The library didn't go silent.
It went alert.
Mina felt it before she understood it, the way you feel weather change through skin before you see clouds. The air seemed to tighten, as if the room had straightened its spine. Even the hum of climate control sounded different, not louder, not softer, just… watched.
Mina's fingers paused over the intake sheet.
Across the desk, Nessa's posture adjusted almost imperceptibly. She didn't look up right away, which told Mina everything. Nessa didn't react to ordinary people.
Cora froze mid-step near the return cart, a binder half-lifted from the stack like she'd been caught in the act of breathing too loudly.
Mina glanced toward the archway without moving her head.
Footsteps approached.
Measured. Unhurried. The kind that belonged to someone who never had to rush because the world waited for them.
Two men entered the library wing.
Mina didn't need their names.
The difference between staff and resident was obvious in Helix, but this was more than that. This felt like the difference between a person and a force. Both men carried themselves with effortless precision. Not stiff, not formal, just calibrated. Their clothes were dark and expensive in the way that didn't advertise price tags. Clean lines. Perfect fit. No unnecessary ornamentation, because nothing about them needed extra.
They walked side by side, mid-conversation, voices low enough that Mina couldn't make out the words but not low enough to suggest secrecy. They didn't need secrecy here. The building itself protected them. The staff protected them. Even the rules protected them.
One of them gestured lightly toward a sealed cabinet along the inner wall, the tinted glass catching the light. The other gave a brief nod, expression unreadable.
The motion was small.
The room responded as if it had been commanded.
Mina felt it in her own body, her shoulders drawing back, her breathing slowing, her instincts shifting into something older. In her old world, power meant danger, because people with power did whatever they wanted and called it natural. Here, power meant structure, because the system had been built to hold it.
That didn't make it safe.
It just made it quieter.
Cora leaned toward Mina without turning her head. Her lips barely moved.
"Okay," she whispered, almost no sound at all, "do not stare."
Mina didn't. Her eyes stayed down on the intake sheet. She forced her fingers to move again, to write a date, to align a stamp, to make herself look like a person who hadn't been mentally knocked off balance by two men walking into a room.
But her pulse betrayed her.
The man on the left, tall, sharp, with a stillness that felt controlled rather than cold, smiled briefly at something the other said. It was quick, almost human, like the expression had slipped out before he remembered himself.
For half a second, the myth looked like a man.
Then the other spoke softly, and the smile vanished as if it had never existed.
They didn't glance toward the desk.
They didn't acknowledge staff.
They simply moved forward, deeper into restricted territory, like the space belonged to them in a way it never would to anyone else.
Mina kept working, but she could feel the room holding its breath.
She wasn't imagining it. Even the light seemed steadier, sharper, as if the library refused to flicker while they were present.
The two men slowed near one of the inner cases, their voices still low. Mina caught fragments, single words, not sentences. "Window." "Revision." "Timeline."
Not secret, but strategic.
Cora's shoulders were rigid. She looked like she'd forgotten how to blink.
Mina wanted to tell her to breathe, but speaking felt like breaking glass.
Nessa finally looked up, eyes tracking the men as they passed beyond her line of sight. Her expression didn't change, but something about her gaze sharpened.
Not fear.
Awareness.
The men disappeared behind the inner access partition.
The room released its breath in increments.
Cora exhaled first, loud and dramatic like she'd been underwater.
"I lived," she whispered.
Mina didn't look up. "Barely."
Cora pressed a hand to her chest. "Excuse you. That was composure."
"That was panic," Mina murmured.
"Curated panic," Cora corrected, offended.
Mina's mouth twitched despite herself. The humor helped. It made the moment feel survivable.
Nessa's voice cut through the quiet, calm and perfectly neutral.
"Continue your work."
The instruction wasn't only for Mina.
It was for the room.
People moved again. Pages turned. Carts rolled softly across the muted floor. The library returned to its rhythm as if nothing had happened.
But Mina knew that was a lie.
Something had happened.
Power had entered, and the building had recognized it.
Mina finished the intake sheet with hands that were steadier than she felt. She kept her gaze on her work, but her mind replayed details anyway.
The slight tilt of the head when one listened.
The way the other's presence felt heavier, less human, like a blade kept sheathed by choice rather than necessity.
Their ages, Cora had said, were early twenties. Close enough to Mina that it was unsettling. Too close for comfort, because proximity in age made them feel less like distant rulers and more like… predators of a different ecosystem.
Not hunting.
Just existing above.
When Mina carried a packet toward the returns desk, she noticed her own reflection in the glass cabinet.
Uniform. Hair neat but simple. Face calm, trained.
She looked like staff.
But she could still feel the echo of their presence in her bones.
It wasn't attraction.
Not yet.
It was awareness, the kind that made you check exits even when you told yourself you didn't need to.
Cora fell into step beside her, quieter now.
"They come in here more than people think," Cora murmured. "Not often, but… enough."
Mina kept her voice low. "Why the library?"
Cora shrugged. "Because it's the only place in Helix that doesn't flatter them. It just… holds things. Facts. Agreements. Consequences."
Mina glanced at the shelves again, suddenly seeing them differently.
This wasn't a library.
It was leverage.
Cora nudged her lightly with an elbow. "You were fine, by the way."
Mina looked at her. "You were about to faint."
Cora scoffed. "I do not faint. I merely experience intense reverence."
"That's fainting."
"That's admiration under pressure."
Mina's smile surfaced before she could stop it, small and quick.
Cora grinned, pleased. "There. See? You can be a person."
Mina didn't answer, but the warmth lingered.
As the shift continued, Mina found herself listening harder to the library itself. To the way staff moved. To what was not said aloud. The careful neutrality. The quiet obedience.
The heirs hadn't done anything to her.
But the entire wing had reacted as if something could happen if someone stepped wrong.
Mina filed that away.
In her old world, stepping wrong had gotten you hurt.
In this one, it might get you erased.
By the time her shift ended, Mina was exhausted in a way she hadn't expected. Not physically. Mentally. Like her mind had been holding a heavy door shut all day and only now realized how much effort that took.
As she logged out at the desk, she caught Nessa watching her, just briefly, eyes sharp and unreadable.
Not hostile.
Assessing.
Mina kept her face neutral and nodded once, respectful.
Nessa returned it with a single, small nod.
No words.
But Mina felt it: confirmation.
You saw what you needed to see. You didn't react. You didn't reach. You didn't embarrass yourself.
Good.
Mina walked back toward her room with quiet steps, the estate calm around her, the courtyard fountain murmuring like it always did.
Helix returned to normal on the outside.
But Mina's inner world had shifted slightly.
She had seen them.
Not in public, not as headlines, not as distant myths, close enough to feel their gravity.
And now she understood something she hadn't before.
The residents weren't just powerful men living together.
They were a future being trained.
And she was living inside the training ground.