"Three hours and forty-one minutes. The research entered a productive phase around two in the morning that I determined should not be interrupted."

"Percy."

"The exemption categories genuinely are fascinating. Category seven in particular contains a definition of progressive manifestation that could encompass virtually any late-blooming Aspect with developmental characteristics that deviate from standard trajectories."

He was handing me a roadmap. Not to fix my fake registration, but to make the fake registration legally defensible if anyone ever challenged it. Percy Mendoza, the anxious blue-haired kid who muttered through his first two weeks at Halloran and apologized for existing, had spent an entire night building me a fortress out of bureaucratic language.

I took the document. Read the first page. Looked at Percy again.

"Thank you."

His pen twitched in his right hand. "You helped me call the timing when we fought Camille and Petra. You told me I was smart when everyone else told me I was weird. This seemed proportional."

He left before I could respond to that, already pulling out his notebook and scribbling something about the morning humidity’s effect on route optimization.

The second half of Saturday belonged to Sloane.

She texted me at six in the evening with a message that said nothing and communicated everything. Three words. My room. Now.

I showered. Changed into the dark blue shirt Felicity had picked out, because the color did something to my jawline that I’d noticed in the mirror and filed under "tactically useful." Walked across campus in the cooling evening air with the Devotion’s Echo humming between us, Sloane’s emotional signature growing warmer and more insistent with every step I took closer to her building.

She opened her door wearing one of my hoodies. Just the hoodie. It fell to mid-thigh on her smaller frame, and underneath it was apparently nothing because the zipper sat low enough to confirm that particular theory.

"Took you eleven minutes," she said.

"I walked."

"You could have run."

"I was savoring the anticipation."

"Don’t use words like savoring when I’m standing here in your hoodie and nothing else."

She pulled me through the door by the front of my shirt. The lock clicked behind us. The window was already cracked, letting in cool evening air that mixed with the warmth of her room and the specific scent of her shampoo and skin that my brain had been cataloging since the day I woke up in this body.

What followed lasted approximately three hours and involved her mattress earning every dollar of its premium price tag.

Sloane on a Saturday night with no early conditioning the next morning was a different creature than the competitive, territorial version who operated during the week. She was softer. Louder. More willing to ask for things she wouldn’t have asked for if she thought she needed to maintain her image. Her Detonation Aspect sparked at her fingertips during the second round, tiny amber flashes that matched my own constructs in color, and for a moment the room looked like it contained two sets of golden fireworks.

Afterward, lying tangled in sheets that needed replacing for the third time that week, she traced the scar through my left eyebrow with her fingertip and said something I’d been expecting since our bond resolved to full resonance.

"I’m not having kids until after graduation."

I blinked. Processed. Blinked again.

"That’s... good to know?"

"I’m serious." She propped herself up on one elbow, her dark hair spilling across the pillow in a way that made it difficult to focus on whatever parenting timeline she was establishing. "Two years minimum. Probably three if I’m being realistic about agency placement and establishing a patrol territory. Four if the rankings take longer than I’m projecting."

"Sloane, we’ve been together for less than a month."

"And?" Her golden eyes held mine with the absolute certainty that characterized everything she did. "You think I’m the kind of person who doesn’t plan ahead? I’ve had my five-year career trajectory mapped since I was fourteen. Adding relationship milestones to the spreadsheet was just logical extension."

"You have a spreadsheet."

"Color-coded by priority tier." She settled back against my chest, apparently satisfied that she’d communicated the relevant information. "You’re in the red section. That means non-negotiable."

She kissed me. Differently than the kisses driven by competition or possession or raw physical need. This one landed like a promise she’d already decided to keep.

Sunday I spent recovering. Percy delivered a revised version of his insurance report with four additional pages addressing a regulatory gap he’d identified at three in the morning. Felicity texted me seventeen times about a second-year student’s costume redesign that she found offensive on a personal level. Rina sent me a message confirming our rescheduled Aspect testing session for Tuesday evening. Caden sent me a meme about a cat wearing a tiny hero costume that had nothing to do with anything and everything to do with why Caden was the person most people underestimated in our cohort.

Hiro and I fought at Field Zeta. He won. Clean knockout from a counter-right that I walked into because I was still thinking about Sloane’s voice when she said my parents.

I hit the grass. Stayed down for approximately four seconds.

Got back up.

"Again," I said.

Hiro obliged.

Monday morning arrived with the specific violence that six AM conditioning sessions demanded from people who’d spent their weekends pretending they’d escaped the institutional grind. Steele ran us through partner carries, box jumps, and a plank circuit that made my core muscles compose a formal letter of resignation from my body. Camille finished every station first. I finished every station second or third. Rina finished every station, period, which continued to be the fact about her that mattered most.

Breakfast was tonkotsu ramen because the cafeteria gods loved me. Percy sat to my left documenting the morning’s data. Caden sat across from me eating cold pizza from a source he wouldn’t identify. Felicity claimed the seat on my right with casual territorial energy, her blonde ponytail catching morning sun through the windows while she complained about the protein options and suggested the cafeteria add an acai bowl station. Marco argued that acai bowls were a conspiracy to make people pay fourteen dollars for frozen fruit with granola on top. Rina sat beside Percy with her sheep mug, occasionally contributing observations about tea sourcing that Percy received with the focused attention of someone discovering a new dataset.

The walk to Building C felt different. Heavier. The hallway conversations carried less volume and more tension than usual, and by the time I slid into my third-row seat in Room 214, the room held the charged quiet of twenty people who sensed something coming but couldn’t identify what.

Percy settled beside me. His pen didn’t move. That was the tell. When Percy’s pen stopped, it meant his brain was processing something significant enough to override his documentation reflex.

Caden dropped into the seat behind me. No feet on the back of my chair. Another tell. The class clown was reading the room the same way I was.

Felicity took her seat to my right. She leaned toward me, close enough that I caught the vanilla note in whatever product she’d used that morning.

"Everyone’s tense."

"I noticed."