Day 2 Afternoon

The central area the contestants had been given was far too luxurious to feel cramped, all soft furniture, polished surfaces, warm lamps, and the kind of careful design designed to make captivity comfortable.

The girls were scattered through it in the loose collapse of people meeting after a busy day. Their voices rose and fell in fragments, never quite becoming chaos, but not settling into order either.

Evelyn was seated upright near one end of the couch, one ankle crossed over the other, a glass of water untouched near her hand.

“So we know a little more than we did this morning,” she said, calm enough to sound almost dry. “Not enough to be comfortable, but enough to stop guessing blindly.”

Claire sat forward in her seat, elbows on her knees, hands loosely clasped. Her face was composed, but there was a brightness under the control that hadn’t been there before, a little too much alertness in her eyes. She looked like someone holding herself very still so nothing inside her would spill.

“At least classes weren’tt...” She searched for the right word and let out the smallest breath. “Arbitrary.”

Cassie snorted. “That is a generous way to describe it.”

“It wasn’t arbitrary,” Claire said, glancing her way. “It was invasive and humiliating and probably designed by lunatics, but it wasn’t random. Alpha sounds like she knew exactly what she was doing.”

That produced a brief, **** silence. Then, unexpectedly, Lizzy spoke.

She had been perched near the end of the couch with both hands around a mug she had not drunk from. When everyone looked over, she almost shrank from it. Almost.

“I think,” she said, then stopped and tried again. “I think it’s better now that I know.”

No one interrupted, her voice stayed soft, but not weak. “I wasn’t really afraid of the training itself. Not exactly. I just...” She looked down at the mug in her hands. “I didn’t know how far it would go.”

Lizzy lifted one shoulder in a small, embarrassed motion. “Now I know. So...” A faint, self-conscious flush touched her face. “I think I’d do better next time.”

Lizzy hurried on before she could lose her nerve. “I still don’t like her,” she added, with the quiet urgency of someone clarifying something important. “Alpha, I mean. She’s awful. But...” Another tiny shrug. “She is good at it.”

Claire smiled, small and real. “That’s probably the most reassuring thing anybody’s said all evening.”

A few of the others laughed, and this time the laughter wasn’t brittle. Lizzy looked startled by her own success, then ducked her head as though she might hide inside the mug if given the chance.

Evelyn’s mouth softened by a fraction. “It is useful,” she said. “Thank you.”

Lizzy nodded once, still red-faced. The conversation moved on after that, but differently. The edge remained. They still spoke of the hotel with caution. But Lizzy had shifted something in the room by admitting she felt stronger after surviving the unknown once.

Not safe, stronger. The system was monstrous, yes, but not incomprehensible. There was work to do, and they would do it. It was transparent enough to anyone paying attention that it cost something to keep doing it.

Nobody announced it. Nobody looked at the clock and said the words. But one moment they were discussing the day, and the next the silence after Claire’s last comment lasted just a little too long, and everybody knew why.

Claire felt it before anyone said anything. Her shoulders drew in very slightly, then set again. “I know,” she said, with a little more lightness than the room deserved. “You can all stop looking at me like I’m being marched to the scaffold.”

Cassie made a face. “That was one time.”

“It was at least three times,” Fiona said.

“Five,” Mara murmured from the other couch.

There was a ripple of tired amusement.

Claire rolled her eyes with enough grace to make it clear she welcomed the joke. “I’m serious. I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine,” Fiona said bluntly. “You’re just coping in a way that makes people want to salute.”

Claire laughed despite herself, then rubbed at the back of her neck. “I’m nervous.” There was relief in the room at hearing her say it plainly. But she did not stop there. “That’s not the same thing.”

Evelyn watched her over steepled fingers and said nothing.

Claire looked around at all of them, and for the first time that evening something openly protective crossed her expression. “Somebody had to go first,” she said. “I’m glad it’s me.” She glanced toward Lizzy, then Cassie, then the others. “At least then the rest of you know the world doesn’t end afterward.”

