Day 6 - 3/3

Van’s body complained loudly about his morning’s exertions as he and Cassie left the training area. It hurt most in his back and thighs, and walking invited his knees, calves, shoulders, and something deep beneath his ribs to join the argument. Mirel Dane had called the feeling ordinary muscular fatigue. Van suspected she used the word ordinary differently from everyone else.

“I could take her somewhere quiet,” he said thoughtfully.

Cassie made a noise that could have meant agreement if it came from someone else.

“A private dining room, maybe. Obviously not the suite. Somewhere she doesn’t have to worry about people watching her eat.”

“The audience watches all of us eat.” She huffed at the look on his face, “Don’t look at me like that. It was stupid.”

Van looked at her as they crossed from the clinical white hall into one of the warmer resort corridors. Afternoon light filled false windows overlooking green lawns and distant flowering trees. The false weather was almost pretty enough to make him forget about the prison he lived in.

“That wasn’t helpful,” he complained. “I’m really trying over here.”

“I am helping. You just can’t see it.”

“You called my idea stupid.”

“You were choosing the safest possible environment according to the Van Memorial Anxiety Prevention Board.”

He slowed enough that Cassie had to slow with him. “I don’t want her to spend the entire night worrying about expectations.” He gestured uselessly, grasping for the right word. “You know, the…implications.”

“She’s going to do that anyway.” Cassie met his gaze with a stubborn look. “Don’t treat her like one awkward moment will break her.”

Van started walking again. His left thigh objected to the change in movement, then settled into a dull complaint. “I don’t think she’s fragile.”

“You’re acting like she is.”

“I’m trying to make her feel safe.”

Cassie stopped. Van took two more steps before realizing she was no longer beside him. He turned.

Cassie stood in the middle of the corridor with her arms folded. The position pushed her altered top higher. She noticed, dragged it down, and became angrier at the shirt for interrupting her anger.

“Lizzy is a trained hero,” she said. “She doesn’t need mood lighting to feel safe.”

Van looked past Cassie toward the false windows. The lawn outside moved gently under a breeze neither of them could feel.

Cassie lowered her hand. “She is anxious. She is also brave. Those things are not opposites.”

“I know that.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

“Because right now you’re planning the date like you’d defuse a bomb.”

Van rubbed the back of his neck. That hurt too. “I’m not trying to. I just don’t want to mess up and make her more afraid. This whole thing has been a lot.”

“You’re choosing quiet, private, predictable, no audience, no surprises, no pressure, and probably food that can’t stain her shirt.”

“I hadn’t considered the food.”

Cassie stared at him.

Van looked away. “I would have eventually.”

“Just like with the rest of us, you picked something, hoped it wasn’t terrible, and took your chances. You didn’t turn any of the other nights into a hostage negotiation.”

Van shifted the bottle between his hands.

Cassie saw the motion. “What?”

Van continued before he could reconsider the phrasing. “You’re not like Lizzy. You speak out when something bothers you.”

“So yes,” Van said. “I’m being more careful with her than I was with you. You’re stronger than she is.”

The words settled between them.

Cassie looked at him for a long second. Then she said, “No.”

Van blinked. “No?”

“I’m louder than she is.” Cassie stepped closer. “I complain. I fight. I make sure everyone knows when I’m uncomfortable. Lizzy gets scared and does things anyway.”

Cassie’s voice lost some of its heat. “Lizzy needs to learn that this place isn’t like our world. I wish she could have tragically awkward dates with some shy boy and they could mutter and blush at each other all night.” She clasped her hands together under her chin and made fake doe eyes at Van. “But she can’t. The sooner you start treating her like an adult the better.”

The corridor remained quiet around them. “I still don’t want to scare her,” he finally said.

“Then don’t scare her.”

“That sounds easy when you say it like that.”

“Most things do,” she waved a hand dismissively.

Van gave her a flat look.

Cassie unfolded her arms. “Pick something you think she’ll actually enjoy. Don’t turn it into therapy.”

Van absorbed that without answering.

Cassie resumed walking. After several steps, she glanced sideways at him. “What were you thinking of?”

Van sighed. “A movie.”

“You are twenty-two, not seventy.”

