Day 5 - Morning Class

The split happened in the corridor outside breakfast. No doors slammed. No Host appeared between them with a theatrical gesture. They simply finished not eating, rose from a table that had been generous in every way except mercy, and filed out beneath the weight of Verena’s instructions.

Alpha’s group went left. Celia Hart’s group went right.

Lizzy waited until Mara had taken two steps toward the right-hand corridor before she found the courage to reach for her sleeve. “Mara?”

If Mara had been impatient, Lizzy might have lost the nerve cleanly. If Mara had missed the touch entirely, Lizzy could have pretended she had not tried. Instead, Mara turned with soft attentive concern.

“Yes?”

Lizzy’s mouth went dry. Behind Mara, Cassie’s voice cut down the corridor.

“I’m saying maybe you don’t get to decide what counts as taking this seriously for everyone else.”

Fiona answered without raising her voice. Somehow that made it sharper. “And I am saying maybe jokes are easier than principles when you don’t have either one under control.”

Cassie barked a laugh. “Wow. You must practice making concern sound like contempt.”

Claire stepped between them physically, not enough to block either woman, but enough to remind both of them of where they were. Naomi stood a few paces back with her new Hotel phone in one gloved hand, watching the fight with a quietness that did not belong to the Naomi of yesterday.

Mara’s attention flicked toward Cassie and Fiona. Only for a second.

Lizzy felt the second leave. “I need to talk to you,” she said quickly.

Mara looked back. “Now?”

Lizzy’s fingers tightened on Mara’s sleeve. “I—” The words were there. She could feel them, a horrible little knot behind her tongue.

Your dreams are showing. I saw things. I’m sorry.

Another sharp sound came from the right-hand corridor. Not a shout. A laugh from Cassie that had too much anger in it to be humor.

Mara’s brows drew together.

Lizzy let go of her sleeve.

“Eliza,” she said gently, “is it about tonight?”

“No.” Lizzy’s answer came too fast. “I mean, not exactly. It’s about before tonight. Or after. I mean—”

Alpha appeared at the far end of the left corridor and waved with both hands.

“Training group!” she called. “This way, please!”

Van stopped beside Lizzy, not close enough to hurry her, but close enough that the pressure was mounting to get on with the day.

Mara touched Lizzy’s hand. It was only a brief squeeze. Warm. Steady. Exactly the kind of thing that made Lizzy want to blurt out the truth and then disappear through the floor.

“I want to hear it,” Mara said. “I do. But I need to make sure those two don’t turn the next class into a crime scene.”

“I’ll talk to you later,” Mara promised.

“Okay,” Lizzy said.

Mara looked as if she wanted to ask another question. Then Cassie said something about “weaponized scowling,” Fiona stepped toward her, and Claire made a small, heroic noise of exhausted disbelief.

Mara gave Lizzy one last worried look and turned away.

Lizzy watched her go.

Van waited half a beat before asking. “You all right?”

Lizzy stared down the corridor where Mara had disappeared. “I really hate how hard that question is to answer these days.”

Van nodded once, accepting the answer because it was not really an answer at all.

—-----------------------------------

Yesterday’s demonstration chamber had been smooth, sealed, and clean because the cruelty had not needed decoration. Today, the room had been converted into something almost ridiculous.

Padded walls with soft flooring were everywhere. None of it looked real. The “wiring” was painted on a flat panel. The “collapsed passage” was a stack of lightweight blocks arranged with theatrical obviousness. The “locked shutter” was a padded wall with a cartoonish padlock icon printed at eye level.

Alpha stood in the middle of the room wearing red athletic pants, a black compression top, and a whistle she clearly did not need. Her hair was pulled back in a high tail. She looked bright, rested, and cheerful enough to be a medical condition.

Two Van-droids stood behind her. Both wore simple gray training uniforms. Their faces were Van’s face, or close enough to make the difference upsetting. Same height. Same build. Same dark hair. Same general shape of tired decency stripped out and replaced with blank attentiveness.

