The morning sun hung low and sharp, painting the academy paths in long, golden slashes that cut across the grass like warning signs.

A CGI lady in crisp heels and a tailored navy suit led the eight of us out of the administration building. Her steps were precise, professional, the practiced rhythm of someone whose entire job was moving valuable assets from one place to another without answering questions.

All eight of us followed in loose formation.

Word had already spread like wildfire across School Central. Students lined both sides of the wide stone path, watching with that particular brand of hungry curiosity—the kind that wanted proximity to danger without actually touching it. Whispers rippled through the crowd. Eyes tracked us like we were already legends in the making.

Sherry walked a few steps ahead of me, paired off naturally with Speed, who had decided twelve seconds of acquaintance was more than enough foundation for nonstop conversation. His wiry frame buzzed with nervous energy, pink hair catching the light as he gestured wildly.

Sherry’s posture remained composed, her head tilted slightly in that polite-but-distant way she used when managing people.

May slipped her hand into mine without asking, her fingers warm and confident.

"I’m excited, Bram," she said, with the energy of someone who had arranged this exact outcome and was now enjoying the results.

I looked at her. She looked beautiful and completely unbothered by where we were going. All these students were treating this like a field trip. A sponsored adventure organized by a government official and staffed with ability users.

They had never heard the plain at three in the morning.

"Do you still remember your promise?" May asked, squeezing my hand. Her eyes sparkled with mischief.

I tried to locate the promise in my memory. The detention room. The probability she had arranged. The things said in the specific context of two people alone in a white room.

Sex in the zombie land, I remembered.

"Yes," I said.

She held my gaze as we walked, completely unashamed, letting the watching students see the connection. Let them stare.

The team had already begun pairing off. Sherry and Speed. Harmione walking beside the hulking Oddo, an interesting combination I filed away for later. Owen and Code moved alone, detached, the two loners who didn’t feel the social gravity pulling everyone else together.

Code hadn’t laughed once since Sophia’s office. His long hair hung like a curtain over his eyes, hiding whatever thoughts moved behind them.

****

At the main school gate, three heavy armored vehicles waited in perfect formation. Dark green, military-grade beasts with reinforced plating, thick-tread tires, and mounted weaponry that glinted dully under the sun. They looked like they belonged to a different world.

Standing beside them was a man who matched the machines.

"Team," the CGI lady said, "General Sinn."

She saluted sharply and retreated, the sharp tap of her heels fading behind us.

Sinn was not what I had expected from a name. He was what I had expected from a man who had spent his career in places the government sent people when the situation required someone who didn’t stop.

Broad-shouldered. Thick-necked. Military uniform stretched across a frame that had been built by decades of actual work rather than training. Deep scars on the left side of his face, jagged and white, the kind that don’t come from one incident but from a life of incidents. The morning light caught them and made them stand out like lightning frozen in skin.

He began walking around the group slowly. Boots crunching on gravel. No one dared speak. The air felt thicker under his inspection.

Then: "Who here understands the depth of this mission?"

I didn’t raise my hand.

"Very deep," Speed said.

Sinn looked at him. The look of a man who has heard confidence before and is deciding what category this particular version belongs to.

"How deep?" he asked.

"Deep enough to win you some girls when you get back safely," Speed said.

The group laughed. Even Sinn’s face moved. Not a full laugh. The chuckle of a man who appreciated the energy even if he wasn’t going to encourage it.

"It’s a military mission," he said, settling back into the serious register. "Which makes you soldiers for the duration. Who knows what soldiers do?"

Murmuring. We had decided we liked General Sinn, which was itself information about how well he was managing us.

"They follow orders," Owen said.

"They follow orders." Sinn pointed at him. "What’s your name?"

"Owen, sir."

"Owen." Something in his assessment shifted. Approval, or the beginning of it. "You’re my soldier. All of you are my soldiers. Follow orders and everyone comes back."

"Yes sir," Owen said, and the tone was clean enough that nobody laughed.

"My boys could have brought a dead specimen," Sinn continued, the serious and the light weaving together in the way of someone who had learned to brief people toward danger without letting them see the full shape of it until they were already committed. "We need it alive. That’s why you’re here. That’s why this is teamwork."

They still think it’s going to be one day, I thought. Capture and retreat. Clean and done. They’ve never been outside.

"Back to campus," Sinn said. "You have the day. Nineteen hundred we move."

****

We walked back through the gates. The student population had gathered at the campus edge, watching, and when we came through the gap they called names. 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

Speed dissolved into a group of girls with the practiced ease of someone who lived there. Code walked through without acknowledging anyone, his long hair still covering his eyes.

I took Sherry’s hand and we moved through the attention and up the stairs to the second floor balcony, where the campus spread below us and most of the students were down there being excited about something we were not excited about.

We stood and looked at each other without speaking for a moment.

"Harmione, Owen, Oddo, Speed and Code." The campus speakers. Sophia’s voice, calm and official. "Please report to the director’s office."

I looked at Sherry. She looked at me.

The Central students had their own briefing. Different information for different roles. Ours had come from Bala and from years of the plain, which was a different kind of preparation entirely.

We had a day. The last calm one before the walls opened.

I took both of her hands in mine, looking at her properly, really seeing her. The quiet strength in her posture. The intelligence burning behind her eyes. The subtle tension in her jaw that told me she understood exactly what we were walking into.

"We’re coming back," I said.

Sherry looked at me in a way she hadn’t looked at me before. Something behind it that I recognized without being able to name, like looking at a face you’ve known so long you’ve stopped seeing it clearly and then suddenly you do.

"I know," she whispered.

For a moment, the excited noise below us faded. It was just the two of us on that balcony, hands clasped, the weight of the Fallen City already pressing down on our shoulders as the sun continued its slow climb toward night.