"I know. Test it anyway."
She walks me to the door. Sven is right outside.
Lumi touches my arm as I step out. Light. Brief. Her fingers on my forearm, just above my left wrist.
The heat jumps.
Not a pulse. Not the slow flare I've been getting. A surge — sharp, specific, running from the point where her fingers touch my skin up through my forearm and into my shoulder. My breath hitches. I pull my arm back. Not a flinch. Faster than a flinch. Reflex.
Lumi's hand drops. Her face doesn't change. But her eyes do — something in them solidifies. Certainty. She just confirmed something she suspected.
"The body always knows first," she says. Quiet. For me, not for Sven. "Whatever you're feeling — the heat, the pull — don't fight it. You can't win that fight, and trying will make it louder."
I stare at her.
She didn't ask me if I was feeling heat or pull. She told me I was. Like she already knew. Like she's seen it before.
"What is this?" My voice is low. Sven is three feet away and I don't want him to hear.
Lumi looks at me for a long moment. I can see the calculation — what to say, how much, how soon.
"Transition," she says. One word. Chosen carefully, placed precisely, and offered without explanation.
Sven's hand finds my arm. "Let's go."
I walk. Across the yard. Past the fence. Through the door. Down the hallway. Into my room. Bolt turns.
I sit on the bed.
I hold my left wrist in my right hand and look at it.
Skin. Veins. The faint blue lines running beneath the surface. The pulse point where the heat lives. Normal. It looks completely normal.
But it's not. Something is in there — under the skin, in the blood, in whatever runs deeper than blood — that responds to a man I've never spoken to.
Transition.
Chapter six
Sven's schedule says outdoor regulation programming. 8:00 AM. North yard. Staff: Stone.
I don't know what outdoor regulation programming is. I don't know who Stone is. But the schedule is taped to the inside of my door and it's the first item on it that doesn't involve being locked in a room, so I'm not complaining.
The yard is cold and bright and open in a way that makes my chest expand. Packed dirt under thin snow. The hum of the electrified outer fence. Trees beyond it, mountains beyond them. About a dozen Red House guys scattered across the space — some pacing, some clustered, one sitting with his back against the building, face tilted toward the weak winter sun.
The man waiting for me near the east wall is big.
Built like Sven and Gavin — broad through the chest and shoulders, thick arms, hands that look like they could breaksomething without effort. Weathered and sun-lined face. His jacket is worn at the elbows. His boots have actual mud on them — real mud. From somewhere outside the fences.
When he sees me, he pauses.
"You're Alex," he says. Not a question.
"That's what they keep telling me."
His mouth does something that isn't quite a smile. "I'm Stone. I handle outdoor programming. Today we walk."
"Walk where?"