“Okay,” Alpha said. “Before anything else, I owe you an apology.”

Alpha clasped her hands behind her back. “Yesterday’s exercise harmed you. That was not the intended outcome, but intentions aren’t consequences. So, I’m sorry.”

Van said nothing.

Alpha drew a breath. “I asked for you to be assigned here again immediately because I do not want yesterday to become the only thing you remember about this room,” she said. “Avoidance can feel like safety right up until it builds a shrine around the bad thing. You need a better experience here.”

Van’s eyes moved to the droids.

Alpha winced. “Yes. I hear it.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.” The cheer dropped from her voice, leaving something more direct beneath it. “You don’t like the duplicates. They’re completely under my control. I promise. Today is only about threat recognition under constrained conditions. They are calibrated to your current physical strength and speed. No enhanced output, no hidden weapons, no surprise escalation.”

Alpha continued. “For this exercise, consider your powers off limits. The premise is simple: sometimes you are injured. Sometimes your power is jammed. Sometimes using your power reveals your position. Survival cannot depend on your favorite tool being available.”

“The objective,” Alpha said, pointing across the room, “is to move from the entry marker to the extraction marker without being tagged by Master Van or either duplicate. Reaching extraction earns two Victory Points. If the timer runs out before you are tagged, even without reaching extraction, that earns one Victory Point. Tagged means no award.”

Lizzy raised a hand halfway.

Alpha brightened automatically. “Yes?”

“Can we ask why he has to be part of the chasing?”

Van looked at Alpha too.

Alpha didn’t answer right away. “Because this is Harem Hotel,” she said finally. “And being pursued by your Master is the right decision on all sides. On a practical note, as a future team member, he needs to learn your habits and physical limits, just as you must learn his.”

Van’s mouth tightened.

Alpha nodded once. “Good talk. Katherine first.”

Katherine sighed faintly, as if she had been asked to join someone for casual drinks. “How flattering.”

“It is,” Alpha said. “I really love the way you move when you get going.”

Katherine moved to the entry marker and rolled her shoulders once. The room dimmed by a fraction. A timer appeared overhead.

THREE MINUTES.

Alpha raised one hand. “Begin.”

Katherine disappeared into the fake disaster like a rumor in a crowded room.

Van had expected her to be good. But there was a difference between understanding competence and watching it unspool in front of you with insulting grace.

She didn’t sprint. She didn’t freeze to study the room. She moved as if the layout had been provided ahead of time.

The first Van-droid took the main corridor toward the printed FIRE EXIT BLOCKED sign. Katherine didn’t go that way. She slipped behind a foam wall labeled OVERTURNED SHELVING, waited exactly long enough for the droid to commit, and crossed its previous search path at an angle that **** it to turn twice before reacquiring her.

Van tried to cut her off near LOCKED ROLL-UP SHUTTER.

Katherine looked at him, smiled faintly, and stepped backward into a gap he had not noticed because the label on the front panel had made it seem like a dead end.

He stopped to turn, but she was already gone. The second droid adjusted. Katherine adjusted faster. She let the hunters see her when seeing her cost them time. She hid when hiding cost her nothing. She used the labels not as obstacles but as lies the room wanted her opponents to believe. Twice, Van reached a corner certain he had her contained. Twice, he found empty padded flooring and a small sense that Katherine had personally disappointed him.

The extraction marker chimed after one minute and forty-two seconds.

Katherine stood on it with one hand resting against a foam pillar labeled STRUCTURAL INSTABILITY.

The overhead display flashed.

KATHERINE WREN GAINED 2 VP

Completed Survival Course +2 VP

Katherine looked toward Alpha. “Adequate?”

Alpha beamed. “Extremely annoying. Which, for your purposes, is excellent.”

Van walked back toward the starting area, breathing harder than he wanted to admit.

Katherine passed him on her way out. “If it helps, you performed very well as environmental pressure.”

“It doesn’t.”

“I suspected not.”

Across the room, Lizzy stared at the extraction marker as if it had moved several miles farther away.

