Nyx POV
Someone trips me before I even reach my first class.
I hit the floor hard, my borrowed data pad skidding across the hallway. Laughter explodes around me—bright, cruel, Celestial laughter that sounds like broken glass.
"Oops." A girl with perfect golden hair stands over me, not even pretending it was an accident. "You should watch where you're walking, Fringe rat."
My face burns. Every person in this hallway is staring at me, their enhanced eyes taking in my secondhand clothes, my silver hair that marks me as defective, my everything that screams I don't belong here.
Get up. Don't cry. Don't give them the satisfaction.
I stand, ignoring my scraped knees, and retrieve my data pad. The screen is cracked. Great. I spent two days fixing that thing.
"Something wrong?" Golden Hair blocks my path, flanked by two other girls who look like they were designed in a lab. Which they probably were. "Need help finding the trash chute? That's where District Seven garbage usually goes."
My hands curl into fists. I want to hit her. Want to scream that my parents died working in their factories, that my brother is dying because they won't share their medicine, that I earned my place here with my brain while she was probably born into hers.
But I'd be expelled. Or worse.
So I do what I've done my whole life in the Fringe: I survive.
"Excuse me," I say quietly, stepping around her.
She grabs my arm. "I didn't say you could—"
"Miss Celestine." A teacher appears—an older woman with silver circuits running through her temples. "Is there a problem?"
Golden Hair—Celestine—drops my arm and smiles sweetly. "No, Professor. Just welcoming our new student."
The professor's eyes find mine, cold and calculating. "Then you won't mind if Miss Solene joins your programming class. I'm sure you'll help her... adjust."
It's not a question. It's a threat.
Celestine's smile turns poisonous. "Of course, Professor."
This is going to be a nightmare.
Programming class is worse than I imagined.
I'm assigned a station in the back—the broken one with a flickering screen and sticky keys. Celestine and her friends sit in the front, whispering and giggling, occasionally throwing looks back at me.
The instructor, Professor Vex, doesn't acknowledge me at all. He launches into a lecture about quantum encryption that's way too advanced for first-day students. He's testing me, I realize. Seeing if the Fringe rat can keep up.
I can.
In fact, I learned this stuff two years ago from salvaged textbooks and black market data files. While he talks, I'm already three steps ahead, seeing the flaws in his examples, the shortcuts he's missing.
My fingers itch. I want to code. Want to show them what a "defective" brain can do.
"Miss Solene." Professor Vex's voice cuts through my thoughts. "Since you look so bored, perhaps you'd like to demonstrate the encryption protocol on the main screen."
The class snickers. It's a trap. He's giving me an impossible task to humiliate me in front of everyone.
I stand anyway. Walk to the front. Feel every eye burning into my back.
The main screen lights up with code so complex it looks like digital poetry. A level-seven encryption that would take most students an hour to crack.
I have three minutes before the timer runs out.
My hands move across the holographic keyboard, muscle memory taking over. I see the pattern immediately—it's elegant but flawed. There's a backdoor hidden in the third sequence, a weakness in the quantum tunneling algorithm.
I exploit it.
The encryption shatters in ninety seconds.
The classroom goes silent.
Professor Vex stares at the screen, then at me. "How did you..."
"The quantum tunneling algorithm assumes a closed system," I explain, my voice steadier than I feel. "But if you introduce a recursive loop in the third sequence, it creates a cascade failure. The encryption breaks itself."
More silence.
Then Celestine laughs—sharp and mean. "She probably cheated. Fringe rats steal everything."
"I didn't—"
"Enough." Professor Vex holds up a hand. His face is unreadable. "Miss Solene, return to your seat. We'll discuss your... technique... after class."
I stumble back to my station, heart hammering. Did I just make things better or worse?
The rest of class passes in a blur. I catch students whispering, pointing. Some look impressed. Most look angry. Like I've committed a crime by being good at something.
When the bell rings, I grab my cracked data pad and bolt for the door.
I almost make it.
"Nyxara Solene."
The voice stops me cold. It's not loud, but it cuts through the hallway noise like a knife through silk. Deep. Controlled. Dangerous.
I turn slowly.
And there he is.
The boy from the entrance hall. Platinum hair. Electric blue eyes. Tall and perfect and so coldly beautiful he doesn't look real. Up close, he's even more terrifying—I can see the faint glow of cybernetic enhancements beneath his skin, the way he stands like a predator pretending to be human.
Kaelen Voss. The Chief Architect's son. The future High Enforcer.
And he's looking directly at me.
"Your encryption break." His voice is arctic. "Explain it."
My mouth goes dry. "I... the algorithm had a flaw. I just—"
"I know what you did. I watched." He takes a step closer. Students scatter around us like we're magnets repelling. "That technique isn't in any textbook. Where did you learn it?"
I can't tell him I taught myself from stolen files. Can't admit I've been hacking Celestial systems since I was thirteen, looking for medical information to save Zephyr.
"I figured it out," I say lamely.
Something flickers in his blue eyes. Curiosity? Suspicion? "You figured out a level-seven bypass in ninety seconds. On your first day."
"Is that... bad?"
"It's impossible." He tilts his head, studying me like I'm a puzzle. "Unless you're much smarter than your file suggests. Or much more dangerous."
My heart pounds. "I'm not dangerous. I'm just—"
"Gifted." The word sounds strange coming from him, almost... gentle? "You have a gift, Nyxara Solene. The question is: what will you do with it?"
Before I can answer, his hand moves—fast, too fast for me to track. His fingers brush my wrist, just for a second, and I feel a shock run through me. Not painful. Something else. Something that makes my breath catch.
He pulls back immediately, and for one impossible moment, I see something crack in his perfect ice-cold expression.
Surprise. Confusion. Maybe even fear.
Then it's gone, and he's back to being the untouchable Enforcer prince.
"Be careful, Miss Solene." His voice drops to a whisper only I can hear. "You just made yourself very interesting. And interesting Fringe students tend to disappear."
He walks away, leaving me frozen in the hallway.
My wrist still tingles where he touched me.
And I realize with growing horror that Kaelen Voss—the most dangerous person in this Academy—just noticed me.
I should be terrified.
So why does part of me want him to notice me again?