It was half a joke, not really enough of one. Mara’s eyes lowered for a moment. Fiona looked away first, jaw working once. Even Cassie had no immediate answer.

Evelyn understood then, with a clarity sharp enough to feel like guilt, exactly how Claire was carrying it. Not just as an assignment. Not even only as a burden. As an example. As something to survive on everyone else’s behalf.

Because just as the thought rose, she saw Mara watching Claire with quiet, unmistakable attention, already leaning in to soften the event for her. Mara was better suited to this. Better positioned to ease her fears. Better able to meet Claire in the domestic, human shape of what the night was becoming.

She was not yet ready to open herself for the others the way they would need one day. That fact sat inside her like a stone. But she could at least recognize when someone else was.

The conversation dissolved not long after. One by one the others stood, stretched, made excuses about showers or changing or wanting a few minutes alone before dinner. Fiona left first, still bristling in a way that suggested she needed solitude not to bite somebody. Cassie lingered just long enough to tell Claire not to let the place bully her into acting “weirdly normal,” then vanished before Claire could answer. Lizzy offered Claire a shy, earnest good luck that made Claire’s face soften at once. Even Evelyn, before she departed, only paused long enough to meet Claire’s eyes and give a single nod.

Claire let out a breath as the room emptied, the performance of composure slipping just enough around the edges to show how much effort it had cost her.

Mara waited until the silence settled.

Then, gently, “You look like you’re about to either faint or jump out of an airplane.”

Claire glanced over and made a helpless sound that might have been a laugh in **** circumstances. “Those can look very similar on me.”

“I’m beginning to notice.”

Mara rose from the couch and crossed to her. There was nothing abrupt in the movement; she simply came to stand beside her chair and rested a hand lightly against the back of it.

“You don’t have to perform for me,” Mara said.

Claire stared ahead for a second longer, then tipped her head back against the chair and closed her eyes. “That’s unfortunate,” she said. “I had a whole second act planned.”

Mara smiled.

Up close, she could see it more clearly. The tightness around Claire’s mouth. The controlled lift of her chest each time she breathed. Even the strange, restless quality of her hair, as if static or power or nerves kept trying to coax it loose around her face.

Claire opened her eyes again and sat up straight. “I’m all right.”

“I know,” Mara said. “That doesn’t mean you couldn’t use some help.”

Something in Claire’s expression flickered at that.

Mara saved her from having to answer at once by saying, very matter-of-factly, “Come on. Show me what you’re thinking of wearing.”

Claire huffed a breath through her nose and stood. “I have no idea. Mara, I’ve only ever been on like two dates, three if a training mission counts.”

“Oh, I think I get it. Come on, this counts as girl time.”

They went to Claire’s room together. Claire’s space was neat and orderly. Each room was identical, but even after a single night the occupants had stamped themselves onto their space.

Claire crossed to the bed, where she had evidently already laid out several possibilities and then lost faith in all of them.

“This one’s too much,” she said, picking up a soft blouse and dropping it again almost immediately. “This one looks like I’m trying too hard to pretend I’m not trying. This one is just...” She held up a pale top, frowned at it, and shook her head. “I don’t even know. Defeat, somehow.”

Mara took that one from her hand and held it up against her with a critical squint. “No. Not defeat.”

Claire arched her brow. “No?”

“Uncertain optimism.”

That got a real laugh out of her, brief and startled.

Mara hung the top over the back of a chair and went to inspect the rest. “What do you want to feel like?”

Claire’s mouth opened, then closed. “Normal,” she said after a moment.

Mara looked at her.

Claire gave a small, embarrassed shrug. “I know that’s not possible.”

“It doesn’t have to be possible,” Mara said.

Claire sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed her palms against her knees. “I don’t want to dress up for them.”

“For them,” Mara repeated quietly.

“For this.” Claire gestured vaguely, taking in the whole invisible architecture of the hotel, the assignment, the rules, the watching pressure of it all. “I don’t want to make this easier for the place than it already is. I don’t want to...” She searched for the shape of it. “Play along more than I have to.”

Mara nodded once. “All right.”