—-----------------------------------

Naomi had expected another comfortable room. Instead, Celia Hart led them through a wide service door and out beneath a morning sky streaked with pale clouds. Rows of wrecked cars stretched across cracked asphalt and gravel. Some were stacked two and three high behind tall reinforced fencing. Others sat alone, dented and rusted, waiting with their hoods up like old animals showing their throats.

A crane crouched in the distance. A compactor stood beyond it, silent and blocky, the sort of machine that made destruction look bureaucratic. The air smelled like metal, dust, sun-warmed rubber, and old oil.

Cassie stopped walking. “Okay. I’ll admit it. Not the group discussion room I was expecting.”

Celia Hart turned around in front of a blue sedan with no windshield. She wore jeans, sturdy boots, and a soft green cardigan over a white top. Her hair had been pinned back loosely enough to imply she knew exactly how disarming looseness could be. She held a travel mug in one hand and looked more like someone who had wandered into the wrong facility than the woman Verena had sent to handle the most volatile group of the morning.

“Good,” Celia said. “Expectations are obstacles.”

Fiona looked around the yard. “If this is a metaphor, I’m leaving.”

“No, you aren’t,” Cassie said.

Fiona’s head turned slowly.

Cassie looked away. “I mean because they won’t let you. Not because I’m invested.”

Claire made a small sound that might have become a laugh under better weather. Mara stood beside her, gaze moving over the wrecks with an expression Naomi could not quite place. Not discomfort. Not approval either. Recognition, maybe.

Celia took a sip from her mug. “Let’s begin with something simple. In relationships with multiple partners, one of the most common sources of conflict is not jealousy in the obvious sense.”

Cassie stared at her. “We are really doing this next to a dead minivan.”

“Yes,” Celia said. “It keeps everyone from pretending the conversation is delicate.”

Fiona folded her arms. “What is the less obvious sense?”

“Redundancy.”

Claire’s posture changed. She was listening despite herself now. Celia walked a few steps, and they followed because the alternative was standing still and admitting she had control of the pace.

“People like to feel necessary,” Celia said. “That is not unique to harems. It is not even unique to romance. Teams do it. Families do it. Traditional couples do it constantly, though they often disguise it with arguments about dishes, calendars, and whose way of packing a suitcase is objectively insane.”

Mara’s mouth curved faintly.

Celia noticed and continued. “If there are two natural caretakers, one may begin to feel unnecessary. If there are two protectors, one may feel challenged. If there are two people who see themselves as the honest one, one may decide the other is reckless or false. Role overlap is not failure. It is information.”

Cassie looked at a car door hanging by one hinge. “Is this the part where you assign us relationship homework?”

“No. Homework implies I expect you to do it privately and return with a neat answer.” Celia smiled. “I am not that optimistic.”

Fiona’s expression had become sharp in the way Naomi had learned to recognize as attention disguised as hostility.

Celia stopped beside a crushed yellow taxi. “The common bad solution is rigid division. I wash, you dry. You comfort, I protect. You make jokes, I handle the serious things. It is tidy. It is also brittle. People are not utensils in a drawer.”

Claire said, “So what is the good solution?”

“Learning the difference between role and expression,” Celia said. “Two people can both protect without protecting the same way. Two people can both comfort without making one another irrelevant. The work is not deciding who gets the role. The work is respecting what the other person’s version of that role is trying to accomplish.”

Cassie’s jaw shifted. Fiona looked at the taxi. Celia did not look at either of them too directly. That was probably deliberate.

A pale-gold panel unfolded in the air above the hood of the taxi.

KATHERINE WREN GAINED 2 VP

Completed Survival Course +2 VP

The letters glowed against rust and faded paint.

Claire smiled before she could stop herself. “Good for her.” Naomi looked at the notification and imagined Katherine receiving it with the emotional intensity of someone being told the weather had behaved reasonably.

Cassie snorted. “Of course spy mom beat the escape room.”

Fiona’s mouth twitched, but the smile never emerged. The almost-moment collapsed under its own awareness.

