"Class, who knows the answer?" Professor Emmett said, addressing the lecture hall, waiting for a student to take a guess. "No one? Anyone?" His eyes met Hollis’s as if tempting him to answer.

"Alright then. The answer is—"

The class door erupted with a pack of guild recruiters.

Professor Emmett did not look amused. "You recruiters know the academy rules. You may not enter classes during lecture hours."

"But then we—" one began to argue.

Emmett did not speak further. He simply positioned his hand just above the phone on his desk and waited for them to speak another line.

"We apologize, sir," the crowd said in unison, each one giving a slight bow as they left in a clean single file line.

Ash was one of the last to leave, mostly because he was still drawing the diagram Emmett spent three seconds drawing. When he finally did leave the lecture hall, the pack of guild recruiters had been dispatched.

Only a single girl remained with a glossy black heel propped up against the lockers on the other side of the hallway.

"Hey," she merely said. "You look different when you’re not... What was the word you used? A cripple?" she smirked.

"Lucia?" Ash said, unsure of the question.

She too looked different than when he saw her in the restorative facility. Her long black hair was tied at the end with a single red ribbon. Following her heels was a pair of stockings with red roses at the hem. Her black and red skirt hid a pair of red garter straps, which sat below a cropped black blazer and white blouse.

"That’s good you remember me. I didn’t know if your weekly trips to the medic ward exhausted your memory of me."

Her dark violet eyes were absorbing every inch of him.

"Well, it was good seeing you again," Ash said, walking away.

Lucia hadn’t moved from her position. Ash took a breath, stopped himself after a few feet, and turned back around.

"I’ve had a busy week." Ash said, taking a spot beside her.

"Aren’t you going to ask me why all the recruiters left?"

"Should I?" Ash turned to face her, but her eyes were now locked on the door in front of them. "Fine. Why did all the recruiters leave."

"I only had to tell them the Crimson Workshop has claimed the person everyone is after, and they left."

"Good for them and that person, I guess," Ash responded.

"Yes, it is good for that person," she said with a condescending smirk.

"You mean?"

Lucia’s violet eyes met his own pale blue ones.

"I’m only a Null rank. I don’t see why guilds would be interested in me," Ash deflected.

"Vivian told me everything I needed to know about you. We agreed to share you, though that did involve giving her a favor," she shook her head. "I’ll see you later. East campus exit," Lucia said, kicking her leg off the lockers and leaving.

"Wait! Lucia, when is later?" Ash asked.

Lucia only responded with a wave of her hands, back and forth.

"Later it is, I guess," Ash muttered. He cursed his own curiosity, turning in the opposite direction. He had no intention of seeing her again until absolutely necessary.

Necessary arrived after his last class of the day.

Ash found Lucia already waiting at the east campus exit. He had gone immediately there after his last class of the day.

She was still wearing the same clothes he had seen a few hours ago, propped up against the stone pillar beside the gate with her arms crossed and her heel up again. She had her phone out, scrolling through something and muttering curses beneath her breath.

"You actually came," she said, pocketing the phone.

"You told me to."

"I tell lots of people lots of things." She pushed off the pillar. "Come on."

She walked without checking whether he was following.

"Lucia!" the guard attending the checkpoint station called out. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

Lucia merely waved her hand with a slight smile and kept walking, ducking underneath the gate and continuing to wherever she decided she was going to go.

A luxury car was already waiting outside for her. A man in a clean suit exited from the driver’s side door and opened the back one for her.

"Uhm, sorry about this." Ash told the guard and followed Lucia into the car.

The driver closed the door behind Ash and started driving them.

"Where are we going?" Ash asked.

"Somewhere you haven’t been." She glanced at him sideways. "You really haven’t been anywhere. Have you? Seth mentioned you barely leave campus."

"You talk to Seth?"

"Seth mentions a lot of things to people who know how to ask. Ah, we’re already here."

They couldn’t have gone more than two blocks away from the academy.

Lucia kicked open her side of the car door, not waiting for the driver to open it. Ash looked outside the window and saw a small rundown café that Lucia was heading to. She opened the door and walked in without holding it open for him.

Ash caught it before it fully closed.

The café barely had space for eight small tables and a counter with a blackboard menu. The person behind the counter looked up, saw Lucia, and began making two drinks without being asked. Lucia took the corner table by the window and dropped her bag onto the chair across from her with the intention of it staying there.

"Sit," she said.

Ash took the seat directly next to her.

Two drinks arrived once he sat down. A coffee and a glass of bubbly liquid with ice. Lucia took the glass and pushed the coffee toward Ash.

"So what’s the Crimson Workshop?" Ash asked.

"That’s what you want to know?" She said with a laugh. "I would have thought you’d ask where we are going next or what I want to do with you." She grabbed a straw from the window sill, poked it through, then left it on the table.

"The Crimson Workshop," Lucia said, "runs Shade resolution contracts for high-net-worth clients who can’t access Guild services or don’t want to. Families. Executives. Political figures. People for whom a Shade collapse would be inconvenient in ways money doesn’t fix." She traced the rim of her glass. "There’s a waiting list."

"That’s it? No hunting city-level beasts?"

Lucia gave a faint knowing smile, then gave a hand gesture to the server. She nodded, locked the front door, then went into the kitchen side of the café.

"The Workshop doesn’t recruit people. We identify them and make an offer. The offer is resources, protection, and access to information the Guild system doesn’t share with anyone else. Especially those who file reports that say they fought a bipedal figure with intellect."

Ash’s hands locked onto the coffee.

Lucia leaned in, whispering directly into his ear. "I know you saw something you shouldn’t have and chose not to tell Cavel what it was." She returned to her seated position.

"I... I described what I saw accurately."

"You described it to avoid documenting it." Her violet eyes held his without blinking. "Which means you have a reason to keep it off record. Which means you know more than the report says." She picked up her glass again. "The Workshop knows about the accelerating Gate anomalies too. We’ve been tracking them for eight months. We have data that predates the academy’s by six."

Ash’s hands finally unlocked from the cup.

"That’s what I thought," Lucia said.

"You thought what?"

"That you’d be more interested in the data than in the offer." She smiled, the first genuine one rather than the condescending version from the corridor. "Most people hear Workshop and they start calculating what it means for their rank assessment. You heard data and your face changed."

"My face didn’t change."

"Your face absolutely changed." She reached into her bag and produced a flat folder that had the Workshop’s red insignia in the corner. "I’m not asking for a commitment. I’m asking you to read this and tell me if I’m wrong about you." She placed it in front of him. "If I’m wrong, we never had this conversation. If I’m right, you come find me."

Ash looked at the folder.

"The entity that came through the Gate," he said. "Does the Workshop have a file on it?"

Lucia’s expression didn’t move. "Read the folder first."

"I’m telling you yes to your proposition."

"And I’m telling you to read the folder," she said again, picking up her glass. "I’m not giving you everything you want. That’s not how this works."

"Fine," Ash said.

While he was opening the folder, Lucia had finished her drink, unlocked the café doors, and got back into the car. The car door shutting tight caused Ash to see his ride back had left without him.

Ash turned back to the folder. It only had a single page, with a single name written in red ink.

Alina.