Chapter 18: My New Classmate Set The Hallway On Fire... But The Bureau Investigator Hasn’t Left Yet?!

Soren was drilling with Selah in the outdoor ring the next morning when the transfer student walked onto the field.

She came through the south gate carrying a duffel bag over one shoulder, eating an apple, taking her time with both.

Copper-red hair pulled back in a knot that was already falling apart.

Short but athletic, the posture of someone who took up space because she wanted to, not because she had earned it yet.

Every step she took left a faint shimmer on the packed dirt behind her.

Soren noticed the shimmer before he noticed the girl.

Beck stopped his stopwatch. "Maren Cole. Western Continental transfer. Class Z, effective today."

Hansel leaned over to Soren. "Western Continental got hit by a Fracture six weeks ago."

"I know," Soren said.

He knew because it was in Cole Harver’s file. One of two academies with anomalous bond events. One of two academies that no longer existed.

This girl had walked out of a Fracture that killed everyone else, then got on a bus to come here.

He cross-checked her against his novel knowledge while Selah threw frost jabs at the training post beside him.

Nothing.

No transfer student from Western Continental.

No mention, no footnote, no background character.

She wasn’t in the book.

[DING! — New entity detected. Maren Cole. Classification: PENDING. No existing data in event log. Timeline deviation: this individual should not be present.]

Selah’s jab clipped his shoulder because he’d stopped paying attention.

"Focus," she said.

"Sorry."

"Don’t apologize. Just move your feet."

He moved his feet. But he kept watching.

◆◆◆◆

Beck ran them through pair drills for another forty minutes.

Maren stood on the rail the whole time with her apple, watching, commenting out loud to nobody in particular.

"The ice girl telegraphs her right hook." This, while Selah was mid-swing.

"The F-rank kid has no technique but he reads shifts before they happen. That’s weird."

Selah’s next jab came about thirty percent harder.

After the session Maren jumped off the rail, tossed the apple core onto the metal post, walked straight up to Soren with zero hesitation in the approach.

She stopped about a foot too close.

"You’re the anomaly kid, right? The one with the wolf?"

"Where did you hear that?"

"Transfer bus, two hours, not a lot else to talk about." She looked down at Grimm. "She’s pretty."

Grimm growled.

Maren grinned at the wolf.

She didn’t step back, which was either confidence or stupidity, the kind of distinction that usually resolved itself within a few Chapters.

"Is the wolf single?" Maren said. "Asking for a friend."

"The wolf bites."

"So do I."

Selah’s voice cut in from behind Soren’s left shoulder. "Training is over. You should find your room assignment."

Maren looked at Selah, then at the frost still active on Selah’s knuckles, then back at Soren.

"Sure," Maren said. "Nice to meet you both."

She picked up her duffel, turned, walked away. The shimmer followed her steps across the dirt.

Selah watched her go. The frost on her knuckles thickened by about a millimeter.

"I don’t like her," Selah said.

"You don’t like anyone."

"I like you, occasionally. When you’re not staring at transfer students."

"I wasn’t staring."

"Your mouth was open."

"It was not."

Grimm made a sound from the ground that was close to a laugh, the first sound she’d made in days that wasn’t a growl or silence.

◆◆◆◆

Back at the dorm Soren sat on the bed, pulled out his training notes, then put them away because he couldn’t focus.

Maren Cole was not in the novel.

Every other variable in this building like Troy, Selah, Dani, Joan, he could predict because he’d read their Chapters but she had no arc, no introduction scene, no wiki entry.

She was a blank space walking around in a story he’d memorized.

That made her either the most dangerous person in the building or the most useful.

He needed more information before he could tell which one.

Grimm put her chin on the edge of the bed.

Her head pointed at the door, which was the direction Maren had gone.

She smells wrong, master.

Soren went still. Grimm hadn’t spoken through the bond in days.

The Suppression Seal was supposed to lock her communication channel along with her Obsession.

Not wrong bad. Wrong... familiar. She smells like something I used to know.

"What did you used to know?"

Fire. Old fire. The kind that eats.

The voice cut out. Grimm put her head on her paws, ears flat.

Soren stared at the wall for about ten seconds.

Then he checked his system.

[DING! — Classification for Maren Cole: still PENDING. System is unable to resolve. Reason: entity signature conflicts with database parameters. Manual observation recommended.]

Manual observation.

The system was telling him to go look at her with his own eyes because even the database couldn’t figure out what she was.

◆◆◆◆

He found out that evening, by accident.

Soren was coming back from the cafeteria when he passed the outdoor training rail.

Maren’s apple core was still sitting on the metal post where she’d tossed it after the session.

Except it wasn’t rotting.

It was smoking.

Thin gray wisps rising off the brown flesh, the seeds blackened, and the metal underneath scorched in a pattern that matched the shape of a palm print.

Not five fingers spread flat but five claws, slightly curved, pressed down with heat.

Soren crouched next to it.

The scorch mark was still warm.

He touched the edge of it, felt the residual heat climb through his fingertip.

This was body heat.

Sustained, passive, coming from inside the person who’d been holding the apple.

No tamer ran that hot. No human ran that hot.

He looked at the scorch mark for another three seconds, then stood up.

[DING! — Thermal anomaly detected in training yard. Source: UNIDENTIFIED. Note: Joan Sawyer’s surveillance network has flagged this event. Thermal signature does not match any registered beast in the facility.]

Joan’s nodes were in the dormitory corridor.

But her scanner had range, the portable one she carried in her coat pocket.

If the anomaly was strong enough to trip her network from the training yard, she already had a data point that didn’t fit her existing model.

Ice events near Soren, shadow traces near Soren, and now a fire signature near Soren?

Soren pocketed the apple core, wiped the scorch mark with his sleeve until the metal was just dirty instead of branded, then walked back to the dorm.

Grimm was waiting at the door. Her tail gave one slow thump when she saw him.

He sat on the floor next to her, put his hand on her head, and looked at the charred apple core in his other palm.

"What are you?" he said to it.

The apple core didn’t answer. But Joan Sawyer’s surveillance log updated three seconds later.

[DING! — Joan Sawyer has flagged thermal event #7 in her active case file. Cross-reference with Corridor B4 shadow data: IN PROGRESS. Cross-reference with Soren Kane proximity records: IN PROGRESS.]

She was building the pattern. One more data point, maybe two, then she’d see it.

Soren closed his hand around the apple core until it crumbled.