The notification vanished.

—-----------------------------------

Lizzy stood on the entry marker and tried very hard not to look like someone considering a tactical faint.

The course had reset itself since Katherine’s run. Panels had shifted. New labels glowed on different walls. The extraction marker now sat deep beyond a fake loading bay and a corridor of foam pillars pretending to be a collapsed parking structure.

It might as well have been in another country.

“You don’t have to be Katherine,” Evelyn said.

Lizzy startled. Evelyn had come to stand just behind her left shoulder.

“I wasn’t planning to be,” Lizzy said. “Mostly because I don’t know how to make sprinting through a war zone look like ballet.”

Katherine, from the observation line, said, “Footwork helps, all the rest is momentum.”

“Not helping,” Lizzy called.

Van came to stand at the hunter marker with the two droids. Lizzy looked from one Van to the next and hated the Hotel in three identical directions.

The real Van raised one hand slightly. Not a wave. Not a promise. Just a signal that he was there.

She could tell which one was him now. She hoped she could keep doing that once she was afraid.

Alpha stepped closer. “Your objective is not to impress anyone.”

“That’s good,” Lizzy said. “I was worried I’d accidentally become impressive.”

“Your objective is to survive the conditions presented,” Alpha continued. “Exit if you can. Timeout if you can’t. Getting hunted does not mean running in a straight line until someone faster catches you.”

Lizzy breathed in. Coaches had said that before, or something like it. Do not run where the threat wants you to run. Do not hide where fear tells you to hide.

Lizzy looked at the course again. She didn’t see Katherine’s map. She saw routes, yes, but also too many places where a Van could appear. Too many corners. Too many hands reaching. Too many chances to forget which version was real.

She would not reach the extraction marker. The thought came with unexpected calm. The hunters would expect her to try anyway.

Alpha raised her hand. “Begin.”

Lizzy ran for the first corridor because everyone expected fear to choose the obvious route. It worked for six seconds. One droid followed. The other moved to cut off the crossing ahead. Van stayed back half a beat longer, watching the angles rather than chasing immediately.

Lizzy reached the panel marked FLOODED LOADING BAY and stopped before the droid behind her expected her to stop. She dropped low, slid behind a foam barrier, and let the droid’s footsteps carry past before she moved again.

Not toward extraction, but away from it. The first time she doubled back, her whole body protested. The exit was the win. The exit was the point. The glowing marker waited somewhere ahead like a promise the Hotel had built specifically so she could fail reaching it.

But the droids were focused forward. Van was focused on where a frightened person would go. Lizzy went where they had already looked.

She used cleared spaces like temporary shelters. She crossed open lanes immediately after a hunter turned away. She let sound do some of the work, scraping one shoe against the floor near a false corridor, then slipping back behind a panel marked JAMMED SERVICE DOOR while a droid investigated the wrong side.

She couldn’t phase, but she could vanish.

Thirty seconds.

Van nearly caught her near the “burning stairwell.” His hand reached for her shoulder and missed by less than an inch when she ducked under a padded support beam. Lizzy made a sound she would deny later if anyone mentioned it.

Twenty seconds.

Lizzy was nowhere near extraction.

That should have meant failure. Instead, she found the space beneath an angled panel labeled COLLAPSED PASSAGE and folded herself behind it, not into the smallest possible shape, but into the shape least likely to be visible from the search path. One of her coaches had once spent twenty minutes explaining the difference between hiding from a person and hiding from a camera. Lizzy had thought it was excessive at the time.

She mentally apologized to him. A droid passed.

Ten seconds.

Van’s voice came from somewhere ahead. “She must’ve doubled back.”

Lizzy moved. Not away. Around. She broke from cover at an angle, letting the droid see her. It stepped into the narrow lane between two panels.

Five seconds.

Lizzy ran straight at it. The droid lifted its hand. She faked left. The droid adjusted.

She went right, shoulder twisting, breath trapped in her throat as she squeezed between the droid and the padded wall so closely that its sleeve brushed hers without the palm making contact.

One second.

