Steele’s voice continued through the roster, but my attention had fractured after hearing my own assignment. Whatever force governed my life—the System, Ecchi Logic, or some vindictive deity with a spreadsheet—had assembled a working group that could only be described as architecturally hostile to my continued peace of mind.

Camille Ortega, whose mouth I had occupied two days prior during what was supposed to be a straightforward combat drill, and who had materialized in my doorway at midnight wearing something the lingerie industry would call strategic and I would call a cardiac event, positioned to discuss emotional processing.

Felicity Hardy, who had constructed an aggressive friendship around me with the structural integrity of reinforced concrete while her Temptation Gauge climbed with the inexorable patience of geological formation.

Percy Mendoza, who had identified discrepancies in my institutional file and was currently engaged in what he believed was subtle investigation of the regulatory architecture that could dismantle my entire operational framework.

This was a sustainable situation. Everything about this was completely sustainable.

Steele released us to self-organize. The lecture hall filled with the shuffling resignation of students rearranging their seating according to instructions nobody had volunteered to receive. I remained stationary and allowed the group to coalesce in my vicinity, because initiating movement toward Camille would telegraph intentions I was unprepared to broadcast before twenty witnesses and one retired A-rank Hero whose professional background included reading tactical situations for a living.

Felicity pulled a chair from the adjacent row and positioned it beside mine with the assertive efficiency of someone claiming territory. She crossed her legs, adjusted her skirt, and opened her tablet in three distinct motions that somehow all looked like the same graceful gesture.

Percy appeared on my other side without announcement. His notebook was already open to a fresh page with the Silverbrook Shopping Center schematic sketched from memory in the eleven seconds since it had appeared on the smart board. The proportions were immaculate.

Camille was the last to arrive. She walked across the tiered seating with the deliberate confidence of someone choosing to approach a situation rather than being forced into it, and there was a meaningful difference between those two things that she wanted every person in the room to recognize. Her two-toned hair fell across her jaw. Her blazer was unbuttoned, revealing the fitted white shirt beneath that the Halloran uniform committee had clearly not designed with Camille’s particular proportions in mind. She dropped into the chair across from me and set her tablet on the desk with a sound that was slightly louder than necessary.

"Before you say anything," she said, "this is a group assignment. I’m treating it as a group assignment. We work, we present, and we don’t discuss anything that happened outside this classroom."

"Deal," I said.

"I wasn’t asking for permission. I was establishing parameters."

"Also noted."

Her brown eyes held mine for exactly one second longer than her stated parameters required. Then she looked at her tablet and began scrolling through the scenario materials that Steele had just distributed to our devices.

Felicity watched this exchange with barely concealed fascination, her blue eyes moving between Camille and me like a spectator at a tennis match. She said nothing. She didn’t need to. Her expression said everything. That expression said I’m going to need you to explain every single word of that interaction to me later and I will accept nothing less than complete honesty delivered with appropriate dramatic detail.

Percy, bless his overthinking heart, had already moved past the social dynamics and into the actual work.

"The Silverbrook incident involved a spatial displacement Aspect user who could swap the positions of any two objects within line of sight, including people." Percy’s pen moved as he talked, sketching sight lines on his notebook’s floor plan. "The primary tactical challenge was that any approach vector visible to the Villain could be redirected. Hero teams attempting to breach from standard entry points found themselves displaced to random floors, separating units and destroying coordination."

"Which is why four teams failed," Camille said. She’d pulled up the incident report on her tablet and was reading it at a speed that suggested she’d already known about Silverbrook before today. "They kept trying to walk through doors and ended up somewhere else. Every breach attempt gave the Villain more hostages to shuffle around as shields."

"So standard tactics don’t work," Felicity said. "What about non-standard?"

"That’s what we’re supposed to figure out." I leaned forward and looked at Percy’s notebook, where his reconstruction of the building layout had already identified fourteen distinct sight lines from the Villain’s documented positions. "Percy. How many blind spots exist in this building that a person could reach without entering the Villain’s line of sight?"

Percy’s eyes went unfocused for approximately two seconds. His Analyze kicked in with the quiet hum of a processing engine that most people mistook for anxiety.

"Seven." His pen moved to mark positions on the floor plan. "Three on the ground floor behind structural columns, two on the second floor in maintenance corridors that don’t have windows or sight lines to public areas, and two on the third floor in employee-only service areas accessible through the parking structure without passing through the main atrium."

"None of which the original Hero teams used," Camille said.

"None of which the original Hero teams used," Percy confirmed.

I looked at the seven positions Percy had marked. Each one represented an approach vector that bypassed the Villain’s primary advantage. Each one required a different type of Aspect or physical capability to exploit. And each one existed because the building had been designed by architects who cared about HVAC access and fire code compliance rather than tactical siege resistance, which meant the vulnerabilities were there for anyone who thought to look for them.

The original teams hadn’t looked. They’d defaulted to standard breach protocols because standard breach protocols were what they’d trained for, and when those protocols failed against an Aspect that invalidated them completely, they’d tried the same protocols again instead of adapting. Four teams. Six hours. Twelve million dollars in damage and four people in the hospital.

Because nobody stopped to think.

"Okay," I said. "Here’s what I’m thinking."