The classroom door whispered shut behind me, sealing in the stale air of history lectures—and Halward's disappointments. I was free.
At least until next week.
I adjusted my club jacket—black and red, the Dome Protection crest stitched right over the chest—and started jogging toward the "extraction point" Lyre mentioned earlier. I moved with the crowd, ducking under a raised elbow and sidestepping a gaggle of second-years blocking the hall like they'd never heard of traffic flow.
Northern Ossius High's hallway was already mid-club-time chaos. Regular blue school uniforms vanished under a rainbow of club jackets—black and orange for Engineering, black and green for Tech, black and yellow for Intel—each one tossed on like a declaration of allegiance, or at least a personality shortcut.
And then there was Lyre.
Waiting by the staircase down the history wing like she hadn't just spent an hour dying of secondhand shame. Arms folded. Boot braced against the wall. Black and yellow Intel jacket sharp as ever—hair perfectly tied back with that same black bow she'd worn since we were kids. Like nothing rattled her.
She didn't say anything at first—just gave me that look. The one she'd perfected over the years of catching me zoning out.
"Let me guess," she said, not even looking at me. "Halward asked for your post-battle report on the Centipede Lady?"
*Classic Lyre. Sharp, deadpan, two steps ahead of whatever excuse I hadn't made yet.*
"Technically," I said, falling into step beside her, "it was a giant centipede mutant with a thing for blade arms. But no, he wasn't interested in my after-action report."
"I bet he said something about you disrupting his history monologuing rhythm."
"I believe the phrase was 'a disgrace to your father's name,' but, you know. He said it with love."
Before Lyre could scold me further, Nash Aulock came barreling out of the adjacent hallway—black and green Tech jacket flapping, beanie halfway off his head, and goggles bouncing around his neck like they had somewhere more important to be. His hair looked like it had lost a bet with live wiring, but the universe, in its infinite unfairness, still handed him the kind of jawline that made him poster-boy material for Dome recruitment ads.
Girls swooned. Then he opened his mouth and started quoting heat sink ratios, and reality reasserted itself with brutal efficiency.
"There they are," Nash called, weaving into step beside us. "Ossius High's favorite maybe-couple. Keep walking shoulder to shoulder like that and someone's going to print wedding invites."
Lyre shot him a sideways glance—the kind that usually made first-years rethink their life choices.
Nash, of course, had built up immunity.
"Noted," she said.
I sighed, eager to change the subject before Nash built an entire fake wedding registry and started assigning us table placements.
"Anyway. Did you see the new X-20 drop last night?"
His eyes lit up like someone had handed him a motherboard made of dreams.
"The tank-chopper thing with the railgun underbelly?"
"Yep. Hoverframe, magnetic armor mesh, multi-environment thrusters. Railgun's got autocalibrating aim correction—even in wind shear."
Nash had been my friend since forever—pre-Division placement, pre-jacket colors, back when we both thought Dome Squad training sounded cool and not borderline lethal. These days, I chased the combat protocols while he obsessed over the gear itself—weapon specs, armor designs, mech mechanics. He could name every model in the Dome archive like they were celebrity crushes.
He adjusted his bulging backpack. "I need that. I need that. I will give up caffeine and moral restraint if someone lets me pilot that thing."
"You'll die in ten seconds," Lyre said.
"And I'll die happy."
I glanced between the two of them—one Intel prodigy with a blackmail-level GPA, and one Tech Club rogue who could probably hack the Dome's power grid just to boost his holonet signal.
And me?
The guy caught between them, hiding amber eyes behind tinted lenses, just trying not to spontaneously combust.
* * *
Up ahead, two MedTech girls slowed as we passed—black and light blue jackets pristine, like they'd never touched anything that wasn't sanitized twice and blessed by the Board of Health.
One twirled her stylus like she thought a scout might be watching.
The other held her holopad sideways, pretending to scroll, eyes locked on Nash like he was a limited-edition defibrillator.
"Nash Aulock," said Stylus Girl. The three of us stopped. "You're in Tech, right? My latest drone monitor keeps glitching. Think you could take a look sometime?"
Nash nodded. "What's the model? Could be a boot issue that I'm sure you're capable of handling alone. If it were me, I'd just recalibrate the whole thing—reboot using a working drone. Faster, cleaner, way less likely to crash mid-op."
Both girls blinked.
Stylus Girl's smile froze, and her friend cleared her throat, adjusted her spotless collar, and stage-whispered, "Clinic rotation starts in three."