A hand reached for her back.

The timer hit zero.

The room chimed.

Lizzy stumbled three steps and almost fell over the extraction line she had never reached. The overhead display flashed.

LIZZY QUINN GAINED 1 VP

Survived Until Timeout +1 VP

Lizzy stared at the words.

Then she sat down on the padded floor.

Alpha clapped once. “Excellent.”

Lizzy looked up at her. “I don’t feel excellent.”

“That is because you are bad at self-assessment.”

Van walked toward her, stopping at a careful distance. “You okay?”

Lizzy nodded, then shook her head, then nodded again. “I think I just won by being too scared to go where I was supposed to.”

Katherine’s smile was small but real. “It was excellent work, Lizzy.”

Lizzy hugged her knees for one second longer than necessary. Then she stood with shaking legs.

—-----------------------------------

The second notification appeared while Celia was explaining that being right did not entitle anyone to be cruel about it.

LIZZY QUINN GAINED 1 VP

Survived Until Timeout +1 VP

Mara stopped walking. The panel floated above the roof of a green compact car with its doors removed.

For a moment, her face changed completely. Worry broke open into relief. Relief opened into pride. Then both vanished behind the warmer, steadier expression she usually gave other people when she did not want her own feelings to take up space.

Cassie tilted her head. “Timeout means she hid?”

Celia looked at the notification. “It means she survived long enough for the scenario to end.”

Fiona looked at the empty space after the notification dissolved. “Surviving isn’t nothing.”

Celia resumed walking. “Defensiveness,” she said, “is often treated as proof that someone does not care. I find the opposite is usually true.”

Cassie groaned. “Oh, here we go.”

Celia smiled. “Yes. Here we go.”

Fiona’s eyes cut toward Cassie. “Let her talk.”

Cassie’s eyebrows rose. “Oh, now we like the lesson?”

Fiona’s shoulders tightened. “I didn’t say that.”

“No, you just used your serious voice, which means the rest of us peasants should take notes.”

Claire stepped in before Fiona could answer. “Maybe we could let her finish without the comments.”

Celia took no apparent offense at being treated hypothetically. “When someone’s opinion doesn’t matter to you, you don’t usually build armor against it. You ignore it. Defensiveness means impact. Impact often means value. Not always affection. Not always trust. But value.”

Cassie kicked a pebble. It skittered beneath the green car. Fiona stared straight ahead. Neither of them spoke.

—-----------------------------------

Evelyn looked upwards at the ladder. It wasn’t even a proper ladder. It was a series or recessed cut-outs with printed metal rungs, set against a platform labeled SECOND-STORY FIRE ESCAPE. The platform itself rose barely eight feet from the floor. Enough to make falling inconvenient, not enough to justify the flicker of irritation under her ribs.

The room had changed again. Alpha hadn’t made it darker. That would have been too obvious. Instead, the light had become flatter, shadows arranged in unhelpful places, labels positioned where the eye wanted to read instead of scan.

Evelyn stood at the entry marker and kept her face still.

Alpha watched her with unusual seriousness. “Ready?”

“No.”

Alpha blinked.

Evelyn adjusted one cuff that did not need adjustment. “Begin anyway.”

Alpha’s smile returned slowly. “Begin.”

Evelyn moved cleanly into the course. Her first minute went smoothly. She didn’t run when walking quickly would preserve breath. She didn’t hide when relocation created better distance. She treated the labels as constraints and suggestions both, sorting each false obstacle into categories: cover, channel, bait, trap.

Van held back more than the droids. His presence was more distracting than she wanted it to be.

The droids pursued like competent men without curiosity. They reacted to visible motion, adjusted to routes, cut off obvious retreats. Van watched shoulders. He watched for hesitation. He watched the moment before her motion committed. He was not as physically precise as the droids, but he was less predictable.

That, Evelyn thought, was a deeply inconvenient trait.

She slipped past the first droid near a panel marked SMOKE-FILLED HALLWAY. It reached for her arm. Its fingers missed. Her body reacted anyway.