“But I also don’t want to look careless,” Claire said quickly. “Or make Van feel like I didn’t take it seriously. He didn’t ask for any of this either.”

There it was again. Claire turning the whole thing outward, away from herself, toward what she owed someone else.

“You’re worried about making him comfortable,” Mara said.

Claire looked up, faintly defensive. “Shouldn’t I be?”

“Yes,” Mara said. “A little.”

Claire frowned, hearing the unspoken notes trailing from Mara.

Mara came and sat beside her on the bed, not touching her yet. “But not so much that you disappear.”

For a second Claire just stared at her. Then she looked down at her own hands. “I’m not disappearing.”

Claire’s shoulders lowered a fraction, only a fraction, but enough to tell the truth. “I want them to see me come back,” she said, so quietly Mara almost missed it. “The others.”

Mara waited.

Claire swallowed. “I know how that sounds. It sounds arrogant or childish, something bad.”

“It sounds kind,” Mara said. “You want to help us, and your brand of help is to absorb gun fire.”

“It sounds stupid when you say it like that.”

“It does not, it sounds like you have trained to take on difficult jobs and have prepared to stand between victims and villains your whole life.”

Claire gave a small, humorless smile. “Somebody had to go first.”

“Yes.”

“And if I do this and the world doesn’t end and nobody dies and it’s just...” She made a helpless motion. “Awkward, or strange, or even awful, but survivable—then that helps.”

Mara turned toward her fully then, one hand coming up at last to smooth a loose strand of bright hair back from Claire’s temple. “You are allowed to survive it for yourself too.”

Claire’s face tightened, and for an instant Mara thought she might cry. She did not. She inhaled once, steadied, and leaned very slightly into the touch before catching herself.

Mara rose before the moment could become something Claire felt obliged to apologize for. “Stand up.”

Claire obeyed with mock suspicion. “That sounded alarming.”

“I’m choosing your shirt.”

“That feels like overreach.”

“It’s absolutely an overreach.” Mara agreed, “Stand still anyway.”

Mara sorted through the options with a seriousness that made Claire smile again despite herself. At last she chose a soft, casual top in a color gentle enough to flatter Claire without announcing itself, and paired it with something equally easy and clean below. Nothing dressy or calculated. Just the polished version of ordinary.

Claire changed while Mara busied herself gathering a brush, a tie, and a few other small things from the vanity.

When Claire emerged, Mara looked up and immediately nodded. “There you are.”

Claire glanced down at herself. “You say that like I was missing.”

“A little bit, you planned this date like Starling, but Claire is the one going.”

Her hair was worse now, restless from being changed, the bright strands lifting and drifting around her shoulders as though they too could not settle. Claire made an exasperated sound and reached for it, but Mara caught her wrists lightly.

“Sit, I’ll try to tame this thing a bit.”

Claire obeyed again, this time without protest.

Mara stood behind her and gathered the hair carefully in both hands. It was soft, fine, and almost warm with stored energy. She drew part of it back and tied it there, leaving the rest loose, enough structure to clear Claire’s face while still letting her look like herself. Then she adjusted it once, twice, until the effect was effortless enough to seem unplanned.

As Mara gathered the unruly hair, it waved and snapped momentarily before settling. Claire's face was red with concentration as the sensation of Mara's hands combing across her scalp caused heat to bloom unexpectedly through the younger girls chest.

Mara noticed her increased tension, but chose to not mention it, she didn't want Claire feeling more self conscious before leaving for her date.

Claire had kept her eyes down at first, she didn't want to see Mara's face while she tried to understand why she was feeling like this.

As Mara released her hair and stepped back Claire watched her in the mirror. “You’re very good at this,” she said.

Mara was happy to change her focus from Claire sudden discomfort. Her expression changed in a way Claire only half understood. Something wistful passed through it and was gone. “I know.” The answer was soft, almost amused, and sadder than it should have been.

Claire looked at her for a moment longer, then turned in the chair. “Thank you.”

Mara rested a hand against her shoulder. “You don’t have to be brave every second of the evening.”