A blur of white and gold crossed the far intersection and resolved into Alpha.

She was dressed in the same abbreviated training uniform she wore everywhere. Her eyes moved over Van’s posture, the bottle, Cassie’s gait, and the distance between them.

“Walking it off?” she asked brightly.

“Escape attempt actually,” Cassie said.

Alpha turned to Van. “We have saunas available, Master. Ten steamy minutes together, plenty of fluids, then straight to bed. The heat can reduce any lingering stiffness.”

Van made a face at her words, but looked toward Cassie. “That sounds useful.”

Cassie narrowed her eyes at Alpha. “Saunas? Plural?”

“Well, yes. But that isn’t strictly necessary.” Alpha’s smile sharpened. “Training partners shouldn’t have so many…boundaries.”

“No,” both of them said.

Alpha looked delighted by the harmony.

She pointed down the western corridor, giving him a cheerful wave and vanished back through the intersection before either of them could stop her.

Cassie watched the empty corridor. “She moves like an intrusive thought.”

* * *

The archive shelves climbed upward beyond the comfortable reach of vision, connected by narrow balconies and moving stairways that rearranged themselves whenever Claire tried to count them. Golden labels marked seasons by number, Host, and originating reality. Some included dates. Others used calendars Claire did not recognize. One appeared to identify its season by the reign of someone called the Third Singing Emperor.

Claire stood beneath the first balcony with three books open around her.

One rested in her hands. The others lay open on a reading stand on either side.

Evelyn watched one page turn, then another, then another.

Claire’s eyes moved rapidly from left to right. She reached the bottom, turned the page, and continued without pause.

For several seconds she looked at the book as though it had personally performed a miracle. “This is incredible.”

Evelyn remained beside the table. “Summarize it for me. You’ve read quite a lot.”

Claire’s expression shifted from wonder to concentration. “Season eighty-four used a Master from a world where any recreational intimacy was considered a sign of a serious mental condition. The Host preserved the game by treating companionship very differently after the Master could not be convinced to ‘interact’ with more than one contestant.”

Evelyn lifted one eyebrow.

“Two of his contestants reached one hundred VP without ever touching him.” Claire glanced back at the page.

“I could follow the details much more easily.” Her voice rose with each sentence. “I could read the footnotes without losing the paragraph.”

Her hair lifted behind her, spreading in a soft red fan. Evelyn felt the first emotional flare before Claire spoke again. It was excitement, clean and bright. Then ambition attached itself to it with almost painful speed.

“Do you understand what this would do for school?” Claire asked. “I could finish assigned reading in half the time. Less than half.” She placed the first book down and opened the second. “Research papers, legal briefs, tactical manuals, medical certification. I could finally take Professor Halden’s comparative policy course without dropping field training. I could finish the emergency-management minor.”

“You were planning another minor?” Evelyn’s eyebrow rose. “You already have one, I thought.”

“I had room if I moved advanced response theory to the summer session.”

Claire realized how she sounded and her face colored. “I like school.”

“This could change everything.” Claire touched the edge of the page with reverence. “Not just here. When we go home, I could—”

She stopped. The excitement didn’t vanish. It tangled with the rest of the room instead. Claire’s hand withdrew from the page. “I hate that I’m grateful.”

Evelyn felt that too. The guilt was ordinary. So was the wonder beneath it. Neither came with the artificial smoothness Evelyn would expect from an obviously implanted conviction. Claire’s emotions collided, contradicted one another, and refused to resolve into anything convenient.

Evelyn was wary, but detected no foreign pressure at the surface of Claire’s emotion. No obvious compulsion, emotional discontinuity, or manufactured satisfaction disturbed the girl’s excitement.

They had selected records from six seasons chosen to maximize differences: different originating universes, different Hosts, different Master genders, different assumptions about romance, and different resort forms. One season had taken place in an orbital pleasure station. Another had used a snowbound mountain lodge. A third had been staged as an ancient palace beside a desert sea.

The surfaces varied. The architecture beneath them did not.

Claire read while Evelyn organized the data.

“Every record we checked still has one Master,” Claire said after putting down the third book.

She continued while reaching for the second book again. “We haven’t found a season that removes the Master from the point structure. The Host can broaden what qualifies as appealing to that person, but the scoring still points back toward them.”