Not visibly. Not enough for Alpha’s sensors to score. But inside, the near contact struck a memory she had not authorized.

Van’s hand. Earlier. The strange, unwelcome immediacy of touch when the Hotel’s systems had already made intimacy tactical and her own transformation had begun rewriting the old distances. The way her body had registered him before she finished deciding what to think.

Evelyn kept moving. The second near miss came from Van himself. She turned a corner too sharply and found him closer than expected, one hand already lifting to tag her shoulder. His eyes widened slightly when he saw how close they were.

She stepped past him, pivoted behind a foam support, and kept going. But his fingers brushed the fabric at her upper sleeve. Not enough to count. Enough for her. Heat moved beneath her skin with infuriating specificity.

Her pulse accelerated. Adrenaline, she told herself. Accurately. Incompletely.

She had gone years without meaningful physical pursuit from anything that could touch her. Threats were usually mental, strategic, psychic, professional. When bodies became relevant, they were enemies to disable or allies to direct. Her own body had been a reliable instrument. It obeyed, aged, endured, desired when permitted, ignored when instructed.

The Ice Queen transformation had changed that by ****. It had made certain ignored things more difficult to ignore.

A droid appeared ahead. Evelyn changed course.

The climb took three seconds too long. Her hands found the padded rungs. Her shoes pressed into the incline. She reached the platform and saw the route beyond: a narrow walkway, a drop to the left, a foam barrier labeled COLLAPSED ACCESS STAIRS to the right. A passage ahead that would take her toward extraction if she crossed quickly.

Then the droid rose from behind the far barrier. It had Van’s face. Blank. Silent. Too close. Evelyn’s body moved before her mind did.

She stepped back and her heel found nothing. The fall lasted less than a second. Long enough for the room to open beneath her.

Long enough for the part of her that knew the floor was padded to be outvoted by the part of her body that believed in gravity.

A hand caught her shoulder. An arm caught beneath her knees. The impact didn’t come. Van caught her.

He had moved from below the platform, faster than she had expected, faster perhaps than he had expected. One arm supported her back. The other braced under her legs. Her own hands had caught at his shoulders on instinct, fingers clenched in the fabric of his shirt.

The room went very quiet. Evelyn’s first thought was that the pose was absurd.

Her second thought was that absurdity had not prevented her body from understanding it with humiliating fluency.

The classic shape of it. The rescue. The fall was interrupted by arms instead of the floor. The youth of the image pressed against the adult woman inside it, against the years of command and composure and emotional austerity she had worn until they became indistinguishable from skin.

A princess carry. The phrase surfaced from some half-buried place and made the situation worse. Van looked down at her.

His face held alarm first. Then embarrassment. Then the careful discipline of someone trying very hard not to make either of those things her problem.

“Are you hurt?” he asked.

Evelyn’s lungs remembered their assignment. “No.”

Her voice was level. Good. His arms remained around her. Not good. No, that wasn’t accurate either.

That was the problem.

Her body did not treat his hold as tactical support alone. The heat from his arm behind her back had become impossible to ignore. The steady pressure beneath her knees. The proximity of his chest. The scent of exertion and clean fabric and something simply human beneath the sterile training-room air.

She had mastered cooler responses under interrogation. She had walked through psychic battlefields with a steadier pulse.

A gentle chime sounded through the room and golden letters unfolded into the air.

EVELYN CROSS GAINED 4 VP

Princess Carried by the Master +2 VP
First Time Bonus x2

VP Threshold (5VP) Passed - Personal Wardrobe Unlocked

This was ridiculous. “Please put me down,” she said.

Van did so immediately.

Her feet touched the padded floor. His hands left her as soon as she was balanced. He stepped back.

Alpha’s voice came carefully from the observation line. “Caught.”

Katherine’s gaze rested on her with far too much comprehension.

Lizzy looked worried and impressed in equal measure.

Evelyn straightened her jacket. “Correct,” she said.

Alpha tilted her head. “Do you need a moment?”

