"You just stared at your phone for thirty seconds without breathing."

"I was reading."

"You were analyzing." Felicity’s freckles caught the light as she tilted her head, her blonde ponytail shifting across her shoulder. "There’s a difference, and you know there’s a difference, and you know I know there’s a difference."

Across the table, Theo leaned back in his chair and crossed his massive arms. "Meridian Technologies. Aren’t they connected to like half the Hero agencies in California?"

"More than half." Percy’s pen had resumed its motion, which meant his brain had finished the initial processing burst and moved into documentation mode. "Meridian provides equipment, analytics software, or research consultation to approximately sixty-eight percent of licensed Hero agencies operating in the greater Verano metropolitan area. They also hold the exclusive manufacturing contract for Halloran Academy’s training facility equipment, including the combat simulation robots used in entrance examinations."

The table fell silent again. This time the silence had a different quality, heavier around the edges, the kind that forms when people realize the distance between their lunch conversation and the real world has just collapsed to zero.

"So when something goes wrong at Meridian," Caden said, his voice stripped of humor for the second time in five minutes, "it potentially affects everyone who depends on their tech working correctly."

"Including us." Finn’s normally relaxed expression had sharpened. His fingers had stopped threading filaments, which was the equivalent of anyone else standing at attention. "Including every piece of equipment we’ve been training with since we got here."

I watched the news feed update one more time. The camera showed emergency vehicles parked in a semicircle around the building’s main entrance. A woman in a dark suit stood at the perimeter giving instructions to someone I couldn’t identify. The evacuation continued with that same rehearsed efficiency.

Then the feed cut to a desk anchor who announced that preliminary reports suggested the incident was contained and that no injuries had been reported.

Contained. No injuries. Minor incident.

The words were right but the timing was wrong. It had been less than fifteen minutes since the first alert, and the corporate communication machine was already framing the narrative. That kind of response speed meant either Meridian’s PR department deserved an award, or they’d had the statement ready before the incident occurred.

My phone buzzed one final time. A text from Diane.

Seeing the Meridian news. Don’t worry about it. Richards has been having containment issues in Applied Sciences for months. This is the third one this quarter. PR will handle it.

Stay focused on your classes. I’ll update you tonight if anything develops.

Love you.

I stared at Diane’s message for five seconds longer than necessary.

Third one this quarter.

Containment issues.

Those were not the words someone used for random lab accidents. Those were the words someone used for a known problem that kept recurring because the underlying cause hadn’t been addressed. And Diane, who ran one of California’s top Hero PR agencies and maintained relationships with every major corporate player in the Verano ecosystem, knew about it. Knew about it well enough to tell me not to worry, which in Diane’s vocabulary meant she was already worrying enough for both of us and didn’t need me adding to the pile.

I typed back a quick response, pocketed my phone, and returned to my ramen, which had cooled past its optimal temperature window and now tasted like an adequate rather than transcendent noodle experience.

"Everything okay?" Rina asked, her purple eyes finding mine with the quiet directness that was becoming her signature move.

"Fine. Diane says it’s nothing. Apparently Meridian has been having problems in their research division. This isn’t the first time."

Percy looked up from his notebook. His brown eyes held something I couldn’t read.

"That’s interesting."

"Why?"

"Because the SEC filings I reviewed did not contain any references to prior safety incidents, which public companies are legally required to disclose to shareholders if those incidents meet specific materiality thresholds." Percy’s pen tapped against the page twice. "Either the previous incidents fell below the disclosure threshold, which would suggest they were genuinely minor, or the company chose not to disclose them, which would suggest something considerably more problematic."

The table processed this information at different speeds. Caden’s eyes narrowed. Marco stopped eating chips. Felicity leaned back in her chair with the expression of someone adding a new variable to an equation she’d been solving since breakfast.

Theo broke the tension with a shrug that moved his entire upper body.

"Look, emergency services are there, nobody’s hurt, and we’ve got afternoon practicals in two hours. Whatever’s happening at Meridian, it’s not our problem yet."

"Yet," Finn echoed, and the word hung over the table with the specific weight of something nobody wanted to examine too closely.

I picked up my chopsticks and ate my lukewarm ramen and said nothing else about Meridian Technologies, because Theo was right. It wasn’t our problem. We were first-year students at a Hero academy, unlicensed and untested and months away from being authorized to respond to anything more dangerous than a homework assignment.

But the Oracle Feed pulsed softly at the edge of my awareness, processing data I hadn’t asked it to process, filing connections I hadn’t asked it to file.

Meridian Technologies. Roland Richards. Applied Sciences division. Classified research wing on floors thirty-five through forty. Third containment issue this quarter. Aspect discharge in upper floors. Rehearsed evacuation protocols suggesting known recurring risk.

I finished my lunch.

The conversation at the table drifted back toward normal topics. Caden told a story about accidentally making his own shoes invisible during conditioning. Marco debated the aerodynamic properties of various disk-shaped foods with Theo, who contributed nothing useful but laughed hard enough to make the table shake. Felicity showed Rina something on her phone that made Rina’s tail wag once before she caught it and forced it still, her cheeks flushing pink.

Percy wrote in his notebook and did not look at his phone again.

And downtown, seventeen miles south of where we sat eating cafeteria food in our school uniforms, Meridian Technologies stood in the California sunshine with emergency vehicles parked around its base and a corporate PR machine already spinning the narrative into something forgettable.

Contained. No injuries. Minor incident.

I didn’t believe any of those words, and based on the look Percy gave me when nobody else was watching, neither did he.