]
[Charge: 1000 | 10 FC]
[Defense and attacking skills unlocked.]
[May: Charged to Level 8.]
I read it twice. Level ten. One thousand charge. Defense skills. Mute, I thought, with deep personal satisfaction. Come visit tonight.
That was the real reason I had pursued May today. Not the obvious reason, though the obvious reason had been fine. The skills. The safety. Mute had shown me last night what an undefended prime charger looked like against a motivated teleporter and I had not enjoyed the lesson.
Now I had the answer to that lesson.
May was looking at the ceiling with the slightly distant expression of someone testing the edges of something new. Level eight probability manipulation. I wondered what the difference felt like from where she was sitting.
"You're the real deal, Abram," she said, to the ceiling. Then she looked at me. "Does your girlfriend know about this?"
"Sherry isn't my girlfriend."
"Does she know?" May repeated, unbothered by the clarification.
"No," I said.
"Smart," she said. "Keep it that way."
Before I could say another word, Del materialized out of thin air like he'd been waiting in the walls this whole time.
"Time's up," he announced, then had the audacity to add, "Sorry about the room. I know it's not ideal." He pressed his watch to his mouth and murmured into it like a man who took his job very seriously. "Their time is up, Miss Brown. Your call."
A pause. Then: "Yes, ma'am."
He looked at us. "You're both coming with me to the Dean's office."
He touched us both and the detention room was gone.
****
"Thank you, Mr. Slater," Miss Brown said, and Del winked out of existence. "Please, sit."
Miss Brown's office was large and organized in the way of someone who controlled their space because not everything else could be controlled. She was behind her desk.
Sophia Vale was in the chair beside it, legs crossed, sunglasses now on the desk, watching us settle into our seats with the specific attention of someone who had arrived here looking for something and hadn't stopped looking.
I remembered May's panties in my pocket approximately two seconds after sitting down and her skirt was very short. I did not reach for them. I trusted May's probability manipulation to have that situation covered.
"Abram." Miss Brown came for me first. "I don't want another report of this nature. If I hear one, Lord Bala gets involved."
"Yes, ma'am."
Sophia's eyes moved at the name. Just slightly. The movement of someone who had filed something and was now retrieving it.
"He's from CGI?" she asked Miss Brown, in the tone of clarification rather than question.
"He is."
Sophia uncrossed her legs, then crossed them again and said nothing. The silence had weight.
Miss Brown moved on to May, apparently satisfied that threatening me once was enough. Sophia's eyes, however, had not moved off me. Old eyes. Sharp ones. The kind that collect information the way other people collect receipts.
"May," Miss Brown said, her tone landing somewhere between tired and fond. "What am I supposed to do with you?"
May didn't answer. The question wasn't really a question — there was clearly history between them. The kind you don't explain in front of strangers.
"Your cohort had ability scans. You missed it." Miss Brown pressed on. "People are leveling up. Mable leveled up today—"
"Hold on." Sophia raised a hand. "What levels were those girls at before they jumped?"
"Four."
"One's at eight. One's at eleven." Sophia let that sit. "That's not a level-up. That's a launch. Were you running scans in between?"
"We were, just... not frequently," Miss Brown said, in the voice of someone who knew they were losing an argument.
"Right." Sophia looked at me then, clicking something together behind her eyes. "This boy — he's from Bala's group?"
"One of the outsiders Reed brought in," Miss Brown confirmed.
"The six outsiders." Sophia looked at me directly for the first time. "I thought your face was familiar. I saw you on the news."
We were on the news, I thought. We crossed the plain and made it to the walls and someone put us on the news.
I had not known that. I filed it and kept my face still.
[Brown, direct telepathy, Level 7]
The system handed me Miss Brown's stats like a gift I hadn't asked for. A silence settled over the room until Miss Brown broke it.
"That will be all," she said. "You can both go."
I stood. One last look at Sophia before I turned for the door.
[Sophia Vale: Unknown Entity.]
Unknown entity. Not unknown ability. Unknown entity. I walked out before my face could do anything I'd regret.
***
May fell into step beside me in the corridor. I kept my pace even and my voice low.
"When did the first level up happen?" Sophia's voice, carrying just enough from inside the office. "Was it after the outsiders arrived?"
"Yes," Miss Brown answered.
Then we turned the corner and the words dissolved.
"So you're responsible for Annabelle and Mable," May said, pleasantly, like she was observing the weather. "Disposing your seed inside the walls."
I said nothing. Unknown entity, the system had said. Not a gifted person. Not an ability user. Something else entirely.
"The supervisor," May said, after a moment. "The one in the office." She didn't look at me. "Be careful of her."
I looked at May. She was already looking forward, walking at the same pace, the same pleasant expression she wore for everything.