Evelyn looked at the platform. Then at the droid waiting above it with Van’s face and no capacity to understand what it had interrupted.

“No,” she said. “But I will take one.”

Alpha nodded, accepting the distinction.

Evelyn walked to the side of the room with measured steps. Her pulse followed, still disobediently rapid.

—-----------------------------------

Celia let them discuss roles for exactly long enough to become annoyed. Then she set down her travel mug on the hood of a dented station wagon and clapped once.

The sound echoed strangely between the rows of dead cars. “Enough talking.”

Cassie stopped mid-sentence. “I’m sorry, did we win?”

“No,” Celia said. “You reached the portion of the session you are more likely to enjoy.”

Fiona looked around the junkyard again. “Finally.”

Claire’s eyes widened. “Wait. Is this why we’re here?”

“Yes.” Celia spread her hands. “This facility is a rage room for empowered guests.”

For the first time all morning, Cassie looked sincerely delighted. “I take back twelve percent of what I said about you.”

Naomi looked toward the rows of wrecks. “With powers?”

Celia’s smile became sharper. “That is why it is a junkyard and not a tasteful room full of ceramic plates. The perimeter barriers are reinforced. The vehicles are stripped of fuel, battery acid, and anything likely to produce an interesting debris. Hotel repair systems will reset anything structural. You may destroy marked objects only. You may not attack each other, staff, fencing, birds, etc.”

Fiona took one step toward the blue sedan.

Celia lifted a finger. “One more thing.”

Fiona stopped with visible effort.

“This is not a test,” Celia said. “There are no Victory Points for property damage. There is no correct emotional performance. Some people need to break things. Some people need to watch. Some people need to admit they wanted to break things only after they have already done it. All acceptable.”

Claire looked at the wrecks with the expression of someone trying to decide whether enjoying this would count against her permanent record.

Mara stood beside Naomi. “And if someone would rather not?”

Celia gestured toward a smaller fenced area nearby. Inside sat old appliances, empty crates, cheap furniture, and a bucket of bats, crowbars, and mallets. “A lower-intensity space is inside. I like it because there are no powers required.”

Mara considered it, then shook her head. “I agree with the premise, but I don’t think I need it.”

Celia nodded. “That is also allowed.”

Naomi looked at the smaller enclosure. Her gloves felt warm. Too warm.

Cassie cracked her knuckles. “So we can just wreck the cars?”

“Marked cars,” Celia said.

Cassie turned toward Fiona. Fiona was already looking at her. For one suspended second, the fight between them became something simpler. Not gone. Not healed. Just rerouted through the same door.

Cassie grinned.

Fiona said, “Stay out of my line.”

Cassie’s grin widened. “Don’t be such a baby.”

Claire backed up. “I feel like we should have helmets.”

Fiona reached the blue sedan first.

She didn’t scream at full ****. Naomi could tell because the world didn’t come apart. But the sound that left her was still enough to turn the air visible. The sedan’s already-cracked windshield collapsed inward in a glittering sheet. The hood buckled as if an enormous invisible hand had pressed down hard and lost patience.

Fiona lowered her chin. Her expression didn’t soften. But something in her shoulders did.

Cassie let out a low whistle. “Okay. That was pretty good.”

Fiona looked at her through a furrowed brow. “Pretty good?”

“Do you want honest feedback or emotional support?”

“I want you to hit something.”

Cassie laughed and did. She grabbed a length of reinforced pipe from the tool rack, spun once with more theatricality than technique, and brought it down across the red hatchback’s side mirror. The mirror snapped off and skidded across the gravel. A second later, she drove her palm into the door, and a pulse of plasma dented the metal inward around her scorched handprint.

Claire flinched, then laughed. She covered her mouth at once, horrified by herself.

Cassie pointed the pipe at her. “Nope. Too late. You made the noise. You’re in.”

“I didn’t agree to that!”

“Too late, Starling. Now break something!”

Fiona struck the sedan again. This time the driver-side window burst into harmless safety fragments under the controlled sonic impact. “She’s right.”