They dipped into a fake jog and vanished into the crowd.
Nash frowned after them. "Huh. Thought they wanted help."
Lyre didn't even glance up from her holo. "They did. Until you started speaking encrypted circuit poetry."
I patted Nash's shoulder as we walked—the universal gesture for you're a genius, and absolutely doomed.
We passed through the mid-sector junction, where the corridor split into color-coded rivers—students peeling off into groups that matched their jackets and, probably, their futures. Black and purple for Civics. Black and white for General Studies. Most of them moved in loud packs, laughing too hard, bragging too much, pretending like the Dome's career tracks didn't start locking in next semester like permanent life tattoos.
I spotted a few Protection Club kids near a pillar, red-and-black jackets tossed over their shoulders, a stim can arcing between them. One of them looked over. Made eye contact. Then turned away mid-sentence, like my face had triggered a hard reboot in his brain.
Figures.
I knew that look. Everyone did.
The three of us—Lyre, Nash, and me—had a reputation. Not the good kind. Too smart. Too close to power. Too close to the wrong kind of rumors. Especially the one where I'm infected and just hiding it well.
People didn't really know what to do with us, so they mostly acted like we didn't exist.
Honestly? Safer for everyone.
As we walked, the hallway shifted from old Academy stone to newer polysteel underfoot, the kind that hummed faintly under boots and made you feel like the ground had a heartbeat. The walls pulsed with muted dataflow—schedule rotations, alert banners, and the usual Dome propaganda feeds, reminding us to strive for excellence, unity, and unthinking obedience. Classic.
We merged with a cluster of Civics students just leaving lecture, and it didn't take long before someone clocked me. One girl glanced at my face, then at my glasses, then veered back toward her group with just enough urgency to be obvious. She whispered something I didn't catch. A couple of her friends turned to look. One of them laughed. The other looked like she was trying not to.
Lyre didn't say anything. She didn't have to. She just lifted her gaze from her holo and fixed them with that particular Intel Division expression that could be used in court as premeditated psychological warfare. Her stance barely changed, but something about the way she held herself—shoulders straight, weight centered, jaw set—communicated a very clear message: keep talking, and I will dismantle your social credit score and fold it into a quarterly report.
The whispering stopped almost instantly. The laughter dried up even faster. The girls turned away like suddenly remembering they had somewhere incredibly important to be, preferably in another hallway.
Nash, walking just behind us, raised an eyebrow and gave Lyre a half-impressed look. "Remind me never to make her angry," he muttered, mostly to himself.
"She doesn't really have a not-angry setting," I replied, adjusting my glasses again, more from habit than anything else.
Lyre said nothing. Which, for her, counted as a warm and fuzzy moment.
We walked a while without talking. Not awkward silence, just the usual rhythm—Lyre scanning her holo for updates she probably already knew by heart, Nash humming some glitched-out melody under his breath, me wondering if my glasses were doing their job or if someone else had just clocked the amber behind the tint.
Then Lyre broke the silence.
"Reminder that tomorrow is my birthday," she said, tone flat enough to pass for casual, but just barely.
I glanced over. "Right. I forgot you celebrate your date of manufacture."
Nash looked up from whatever mess of circuit diagrams he was mentally assembling. "Wasn't that usually on a weekend?"
"Tomorrow is Saturday," she said, just a little too fast.
She didn't look at either of us, which was how we knew it mattered.
"And both of you are coming."
"Obviously," I said.
Nash scratched the side of his head, adjusting the goggles around his neck like they were his emotional support mechanism. "I mean, probably. Unless there's, like... a system failure. Or lightning hits my apartment again."
Lyre stopped walking.
She didn't raise her voice. Just turned—arms folded, weight shifted, eyebrow twitching like a prelude to character assassination.
"If you bail again like last year," she said calmly, "I'm canceling the entire trip and keeping the emitting relays I promised you."
Nash blinked. "Whoa. You said those were for your hairbow tracking project."
"They were," Lyre replied. "And now they're leverage."
"I'm not doing another birthday where it's just me and Ray and half the school assumes we're dating."
"We're not?" I deadpanned.
She didn't dignify that with a response. Just hit me with the same look she used on malfunctioning bots and administrative holos that wouldn't load.
"I'll be there," Nash said quickly, raising both hands. "Wouldn't miss it. Cake and catastrophic social tension? My ideal night."
Lyre gave a single satisfied nod and turned back down the hall. "Good. We're going to Sector 4."
