Harem Apocalypse: Every Moan Levels Us Up!

Something shifted.

Not from outside. From within. A pressure that hadn’t been there a second ago, like something had reached in and left a fingerprint on something I hadn’t known was touchable.

[Warning: Foreign ability detected.]

[You have been marked.]

Right, I thought, still running. Add that to the list.

A hundred meters to City Square. A prayer that my team was there. The night air of the city moving past me fast.

"CGI!" A voice behind me, loud enough to carry down the street. The third agent, the one who had stayed outside the room, announcing to the city what I was and where I was running.

I looked back mid-stride. A car came at me. Not driving. Thrown.

[Dense Control.]

I dodged left and it hit the building behind me with the sound of something that was going to require significant paperwork. The agent had thrown a car down a city street without appearing to consider the consequences of that even slightly. Whatever Mary Stam had done to earn this specific team, it had generated genuine commitment.

The agent apparently assessed that throwing cars at a moving target on a populated street was logistically complicated and decided to use his legs instead.

Chasing me on foot is a mistake, I thought. I genuinely pity you.

I ran. He ran. For thirty seconds, he thought he had a chance. Then I found my stride and he became a shape in the distance getting smaller. City Square was close. I could see the edge of it.

[Material transmutation used against you.]

The road changed under my feet.

Not the surface. The physics. I was running at full speed and going nowhere, the street beneath me moving in the opposite direction like the world’s worst treadmill, and the harder I pushed, the faster it pulled me back.

I looked behind me. Becky, down the street, one hand pressed to the ground, face concentrated. The density agent closing the distance at pace.

She took a rubber bullet to the skull and bounced off a wall. And she’s still working.

I pushed harder. The treadmill pushed back harder. The math was not in my favor. I had run out of clever solutions and was beginning to reach the place where the outside version of me would have accepted the situation and looked for a different angle.

Then Mute appeared beside me from nothing. He grabbed my arm. The street dissolved.

One jump. Two. And then the warehouse, the screens, the familiar smell of the destabilizers, the team turning toward the sound of us arriving. Mute let go.

I stood there for a second, breathing, checking my inventory. Marked by something I didn’t understand yet. A charge incomplete.

Two agents who had seen my mask and a third who had seen me run. Broke nothing, which was a better outcome than I’d been calculating.

Annabelle reached me first.

She wrapped her arms around me with the specific force of someone who had been holding the tension of waiting in her chest for too long and was now releasing it all at once.

"You had me so worried," she said into my shoulder. "Don’t do that again."

I held her back and looked across the room.

Sherry was on her feet. Something had moved in her face when I walked in, something quick and genuine, and then Annabelle had gotten there first and Sherry had pulled it back behind an expression that was carefully neutral. She sat back down.

I noted it and said nothing.

Wells crossed the room and hugged me, which was either a sign of genuine relief or a sign that the mission adrenaline had made everyone briefly warmer than their default settings.

Then I looked at Mute. He was standing slightly apart from the group, the way he usually stood, contained and self-sufficient. I crossed to him and extended my hand.

He looked at it for a moment. Then he took it.

"Thank you, bro," I said.

He didn’t answer. But something in his face shifted, just slightly, the particular shift of someone who has been angry for a specific reason and has just had part of that reason revised.

Last night’s corridor was still between us. It was going to stay between us for a while. But he had pulled me out of a city street when he could have left me there, and we both knew what that meant without saying it.

Kim’s man distributed the gold cards. One to each of us. Small and solid in my hand.

"It’s just past ten," he said. "You’ll be back at Hogsby before midnight."

The mission was complete. Ahead of schedule. The team had the specific energy of people who had done something difficult and come out on the other side of it, the kind of energy that doesn’t need to be performed because it’s just there.

I looked at Mira. She was sitting in her chair like it was familiar furniture, which maybe it was given the amount of time she’d spent in rooms waiting for something to happen.

She didn’t look like a rescued person. She looked like someone who had been moved from one square to another on a board she understood better than the people moving her.

The destabilizers had been installed specifically for her. A warehouse built to suppress ability, for a girl with a dormant healer ability. That was its own conversation for another time.

My more immediate concern was simpler. She knew who I was. She had heard everything I said to Mary. And she was the only one who knew the truth without owing me anything, which meant my secret was sitting in her hands with no guarantee she’d keep it.

I crossed the room and stopped in front of her. She looked up and stood, and then she hugged me, and it was the hug of someone who had been afraid and was on the other side of it.

"Thank you," she whispered. "For everything."

I held her for a moment and felt Kim’s man looking at us from across the room with the expression fathers get when they’re watching something that means something to their child. He looked away when I caught it.

"We’ll meet again," I told her, stepping back.

"Very soon," she said. The words had shape underneath them. A plan she’d already formed. "Very soon."

"You’re Abram, right?" she added, with the careful voice of someone confirming information they’d gathered from listening.

"Yes," I said.

I left before she could ask anything else.

****

The cars were waiting. I got into the back of one and found myself immediately flanked, Annabelle on my left, Sherry on my right, which left no room in the vehicle for conflict about the arrangement because the arrangement had already happened.

Annabelle was asleep before the city faded behind us. She tilted sideways and her head landed on my lap with the practiced ease of someone who had decided this was a reasonable thing to do and had stopped asking permission. I let her.

"Hope we’ll be considered legends at Hogsby," Sherry said, watching the buildings fall back.

"I hope so."

"What made you delay in the hotel?" she asked.

Classic Sherry. Four words after the debrief and already back at the question she’d been holding.

"Covering for Wells and Anna," I said. "Making sure the path was clear."

She didn’t press. She reached over and took my hand instead, threading her fingers through mine with the quiet ease of someone doing something they had decided to do without making it into a declaration.

I didn’t say anything. She didn’t either. We watched the stray town pass outside the window, the tired streets and the small lights, and held hands in the back of a car with Annabelle sleeping across my lap and the city disappearing behind us.

It was midnight when Hogsby appeared. Then:

[LEWD LEVELING SYSTEM]

[Full Charge incomplete. New female ability user required within two hours.]

[Failure to charge risks system reset.]

I read it. Then I looked at the dark campus, at the dormitory lights, at the clock on the dashboard.

Two hours, I thought. At Hogsby. At midnight. After a mission.

This wasn’t about who was awake. It was about who I could convince... and how fast.