Vince Vale was coming for me. That was settled. The only question was timing and whether I would be ready when he arrived.

The look on his face in that doorway had been cold. Not rage, something worse. The expression of a man who had quietly decided that something needed to be dealt with and had already begun thinking through how. Calm. Methodical. Patient in a way that made it more dangerous, not less.

One of us, I thought, climbing the Vale building stairs, is going to have a very bad night when that moment comes. And I intend for it to be him.

But nights like that didn’t get won with wishes. They got won with preparation. And preparation started with information. And information meant Sherry Vayne.

****

The classroom at School Central was less a room for learning than a terrarium for the wealthy and unsupervised. Warm afternoon light slanted through tall windows, catching dust motes that drifted lazily above clusters of students.

Chairs scraped and turned at odd angles. Conversations overlapped in waves of laughter and low gossip. At the front, a desk sat empty, no teacher, no lesson plan, just the soft chaos of teenagers who knew the rules barely applied to them.

I filled the doorway, scanning.

At the back, middle row, Sherry and Ivy sat together deep in conversation. Sherry facing away, Ivy facing toward me. Ivy spotted me first. Her eyes widened slightly, and she tapped Sherry’s arm.

Sherry turned. The moment her gaze landed on me, a small, knowing smile curved her lips. Across the room, Wells lounged in the back-left row beside some new face, looking as effortlessly at home as always, one arm draped over the back of his chair like he owned the air around him.

Ivy gave a quick wave. Sherry rose without hurry, threading between desks with that precise, self-assured stride of hers.

She had let her brunette hair grow slightly since Hogsby. Mini skirt hugging her hips, crisp white long-sleeved shirt with sleeves folded neatly at the elbows, and a dark sweater vest over it.

Smart as always, carrying herself the way she always did, like she had decided exactly who she was and wasn’t asking for input.

"Hey, Bram," she said when she reached me, voice low enough that only I could hear the warmth beneath the words.

"Miss Vayne," I said, which came out before I decided to say it.

Her smile deepened, a spark of amusement in her eyes. "You really missed me."

"I needed research help."

"Let me guess." She tilted her head, a lock of hair sliding across her cheek. "Capturing a live zombie outside the walls?" The sarcasm was light, but it carried an edge.

"Not exactly." I paused, letting the weight of everything unsaid settle between us. "Speaking of which... days are running out. Are you ready?"

"Yes," she answered immediately, no hesitation, no flicker of doubt. "We both grew up outside the walls, Bram."

"I know."

"Do you?" Her gaze sharpened, searching mine.

"I said I know."

She let it drop, but I felt the question linger like smoke.

We started walking without a destination, which was how the best conversations with Sherry always started.

She had a habit of pulling slightly off the straight path as she walked, the kind of drift that forced you to adjust, and I had stopped noticing I was adjusting.

"So what are you researching?" she asked.

"A species," I said.

"Not Ivy." She said it immediately. "Joking."

"I know." There was something about being with her that felt like years rather than weeks. I didn’t know if it was the shared origin, both of us from outside, both navigating the same walls from the same direction. But it was there.

"Research means library," she said, shifting gears.

Of course, I thought. Why didn’t I think of that first.

"You’re right. Let’s go."

***

I knew where the library was. I had used it the previous afternoon as a punishing ground for Toddy, which was a sentence I chose not to share with Sherry.

The big room was quiet, students reading beneath warm lights in a way that still felt faintly strange given that almost no real teaching seemed to happen at School Central.

The actual books were in the inner room. I pointed toward the door.

"You already move around here like an old student," Sherry said.

"Quick learner," I said, and opened the door.

Azure was coming out as we were going in.

We stopped. Three feet of doorway between us. Her eyes found mine and something in them was wrong, the specific wrongness of someone who had just come from somewhere and was carrying what happened there.

Her red stripes were barely visible, dim and flickering like a dying signal. Her shoulders were hunched, her arms wrapped around herself as if she was trying to take up less space.

Sherry read the room the way she always read rooms, quietly and completely, and took three steps inside, her back to us, giving us the space.

Azure leaned in.

"Kill him," she whispered.

My hand curled into a fist at my side. I held those two words and felt the weight of what it had taken her to say them.

Not help me. Not please. Just the direct specific request of someone who had run out of other options and had decided I was the only person in this institution she trusted with the truth of what she needed.

Then she walked out. I lingered in the doorway for a moment, watching her disappear from sight before turning back to the shelves.

Sherry stood between two rows of books, one hand resting against a spine, waiting. She had heard enough. I could see it in how she held herself, the slight stiffness in her shoulders. She was waiting.

"Research," I said.

She turned from the shelf, one hand still on a spine, looking at me with the expression of someone who had heard something through a doorway and was waiting to find out how much of it she was allowed to know.

"Yes," she said. "Tell me everything."