Professor Harmon stopped letting me stay invisible.
It starts the morning after the chapel. I'm running on maybe three hours of sleep, arm wrapped in cloth under my sleeve, trying hard to look like someone who wasn't locked in a building until three in the morning. The cut is healing now, finally, but slower than it should, aching when I move wrong. I slide into my usual back-row seat, open my notebook, and I'm reaching for my pen when his voice cuts across the room.
"Miss Bardot."
I look up. He's standing at the front with his arms folded and he's looking directly at me with an expression that gives me nothing.
"Front row," he says. "There's an open seat."
I look at the front row. There is an open seat, right in the center, directly in his line of sight for the entire lecture. Thereare also open seats in every other row because students have been creating careful distance around me like I'm contagious, like proximity to me might draw Dominion attention their way.
"I'm fine here, sir."
"I wasn't asking." He waits, and the whole room is watching now, twenty pairs of eyes tracking this exchange. "Front row. Now."
I close my notebook, stand, walk down the aisle with my bag over my shoulder. Every single person watches. I slide into the front row seat and for the first time I'm close enough to see him properly under the classroom lights, dark hair silvering at the temples, a jaw cut sharp enough to cast shadows, and grey eyes with a thread of gold in them that I wasn't expecting. Behind me someone whispers something and someone else makes a sound that might be a laugh, quickly stifled.
Professor Harmon doesn't acknowledge any of it. He just starts the lecture like nothing happened, but I can feel his attention on me now, that distinct quality of focus that isn't neutral, and I know this is intent. He moved me here for a reason and I don't know yet if that reason is meant to help me or test me.
Ten minutes into the lecture he stops mid-sentence.
"Miss Bardot, tell me about the Harford Territories."
I stand. The protocol is automatic now, learned in the first week. You stand when called on, you remain standing until dismissed. My heart is going faster than it should and I take a breath before I speak.
"The Harford Territories were the last independent pack system to resist Council oversight, sir. They held out for three years after the Consolidation Act before the protocols forced compliance."
"Consolidation protocols." He takes my words and holds them up to examination like he's looking for flaws in thestructure. "Be specific, Miss Bardot. What were the mechanisms of enforcement?"
"Economic pressure, sir. The Council cut off trade routes and restricted resource access until the territories had no choice but to submit to oversight."
"And you believe that's what actually worked?" He tilts his head slightly, waiting. "Economic pressure?"
I hesitate. This feels like a trap but I don't know what kind yet. "The historical record supports that interpretation, sir."
"The historical record was written by the Council." He walks closer to my desk, stopping just at the edge of professional distance. "I'm asking what you think, not what the approved narrative claims."
The room has gone quiet. I can feel everyone listening, waiting to see how this lands.
"I think," I say carefully, "that economic pressure worked because the threat of force was underneath it. The territories couldn't fight the Council's military capacity so they accepted the gentler option while they still had one."
He looks at me for a long moment and something moves in his expression, so subtle I almost miss it. "Adequate," he says.
Then he moves on to the next student. I sit down and write the wordadequatein the margin of my notes, trying to figure out what it means when he says it in that tone, flat and cold and somehow not quite criticism.
The rest of the lecture passes. I take notes on bloodline consolidation patterns and regional resistance movements. When the bell rings and students start packing up, he says my name again.
"Miss Bardot. Stay after class, please."
The room empties around me. I stay at my desk with my notebook open, waiting while the last student files out. The door closes. The sounds of the building settle into that distinct qualityclassrooms have when they're empty. He's at his desk writing something and doesn't look up for a long moment, just finishes whatever he's working on, then comes around and sits on the edge of his desk.
"You're unprepared," he says. No preamble, just the observation delivered flat. "Consistently. Not catastrophically, but consistently enough to establish a pattern."
"I've been reading the assigned chapters, sir."
"Reading and understanding are different things." He looks at me with that same appraising quality he uses during lectures, like he's categorizing me, deciding which problem I represent. "You're not stupid. The work you produce when you've engaged with the material properly demonstrates that. You're simply not prioritizing this subject."
Something hot moves through my chest and I take a breath before it reaches my voice. "I'm prioritizing surviving, sir."