“I know.”

“You’re lying.”

Claire smiled, tired and genuine. “Only a little.”

Mara squeezed once and stepped back. “Then at least be brave in a comfortable shirt.” That made Claire laugh again, and this time the sound lingered.

By the time Claire stood and reached for her shoes, she still looked nervous. She still looked too aware of the strangeness waiting downstairs. But she no longer looked like a girl trying to carry the entire suite on her back. She looked young, pretty, and composed in a way that belonged to her rather than to the hotel.

When she moved toward the door, Mara walked with her. At the threshold Claire hesitated, one hand on the frame.

“Hey,” Mara said.

Claire looked over.

Mara smiled, warm and unforced. “It’s still a date, no matter what Verena calls it.”

Claire stared at her for half a beat, then laughed under her breath and shook her head. “That is the least comforting thing anybody has said to me.”

“Claire!” Mara scolded. “He’s just a boy. And it’s just dinner.”

“No,” Claire said. “I know. But, consider this; it’s dinner with a cute boy.”

Mara laughed and agreed, “You’re right, Claire. You’re doomed.”

Van stood in front of the closet with one hand braced against the open door and stared at his options like they had offended him personally. He had not owned this many decent clothes in his life. The hotel had simply provided them, folded and hung as though they had always belonged to him.

He pulled out one shirt, frowned at it, put it back, then took out another that looked less like he was trying to impress someone and more like he had developed a mania for excess buttons. That one he threw away.

He dressed slowly, not because he was vain about it, but because every step seemed to imply a decision he did not feel qualified to make. Not too formal. Not sloppy. Nothing that suggested he had mistaken the evening for a reward. Nothing that suggested he thought Claire should be grateful for the assignment. Nothing that suggested anything, ideally, except that he had made a reasonable effort not to look like an unmade bed.

The result was simple. Dark pants. A clean button-down with the sleeves left alone rather than rolled. Shoes that were actually decent instead of the work boots he had worn most of his adult life. He looked, he thought, like a man trying to attend a dinner where the wrong answer to any social mistake might be spiritual humiliation.

He checked the time. Then checked it again a minute later as though it might have changed its mind. He had spent the day either dreading the evening or trying not to think about it. The hour had arrived, now that there was an actual girl getting ready somewhere in the same building to go on what the system called a bond assignment with him.

He crossed the room, picked up the suite phone, then put it back down. The phone felt too ordinary for the purpose. He stood there a second, jaw tight, then went to the terminal instead.

Verena had made it plain enough during orientation that the hotel could be contacted through any number of means if it wished to be. He found her name in the interface with disturbing ease. Headmistress Sable. Contact Administrative Host.

Van stared at it, then selected it before he could talk himself out of it.

There was no ringing tone. No hold music. The screen merely dimmed, and a line of elegant text appeared.

Request acknowledged.

A second line followed almost at once.

Headmistress Sable will attend you shortly.

Van let out a breath through his nose. He did not have to wait long.

There was no theatrical entrance. No burst of light. No ominous ripple in the walls. A soft tone sounded at the suite door, polite as a hotel concierge. When Van opened it, Verena stood beyond the threshold.

She was dressed more simply than she had been earlier, though “simple” meant something peculiar on her. Dark fabric, fitted and severe, the lines clean enough to look almost modest until the overall effect resolved into something far sharper. Stockings, of course. High heels that made no sound on the floor when she stepped inside. Her hair was immaculate. Her expression was unreadable without being blank.

She glanced at him once, taking in the clothes, the posture, the room, the mood of him, and gave no sign whether anything she saw amused her.

“Master Van,” she said. “You requested my attendance, I do hope it wasn’t for fashion advice.”

He shut the door behind her. “I need some answers, please. Plain ones.”

Verena’s mouth curved very slightly. “You requested my presence. The rest is always a matter of negotiation.”

Van had no interest in playing that game. “How much choice do Claire and I actually have tonight?”

She moved farther into the suite, not with the casual entitlement of someone barging through another person’s space, but with the absolute ease of someone who had never in her existence doubted a room would permit her entry. She stopped near the sitting area and turned to face him.