Cassie paused. “I’m sorry, what?”

Fiona did not look at her. “Don’t make it weird.”

“You made it weird by agreeing with me.”

Claire took aim at an old refrigerator in the smaller zone, then looked at Celia who just nodded.

Her power flowed out of her in a glittering tide. A thousand tiny planes of gilt edged **** scattered the light around the old fridge before turning as one and diving to the center. The metal groaned with pressure before the seams burst and the appliance crushed inward like a soda can.

Mara watched from beside Celia, arms folded loosely, expression thoughtful.

Naomi stood near the edge of the smaller enclosure with a wooden bat in both hands.

Celia looked at her. “You don’t have to.”

“I know,” she said. Then after a moment, Naomi realized. She did know.

Not because the Hotel would spare her if she refused. Not because consequences had become optional. But because this particular choice was hers. Her gloves gripped the handle of a wooden bat.

She hit the printer. The sound was satisfying in a way she didn’t want to admit. Plastic cracked. A paper tray flew loose and clattered across the table.

Naomi hit it again.

Then an old lamp. Then a stack of cheap plates. Then the side of a small filing cabinet that dented under the bat with a hollow, ringing complaint.

Her arms were not trained like Fiona’s. Her strikes did not have Cassie’s wild **** or Claire’s bright, startled power. But the impacts traveled through her body honestly. No one collapsed because she touched them. No one recoiled from her hands. No drain reached through the bat.

She was allowed to be angry at an object. That shouldn’t have felt like a privilege.

Across the yard, Fiona and Cassie had fallen into something that was not cooperation and not competition because admitting either would have ruined it. Fiona’s sonic strikes weakened glass and metal. Cassie followed with glowing orange explosive bursts that tore open what Fiona cracked. Claire attacked the refrigerator again, tossing it into the air with more laughter than she knew what to do with.

Naomi looked down at the bat in her hands. Then at her gloves. Deep navy. Smooth. Expensive. Thick enough to matter. Safety.

That was the word they had always worn best.

Her first pair had been bought after the accident, after everyone stopped saying temporary and started saying careful. Then came better gloves. Custom gloves. Formal gloves. Gloves for school, gloves for public events, gloves for family photos where her smile had needed to say everything was managed now.

They had protected people from her. They had protected her from seeing people flinch. They had made danger portable and shame presentable.

Naomi set the bat down. The others didn’t notice at first. The yard was full of impact and laughter and metal complaining under powers it had never been built to withstand.

Naomi pulled off the right glove. Her bare hand emerged pale and tense in the morning light. Nothing happened. She pulled off the left. Nothing happened again.

That was not the same as safe. She knew that. For once, knowing did not send her immediately backward.

Power Valve sat beneath her skin like a promise made by something she did not trust. Exposure made control easier. Less cover. Less distance. Less hiding. The Hotel had turned that fact into humiliation. But the fact remained. Control was not the same as concealment.

She had spent years hiding inside injury and calling it responsibility because responsibility was the only word that made the hiding noble enough to survive.

Naomi looked at her bare hands. Then she picked up the gloves and placed them on the table amid broken plastic, glass fragments, and bent metal.

Naomi picked up the bat again. The first strike landed across the gloves with a flat, ugly sound. The second drove them into the jagged remains of the printer casing. The third tore the seam of the right glove.

Naomi kept going. She didn’t scream. She didn’t need to. Her breath came hard through her nose. Her arms shook. The bat rose and fell until the gloves no longer looked like gloves, only dark fabric shredded among sharp debris, cut open by the things she had already broken.

Across the yard, the others had gone quiet. Naomi felt them watching. She didn’t stop because they watched. She stopped because the gloves were destroyed.

Her hands were bare around the bat. Dangerous. Responsible. Hers. For once, the silence didn’t feel empty.

Naomi lowered the bat.

Celia’s voice came gently from somewhere behind her. “Good.”

Naomi looked at the ruin on the table. Then at her own uncovered fingers.

“No,” she said. Her voice was quiet. “Necessary.”