I dig deeper, my fingers flying across the keys. The more I find, the worse it gets. These records haven't been forgotten. They’ve been buried. The language gets thinner after the ESA takes full control of the city’s power grid, then disappears almost completely.
I don't have enough to name what Asa is.
Not yet.
But I have enough to know the F-Class label is wrong.
I look at the clock. It’s nearly five. Outside the window, the Redbrook sky is turning a bruised, sickly purple, the color of a storm that refuses to break. Mercer isn't just interested in Asa. Everything he’s doing with Asa… they’re tests.
And Asa, bless his brilliant, stubborn heart, keeps passing them.
I pull my phone from my pocket, my thumb hovering over Asa’s name. I hesitate. If I call him, he’ll hear the panic in my voice. If I text, maybe I can keep him moving before Mercer does.
I don't call.
I text.
Library. Back tables. Now.
Then I send another before I can talk myself out of it.
I think I know why they want you.
Asa
Mira is already at the back table when I get there, the one tucked behind the Oversized Geography section where the security cameras have a blind spot. She’s surrounded herself with a fortress of leather-bound archives and digital printouts. She doesn't look up when I pull out the chair. Her fingers are flying across a tablet, her mouth set in a thin, dangerous line.
"You look like hell, Asa," she says, still not looking at me. "And you smell like you’ve been living in a cedar chest."
"It's the new fragrance from Enigma Pour Homme," I joke, my voice sounding more brittle than I’d like. "Very exclusive. Hard to wash off. What’s so urgent that you couldn't send an encrypted file?"
She finally looks up, and the pity in her eyes makes me want to bolt. Mira doesn't do pity unless something is genuinely terminal. She slides a stack of photocopied records toward me—documents from the early eighties, judging by the faded typeface and the headers that have been redacted with heavy black ink.
"I spent the rest of the day in the digital archives using the back-door credentials I 'borrowed' from the Dean's office," she whispers, leaning in. "And I don’t think the class system is the whole picture. S through F measures output. How much a Guide can take, redirect, or support before they burn out. But these older records keep sorting Guides another way."
I pick up the top sheet. My fingers are trembling, a fine, high-frequency vibration I can’t stop. The text is dense with design theory and energetic mathematics, my language, but used in a way that feels like a weapon. I scan the equations, my mind automatically solving for the variables of suppression and flow.
"Another way how?" I ask.
"Function," Mira says, her voice urgent. "Not just how much power a Guide has. What their body does when power hits them. Some of this language lines up with what you did in the field, Asa. With how you can stand next to Jorak’s Black Current and not get burned to a crisp. With how you knew where his power needed to cut."
I remember telling Mira everything and her just staring at me in awe before telling me to be careful. I have been everythingbutcareful because my body, mind, and soul now need Jorak like I need air to breathe.
I try to respond, but a sudden wave of heat rolls through me. It’s not the sharp, clean burn of Jorak’s power. It’s internal. It’s a slow, honey-thick throb that starts in the base of my spine and radiates outward until my skin feels too tight for my bones. I swallow hard, my throat suddenly dry as the Redbrook dust.
"Asa?" Mira’s voice sounds like it’s coming from the end of a long tunnel. "You’re nearly white as a sheet. Are you sick? Is it the distance sickness?"
"I'm fine," I lie, because that is my default setting. "Just… a lot to take in. The math is complicated."
I reach for my water bottle, but my hand misses. My depth perception is tilting. The room is suddenly too bright, the lights overhead screaming in a pitch only I can hear. I can feel moisture gathering at the small of my back, a slick, hot dew that smells unmistakably of sweetened pear and vanilla.
"Oh god," Mira says, her chair screeching back as she stands up. "Asa, your heat. It’s hitting. Right now."
"No," I gasp, clutching the edge of the table. "No, I have two weeks. I track it. I have the charts. It’s not due for two weeks."
"The bond doesn't care about your charts, you idiot," she hisses, moving around the table to shield me from the view of a stray freshman two aisles over. "Jorak’s an Enigma. He’s rewriting your entire endocrine system. You need to get out of here. Now."
I try to stand, but my knees have turned to water. The air in the library is gone, replaced by a vacuum that tastes of ozone and black cedar.