“A direct question,” she said. “How refreshing.”

“I’m not in the mood, Verena.”

“No,” she said. “You are wound very tight just now.”

Van bit back the first reply that came to mind. “Then answer my question.”

For a moment the only sound in the room was the faint hum of conditioned air.

“At the level that most concerns you,” Verena said at last, “the answer is simple. Neither of you is required to perform intimacy you do not wish to perform.”

Some of the tension went out of his shoulders before he could stop it.

“And at the level that should concern you more,” she continued, “that answer is insufficient.”

Van’s jaw tightened again. “There it is.”

She folded her hands before her, elegant as a lecturer about to begin a lesson she had given too many times to count. “You and Claire are not strangers passing one another in a railway station. Nor are you temporary companions with the luxury of polite emotional distance. You are bound now. All of you. Your fates have been braided together with considerable **** and some expense, and while you may resent that reality, resentment will not dissolve it.”

“That sounds a lot like a prettier way to say we don’t have a choice.”

“You have many choices,” Verena said. “You simply do not possess every choice you would prefer.”

Van laughed once, without humor. “That’s just banter disguised as an answer.”

“It is an answer, Master Van. And a thorough one.” Her tone was light, but sharp. “It’s just not the one you wanted.”

He turned away from her then, pacing two steps before stopping near the window. Beyond the glass, the grounds of the hotel lay under golden afternoon light too perfect to trust. He could see paths, terraces, distant trees moving in a wind he could not feel. Somewhere out there Claire was getting ready, probably as tense as he was, and he hated that he could not tell whether this conversation was helping or only making him better dressed for the same trap.

“I don’t want to corner her,” he said, still looking out the window. “I don’t want her walking in there wondering what I’m going to expect from her because this place decided to call me Master and put a schedule on us.”

When Verena answered, her voice had cooled, not cruelly, but with a firmer edge.

“Then do not corner her. This is your bonding assignment just as much as it is hers.”

He turned back. “That’s not an answer.”

“You are still behaving as though the primary danger tonight is that one of you will accidentally become a monster to the other. That fear is understandable. It is also, at this point, self-indulgent.”

Van stared at her.

Something old and hard flickered behind her poise, some remnant of exhaustion vast enough to make the room feel briefly smaller. “If we had wished to place monsters in your path,” she said, “do you imagine we lacked the power?”

The question hung there like a cold metal hook.

Verena took one measured step toward him. “If the producers and I desired barely human mockeries—obedient dolls, broken pets, snarling beasts, ornamental things built to please or terrify—we could furnish this facility with them by nightfall. We have not done so. Instead, you have been given frightened, powerful, difficult, very real young women who are as trapped by this arrangement as you are.”

Her gaze did not leave his face.

“So stop tiptoeing around the contestants as though each of them is either a predator waiting to spring or a victim so fragile she might shatter at ordinary contact. They are neither. They are your teammates. Claire most certainly included.”

There was something horrible about being reassured by Verena. And yet the shape of what she said cut through his spiraling in a way little else had managed. Claire was not being marched to him as prey. He was not being marched to her as a hunter. They were both being pushed into the same room and told to start figuring out how not to die together.

It did not make the evening good. It made it possible. “She can say no,” he said.

“Yes she can, although at this stage, I would be very surprised indeed if you tried anything she would say no to at this point. You haven’t scored very highly on the sexual aggression indexes.”

“What?” he spluttered then paused. After a breath, he continued, “And if we both spend the evening talking about the weather and never touch each other?”

Verena tilted her head. “Then you will have spent an evening together talking about the weather.”

“That simple?”

“No,” she said. “But not because an alarm will sound if you fail to kiss her by midnight.”

That pulled his attention fully back to her. “Kiss by midnight?”

A pause.

Then, to his surprise, Verena’s expression shifted by the smallest fraction toward something like restrained amusement.

“You believed there was an itinerary.”

Van stared at her. “You mean there isn’t?”

“Of course there isn’t.”

