Unable to sit still, I pull up my email, smiling as a new notification from Rue shows up.Damn, he’s good.The intake from Vesper House opens up, the one hidden by firewalls we’re not supposed to be able to circumvent.
Vesper House Intake Record - Transaction 8849-Z*
I bypass the financial records and go straight to the blood compatibility metrics. The clinic uses a proprietary algorithm to match scent and pheromonal signatures with blood pH and hormonal spikes. The match for the Alpha, identified only as 'Client A' for now, is a staggering 99.8%. I have never seen a number that high. Even state-mandated pairings for S-Class assets rarely break 85%. At 99.8%, the two subjects aren't just compatible; they are biologically resonant. Their systems will recognize each other as parts of a whole.
I scroll down to the Omega's biometrics. The data is encrypted with a secondary key, one that requires a physical token I don't yet have. But the intake timestamp for the Omega's blood draw is visible. They arrived a few hours after the Alpha. They were processed through the standard screening. And then, the discharge time: nearly twelve hours later. Long enough for a fullrut cycle to reach its peak and begin its descent. Long enough for a lethal amount of energy to pass between two people.
I stare at the screen, my mind already weaving the implications into a broader strategy. If I can secure this Omega, I won't just have a way to stabilize Jorak; I’ll have a way to enhance him.
A resonant Guide can act as a lens, focusing an Esper’s power into a surgical strike rather than a blunt instrument of destruction. We would be able to stabilize the nodes without the risk of civilian casualties.
But Rue is right about one thing: the Omega's life will be over. The moment I put a name to that blood profile, they become ESA property. They will be moved to a high-security facility. Their movements will be monitored, their diet controlled, their very heartbeat logged. They will be the chain that holds the wolf. And the wolf, in turn, will never let them go. A 99.8% match creates a dependency that borders on the religious. Jorak won't just need them; he will hunt anyone who tries to stand between them.
Asa
I stare at the roster for my graduate seminar in Advanced Design Theory, but the names are just strings of characters floating over data points. Designation: Alpha. Class: B. Designation: Omega. Class: A, the language of the ESA, a system that sorts human beings like livestock based on the frequency of their status. I hate this part of the semester. I hate the way the air in the lecture hall always smells like suppressed pheromones and the sharp, ozone tang of high-level Espers trying to look like normal students.
I adjust my glasses, the bridge of my nose still tender from the heat-fever that broke only hours ago. My body feels strange, lighter, but also more fragile, as if the skin across my ribs has been stretched too thin.
Vesper House was supposed to be a reset button, a clinical solution to a biological problem, but the memory of that room won't leave me. The scent of black cedar and whiskey is still lodged in my sinuses, a phantom presence that makes the sterile hallway smell like a lie.
I managed to drag myself out of the bed nearly an hour after he left, the sun already up. I’ve never been able to rid of that kind of need within a night. That Esper... thatEnigma...
“Not thinking about it,” I mutter to myself as I walk toward Room 402.
There are twenty-two students on the list. Most are the usual mix of ambitious B-class Guides looking for research credits and Alpha Espers who need my mathematics to understand why their power keeps tearing through the city’s aging infrastructure.
Then I hit the last name on the digital scroll. Designation: Enigma. Class: S. My breath hitches. There aren’t supposed to be Enigmas in open graduate programs. They are state assets, kept behind the thick concrete walls of the Redbrook Stabilization Center or deployed into the corrupted zones where the nodes are failing.
And yet, I was in that bed last night, letting an Enigma Esper take me apart one knot at a time.
I keep scrolling, hoping it’s a clerical error, but a name is there in cold, digital ink.Jorak Thorn.I’ve heard rumors about that name, an Esper so strong the government has him hidden from the masses. And he’s now in my class?No, has to be a different one.
I stop at the door, my hand hovering over the handle. The air coming from under the gap is heavy as it always is every year but this time it feels different. Like the moment I open the door, I’m going to feel that same thing from last night.
Not that it makes any sense. I’m an F-class Guide. I’m supposed to be immune to this, too weak to feel the nuances of high-level signatures, but I can feel him. He’s in there. He’s sitting in my classroom, waiting for me to walk in and pretend that I didn’t spend several hours screaming his name while he knotted me into the mattress of a rut clinic.
Heat spills through me, my pants tightening as my cock swells a little. God, this is going to be torture, isn’t it?
I push the door open. The room is half-full, the low hum of conversation dying down as I approach the podium. I focus on the way the wood grain swirls in a pattern of interlocking circles before setting my paperwork down.
I finally look up, my gaze sweeping the room before falling onhimin the third row, leaning back in a chair that looks much too small for him.
Jorak is wearing a plain black t-shirt, the sleeves tight against arms that are corded with the kind of muscle he’d only get from government training. He isn’t wearing the tactical vest or the suppression cuffs I saw in the news clips.
He looks almost human, except for the way the air seems to warp slightly around his shoulders. He’s smirking at me, a claim on those sinful lips. His eyes are dark, focused on my face with an intensity that makes my collar feel like it’s choking me. He looks like he never left Vesper House. He looks like he’s still tasting the vanilla on my skin.
"Good morning," I croak out before clearing my throat. "This is Advanced Design Theory. If you are looking for Introductory Stabilization, you are in the wrong building. We deal in equations here, not empathy."
I turn to the whiteboard, my back to the class, and start writing. The chalk snaps in my hand. I discard the piece and keep going, filling the board with the Navier-Stokes equations for fluid dynamics, the only thing I can think of that might distract me from the fact that an S-class weapon is currently memorizing the way my pants fit.
I explain the relationship between energetic flow and structural integrity. I talk until my throat is dry and the silence from the third row starts to feel like a physical weight.
"Professor Renwick?" A girl in the front row raises her hand. Mira’s research assistant, a B-class Guide with eyes that are much too observant. "The fourth variable in the third line—is that a constant or a coefficient of the Black Current interference?"
I open my mouth to answer, but a voice cuts through the room before I can speak. It’s low, resonant, and carries a vibration that makes the glass in the windows rattle in their frames. "It’s a variable for entropic decay," Jorak says, watching me, his gaze tracing the line of my jaw. "The professor is assuming the node is already compromised. He’s calculating for a rupture, not a leak."
The class goes silent. Nobody contradicts an Enigma, especially not an S-class who looks like he could tear the building down with a thought. I turn around completely, leaning against the podium as I use my most condescending academic stare, the one I usually save for administrators who try to cut my research budget. "Mr. Thorn, is it? I wasn't aware the ESA allowed its assets to moonlight in theoretical mathematics. I hope you brought a pen. Or do you plan to memorize the decay of the city through sheer force of will?"