I paused. "Wait—Sector 4? That Sector 4?"
She didn't break stride. "Dad finally pushed the clearance through. Just the three of us. No escorts. No press. No crowd-control teams shadowing us like last time."
Nash looked both impressed and mildly alarmed. "That... sounds mildly illegal."
"We have Arthur," she said.
And that, somehow, was the entire explanation.
Arthur wasn't just her butler—he was a former Dome Squad Elite turned security officer turned scariest chauffeur alive. The kind of guy who could fold a metal chair using just his stare. If he were with us, we could probably walk through an active breach zone and no one would flinch.
Nash let out a long, low whistle. "Okay, now I'm hyped. I've been dying to see the new agritech up close. Maybe get a drone-bee to land on my hand and imprint on me as its queen."
"Dream big," I said. "I'm just in it for the fresh oxygen. Maybe pet a real farm cat or smell real lavender."
Lyre ignored our farm fantasies.
She kept walking, arms still folded, expression unreadable—but her pace picked up half a step. Barely noticeable. Unless you knew her.
I did.
That near-invisible shift, the way her shoulders set like she was trying not to smile—it was the Lyre version of a celebration. She was excited.
"Looks like someone is eager for this day to end," I said. "Keep walking like that and people might think you're actually looking forward to hanging out with us."
"I'm excited for the produce," she replied, with all the warmth of a press release. "Not the company."
"Sure," I said. "Because nothing screams 'birthday thrill' like freshly-harvested cabbages."
Nash snorted behind us. "Don't knock it. She did once spend twenty minutes explaining soil acidity levels at lunch."
"That was one time," Lyre muttered, but there was a faint pink creeping up the sides of her ears.
"And she color-coded the diagrams," I added. "It was honestly inspiring."
"I'll make sure they lock you in the compost unit," she said.
"See?" I nudged Nash. "She cares."
Nash wiped an imaginary tear from his cheek. "It's so beautiful when friendship decomposes naturally."
Lyre rolled her eyes so hard I swear I heard the rotation, but the edge of her mouth twitched. Just enough to count.
We reached the corridor fork—Intel wing branching off to the left, Tech curling right, Protection waiting at the far end like it owed someone an apology.
We slowed. A quiet, habitual pause. The kind that happens when a group instinctively knows the next step means splitting up.
Lyre glanced toward my hall. "Good luck in there," she said, nodding toward Protection. "Try not to break anything. Or anyone."
"No promises," I said. "Try not to eye-roll your division into a diplomatic incident."
"I make no guarantees."
She turned to Nash. "And you. One explosion is enough for one week."
His eyes went wide. "Wait, how did you know about that? I thought we covered it up pretty good."
"Don't underestimate us Intels."
Nash raised his hand in mock surrender. "Okay, okay, no explosions."
Lyre gave him a look that could've defused a warhead. Then—satisfied—she turned, gave us both the kind of wave that didn't look like a wave, and disappeared into the Intel wing with her usual pace.
Nash clapped my shoulder. "You're lucky, you know."
I gave him a look. "Says the guy with workshop privileges and a special award for his plasma pen invention."
He gestured vaguely in the direction Lyre had disappeared. "Not about that. I mean—she doesn't say that kind of thing to just anyone. The 'your eye color isn't a symptom' talk? That's, like, peak Lyre compassion. She probably had to consult a legal team before expressing it."
I snorted. "She rehearsed it in front of a mirror, guaranteed."
"Still counts," he said. "For her, that's basically a hug."
I didn't answer right away. Because he was right. And I wasn't sure what to do with that kind of right.
Instead, I shifted my grip on my jacket sleeve, tugging it straight. "Anyway. I've got reflex drills."
Nash made a sympathetic noise. "Oof. On a Friday?"
"Yeah. Coach said if I want to stay on top of the Protection program, I need to 'train like I'm actually interested in surviving.'"
"You going solo?"
I nodded. "As always."
"Then may your reaction times be quick and your instructors greatly impressed."
"See you too, dude."
He grinned, gave a casual salute, and ran towards the Tech wing.
And just like that, I was alone again.
I walked alongside other Dome Protection Club members as we approached the entrance to the club. Through the observation window, I caught a glimpse of the reflex rig already powered up—green tracking lights scanning in slow, mechanical sweeps.
Something twisted low in my chest—not quite fear, not yet. Just the kind of slow, internal shift that told me something was going to go sideways. I just didn't know if it would be the tech...
Or me.