“I assumed—” He stopped, because saying it aloud made it sound more ridiculous. “I assumed the hotel would schedule the whole thing. Venue. Timing. Some kind of... progression.”

Verena’s brows lifted. “Progression.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I do,” she said. “I am merely enjoying your choice of words.”

Van scrubbed a hand down his face. “I thought maybe there’d be one of your little printed cards somewhere. ‘Pleasant conversation to commence at nineteen hundred. Mutual vulnerability by dessert.’”

He had not meant it to be funny. Not exactly. But Verena’s mouth twitched once at the corner, and the absurdity of his own assumption hit him half a second later.

“No,” she said, smooth again. “Your evening has not been planned down to the minute. I arranged the appointment. Nothing more.”

He lowered his hand. “You’re serious.”

“Entirely.”

“So where are we even supposed to go?”

Verena looked toward the terminal. “There is a directory of available venues and amenities accessible from the contestant lounge terminal and from your room interface. The two of you may choose as you like.”

“Available venues,” Van repeated. “There are venues.”

“There are several.”

“We toured this place.”

“You were shown what was relevant at the time.”

That was not an answer and was, somehow, exactly her kind of answer.

Van let out a slow breath. “So that’s it. We show up, pick somewhere, and... improvise.”

“That is a perfectly good word for it, though I believe in your world it is called dating.”

“I don’t think you understand how little experience I have with this sort of thing.”

Verena regarded him steadily. “On the contrary. I understand exactly how little experience you have with this sort of thing. Both of you. We have cabinets filled with the relevant data.

That shut him up. For the first time since she entered, the room went quiet in a way that did not feel combative.

Verena’s expression settled into something cooler, but less barbed. “Master Van,” she said, “you are not expected to become a different species of man by sunset. You are expected to begin understanding the contestants as people instead of victims. That is all that tonight is.”

He studied her, uncertain whether that was kindness, manipulation, or simply another kind of administration. Probably all three.

“When did you get good at sounding reasonable?” he asked.

“A very long time ago.”

Van looked past her toward the door. “All right.”

Verena inclined her head once, as though some small requirement had been met. She moved to leave, then paused with one hand near the back of a chair, not touching it.

“One further thing,” she said.

He waited.

“When Claire arrives, do not make the mistake of trying to protect her from the fact that this is strange.”

Van frowned. “What?”

Verena turned just enough to meet his eyes over her shoulder. “The girls will forgive uncertainty before they forgive condescension. She knows where she is. She knows what tonight is. Do not insult her by pretending otherwise in the name of gentleness.”

“Why are you talking to me like this?” Van asked before she could leave. “You almost seemed human for a minute there.”

“Why, Master Van? Because I’m off the clock of course.” Then she left him with that.

The door closed behind her with a hush so soft it barely seemed real. Van stood motionless in the center of the suite for several seconds.

—-------

The lounge was quiet when he arrived.

It sat between the contestants’ rooms and the broader public spaces of the dormitory wing, a comfortably furnished room anchored by the terminal kiosk Verena had mentioned. Evening had deepened enough that the windows were mostly dark glass now, reflecting the interior lamps in warm blurs. The place looked like a university common area curated by someone with impossible funds and questionable motives.

Van got there first. That gave him time to stand beside the terminal and immediately regret standing beside the terminal. It made him look as if he had arrived early for a dentist appointment he intended to take very seriously. He considered sitting. Then standing felt less awkward than sitting and springing up the second Claire appeared. He compromised by pretending to study the venue list with concentration intense enough to pass for purpose.

He heard her before he saw her, the soft approach of footsteps from the hall and then a brief pause at the threshold. When he looked up, Claire was there. For one useless second all he could think was that she looked normal.

Not ordinary. Claire would probably never manage ordinary if she lived to be a hundred. There was too much brightness in her, too much alert life in the way she carried herself, too much beauty made sharper by effort rather than softened by it. But she had chosen something simple. Soft lines, easy colors, nothing formal, nothing ornate. She looked like a girl trying to go out for an evening and insist by **** of will that the world making it possible was not insane.