Evelyn wrote the conclusion in a small notebook. “And the transformations?”

“Rewards, punishments, purchases, sometimes all three. None of these records describe one that prevents a contestant from participating entirely.”

Evelyn added another line.

Claire turned several pages. Her hair placed a marker in the previous book without being asked.

“Every complete record describes the resort as separate from the participants’ home reality. The design changes. The confinement doesn’t.”

They moved through the remaining records. Some Hosts were affectionate. Some clinical. Some openly cruel. One wrote announcements like religious scripture. Another treated the season like a sporting event and attached commentary statistics to every challenge.

The tone changed. The tools changed. The rules bent around local reality until they nearly appeared new. They never appeared to break.

Claire finally lowered the sixth book. “So far, the system doesn’t seem to care what a relationship looks like,” she said.

“It cares that the relationship still points toward the Master. Friendship can count. Sex can count. Protection, obedience, rivalry, caretaking, dependency. The Host can reinterpret the route, but we haven’t found one that changes the central structure.”

Evelyn closed her notebook. She had been hoping for a flaw they could exploit. Instead, they got a clearer picture of the cage.

Claire looked back toward the shelves. “There are hundreds more.”

“Thousands.”

The excitement returned. So did the guilt. Neither concealed the other.

Evelyn could find no sign at the surface that the transformation had anything about Claire except her reading speed.

She was not certain whether that made the system less terrible. She suspected it made the system much more dangerous.

* * *

Naomi’s new blouse was dark green, close fitted and bare shouldered. With her dark shorts, it was a perfectly normal set of clothes. Naomi felt as though she had walked onto the grounds half-dressed.

The pressure beneath her skin had quieted.

The drain waited there like thirst given direction. It brushed at the boundary of her control, testing every living thing that came close enough to register.

Naomi held it down so tightly that her jaw hurt.

“You’re doing very well,” Mara said.

Naomi kept her eyes on the path. “Please don’t say that. It’s all I can think about.”

The path curved between two hedges and opened onto a broad lawn near the outdoor pool. Katherine and Lizzy approached from the opposite direction.

Lizzy noticed the blouse first. Her face brightened. “Naomi, that looks really good.”

Naomi nearly crossed her arms. She stopped herself midway, lowered them again, and forced her shoulders to remain open.

“Thank you.”

Katherine looked at the blouse, then at Naomi’s hands, shoulders, breathing, and the careful distance she maintained from Mara. Her gaze remained there one second too long.

Naomi noticed. “What?”

“You are exhausting yourself.”

Mara glanced at Katherine. “She’s practicing.”

“Yes,” Katherine allowed. “Poorly.”

Naomi’s embarrassment sharpened into irritation. Irritation was easier to carry. “Excuse me for trying not to hurt people.”

Katherine stepped off the center of the path so another pair of resort guests—faceless constructs, Naomi assumed—could pass without coming close.

“You are trying to stop the power entirely,” Katherine said.

Naomi’s mouth tightened. “That is generally the objective.”

Katherine gestured toward a shaded seating area beside the lawn. “My transformation is different from yours, but concentration remains concentration. When I hold a body or face under stress, resisting every instability takes more effort than controlling the changes I permit.”

Naomi followed the gesture reluctantly. They moved toward the shade.

Katherine sat on the low stone border surrounding a flower bed. “If I attempt to prevent every possible alteration, I divide my attention across my entire body. If I choose the shape I am maintaining and allow harmless adjustments within it, the effort decreases.”

Naomi stared at her. “You think I should let the drain just happen?”

“I think you should determine whether the choice is truly between perfect control and disaster.”

Katherine continued. “You have already proved brief contact is not instantly catastrophic.”

Mara lowered herself onto the stone border near Katherine. “What would partial control feel like?”

Naomi looked at her bare arm. “I don’t know.”

“Then perhaps,” Katherine said, “you should stop spending all your strength trying to pretend you do.”

The comment landed hard enough to make Naomi’s eyes narrow.

Lizzy started to speak then stopped herself. After taking a breath, she continued. “Just loosen it a little. Then pull it back.”

