"I'm Sven," he says. "I'm your house advisor. Step out."
I look around. The yard between the buildings is cleared, flat, hard-packed dirt under a thin layer of snow.
No one's out here. But the buildings have windows, and some of those windows have faces in them — distant, blurred, watching. I count six before I stop counting. None of them move.
Sven is watching me watch them. I can feel it without looking.
Fire Hydrant is out of the van now, handing Sven the manila folder. His hand shakes when he extends it. Small tremor. Barely visible. But I see it because I've been watching hands my whole life — whose are steady, whose aren't, whose are about to swing.
"All yours," he says, and the way he says it — fast, half-turned toward the van already — tells me everything. He wants to leave. He wants to get back in that van and drive away from this place and never come back.
Sven takes the folder. Opens it to the first page. I see it, upside down, for just a second before he angles it away.
Death on record — unresolved.
Something stamped at the bottom in text too small to read, next to a logo I don't recognize — not the state seal, not the Department of Corrections. Something else. An organization I've never heard of.
"Your transfer paperwork lists this as a juvenile rehabilitation program," Sven says, still reading. "That is technically accurate. You are here under the authority of the Frosthaven Review Panel, which oversees all placements at this facility. You will be housed in Red House, which is my unit. You will follow my instructions. You will not touch anyone without permission. You will not leave your designated areas without escort."
Red house, what the hell is that. And ‘you will not touch anyone without permission’. In juvie, the rule is don't fight. Don't assault. Don't threaten. Nobody says don't touch.
"Do you have questions?" he asks.
I have about forty. I start with the most honest one.
"Where am I?"
"Feral Academy. A satellite program of Frosthaven Academy, located approximately five miles from the main campus."
Satellite. The word they use for the place you put people who can't be at the real school. Five miles of forest between us and whatever Frosthaven Academy actually is. Close enough to be connected. Far enough to be a deterrent.
"And what is Frosthaven Academy?"
He closes the folder. "That's above your placement level."
Above my placement level. That's not corrections language. That's the kind of thing people say when there are tiers and I'm not on the right one.
"Cool. What's a feral academy?"
"A facility for individuals whose behavior and biology require structured intervention in a controlled environment."
Every word of that sentence was designed to say nothing. I've heard sentences like that my whole life. They mean: you're here because we put you here, and the reason is in a file you're not allowed to read.
The van is pulling away. I watch it go. Swallowed by the tree line in seconds. No taillights. No evidence it was ever here.
From somewhere behind the nearest building — the one with the tall fence, the enclosed yard — a sound drifts across the cold air. Low, rising, rough. Not human. Not mechanical. An animal sound. But not like any animal I've heard. It's too cadenced, too deliberate. Like something between a growl and a howl, and it cuts off abruptly.
Sven doesn't react. Doesn't flinch, doesn't look, doesn't acknowledge it at all. Like it's background noise. Like it's normal.
My arms break out in goosebumps and it has nothing to do with the cold. Something low in my gut pulls tight.
I should be scared. I should be cataloging exits and calculating odds and doing the math I've always done — how fast can I run, who's between me and the fence, what's the weakest point. That's what I do. That's what I've always done.
Instead I'm standing in the cold, listening to something that isn't human.
Sven removes my cuffs and turns me around.
Sven is watching me and his nostrils flare — a tiny movement, fast.