And because the universe hated symmetry, he saw in the next instant that she was looking him over with exactly the same startled relief.

Clean shirt. Decent shoes. No tie. No attempt at polished grandeur. Just a man trying to look presentable without turning the situation into theater.

They had, apparently, both chosen sanity as their lone available luxury.

“Hi,” Claire said.

“Hi.”

A beat. Then, because both of them were apparently committed to making this as awkward as possible before improving, they spoke at the same time.

“You look—”

“I wasn’t sure if—”

They both stopped.

Claire laughed once, breathy with nerves. “Sorry.”

“No, that was my fault.”

“I think it was statistically both our faults.”

That earned the hint of a smile from him. “Fair.”

The silence that followed was not comfortable exactly, but it was less brittle than before.

“You look nice,” Van said, because there was no way to avoid saying something.

A faint flush touched her cheeks. “Thank you. You too.”

Claire came farther into the lounge, glancing toward the terminal as though grateful it existed. “So,” she said. “Do we have instructions? An assigned route?”

He stared at her for a second, then, despite himself, laughed. The sound surprised both of them.

“It’s funny you say that,” he said. “I asked Verena whether there was some kind of plan, and apparently I had convinced myself she’d scheduled the whole night down to the minute.”

Claire’s brows lifted. “You asked her?”

“I needed to know how much choice we actually had.”

Something in her face softened at that before she could hide it. “And?” she asked.

“And apparently no one is going to rappel through the ceiling if we don’t achieve appropriate emotional milestones on time.”

She gave him a real smile.

He went on, because now that he had started it, the absurdity deserved full confession. “I genuinely thought there might be a card somewhere. Hand holding to begin at nineteen hundred sharp. Meaningful eye contact at nineteen oh-five.”

Claire laughed. She laughed the way a person laughs when tension finally finds a seam and tears open. One hand came up to her mouth on instinct, and she shook her head, eyes bright with the shock of finding something funny tonight at all.

Van smiled before he could stop himself.

“There it is,” Claire said when she could breathe again. “That’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard.”

“It really is.”

“And yet completely plausible here.”

“That was my thought.”

She let out one last soft laugh and looked at the terminal. “Well. If I’m trapped in an inescapable prison realm with a despotic nightmare in heels and stockings, I want dessert before dinner.”

Van turned toward the screen. “That narrows it down considerably.”

“Oh, good,” Claire said, coming to stand beside him. “I was worried you’d insist on something dignified.”

“I don’t think I know how to insist on something dignified.”

“That’s all right,” she said. “Neither do I.”

On the console before them was a dizzying array of facilities and venues. The hotel, in its endless and infuriating thoroughness, offered options. Van stared at the list with mounting disbelief.

“Of course there’s a waterfront district,” he muttered. “Why wouldn’t there be a waterfront district?”

Together they scrolled through the list before Claire stabbed the screen with a finger. “Malt shop,” Claire read aloud, then looked over at him. “Tell me there’s no dress code.”

“I think if there were, Verena would have mentioned it with malicious joy.”

“That’s probably true.”

He selected it. The terminal brightened, and a small map unfolded across the screen with a highlighted route leading out of the dormitory wing, through a section of the main grounds Van was reasonably certain he had walked past earlier, and onward to a narrow lane by the water.

Claire leaned in. “That’s not possible.”

He glanced at her. “What part?”

“That street.” She lifted a hand and pointed. “I’ve flown over the grounds.”

He looked back at the map. “Maybe it’s indoors.”

“No.” Claire’s voice had gone thoughtful, unsettled. “No, that’s the shoreline.”

For a moment they just stood there, side by side before the glowing terminal, looking at a place that ought not to exist and which the hotel was presenting with cheerful administrative confidence.

Then Claire straightened and squared her shoulders with a little more resolve than the occasion probably merited.

“Well,” she said. “There’s only one way to be horrified by spatial manipulation.”

“Go look at it?”

“Exactly.”

Van nodded. “That does sound like us.”

They started walking.