Naomi hated the idea, but she was deeply invested in controlling this thing. She closed her eyes and the old fears came automatically. Her concentration ground against the pull of her power, itself barely restrained by her modest exposure.

Naomi forced herself to relax and loosened her grip. Not by much, but felt an immediate change.

The pressure beneath her skin moved. Wine-dark sensation gathered along her arms, invisible to the others but unmistakable to her. The drain reached outward, found three living bodies nearby, and strained against the cage of her skin.

Naomi caught at it with her will. She restrained it, but didn’t try to stop it, just directed it. She narrowed the opening until the pull remained present but small.

Her shoulders dropped half an inch in relief when her will unclenched and her power didn’t swell.

Mara noticed. “Is that easier?”

Naomi opened her eyes. “Yes.” The word came out too quietly.

Katherine watched her breathing. “Good, try to maintain that level of control. It will be far less exhausting.”

“How long do you think you can hold it?” Mara asked.

“I don’t know.” The drain moved with her attention, but it did not surge. Her control remained in place without every muscle in her body joining the task.

Lizzy’s expression filled with cautious hope. “That’s good.”

Mara held out her hand. “Let’s test it. Just a quick touch.”

Naomi’s attention snapped back. “No!”

Katherine said, “She understands the risk.”

Naomi looked back at Mara’s hand. The fingers remained extended but relaxed. No pressure. No performance of bravery. Mara was simply offering.

“Just a brief touch,” Naomi said.

Mara nodded before touching two fingers to the outside of Naomi’s upper arm.

The drain moved beneath Naomi’s skin. A quick pulse passed through the contact. Mara inhaled sharply. Naomi caught the pull before it deepened.

“One,” Katherine counted.

The power pressed toward Mara’s warmth. Naomi narrowed it.

“Two.”

Mara removed her hand without jerking it back.

Naomi recoiled anyway, “Are you all right?”

Mara flexed her fingers. “Yes.”

Naomi was breathless. “How bad was it?”

Mara considered the question rather than comforting her. “Like touching something with a weak electrical current. Then I felt tired for a moment.” She rolled one shoulder. “It’s already passing.”

Mara smiled. “It was unpleasant, not terrible.”

The relief struck too quickly for Naomi to defend against it. Her eyes burned. She looked down before anyone could see.

“It’s like I said. I find it easier to relax total control and focus on preventing a disaster. Far more sustainable,” Katherine said.

“You make everything sound like a laboratory report,” Lizzy said.

Naomi laughed. It came out wet and unsteady, but it was still a laugh.

Lizzy looked at Naomi’s arm. “Could I try?”

Naomi’s head came up. “You don’t have to.”

“I know.” Lizzy tucked a loose strand of hair behind one ear. “But if this is going to help, you should know whether it works when you can’t see it coming.”

Naomi hesitated, then closed her eyes and held out her arm.

Lizzy waited for a long uncomfortable beat. Just when Naomi was opening her eyes to see if Lizzy had changed her mind, Lizzy’s hand flashed out and grabbed Naomi’s wrist.

The drain leaned toward her, but Naomi held the opening narrow.

Lizzy flinched at the first unpleasant pulse but did not pull away. The power caught against Lizzy differently than it had against Mara, but Naomi did not let herself investigate the difference. She narrowed the opening until the pull remained no stronger than before.

After a brief pause, Lizzy withdrew. She rubbed her fingertips together. “That was weird.”

Naomi searched her face. “How do you feel?”

“A little tired.” Lizzy waited, then smiled. “Not very much.”

Naomi looked from Lizzy to Mara. Her control had remained in place, and Naomi was not shaking from the effort. She loosened one breath she felt like she had been holding for years.

“I could do this in a hallway,” she said. “Or a grocery store.” Naomi touched her own exposed shoulder. “If someone brushed against me. If I didn’t see them coming. I might not have to stop everything. I could keep it here.”

“A small drain,” Katherine said. “Enough to warn them into breaking contact. So that they can move away.”

Lizzy’s smile widened. “That’s amazing.”

Naomi looked down at the sleeveless blouse. The garment had been purchased from the Hotel. The control had been created by a transformation the audience chose.

Naomi pressed her lips together, trying to hold the emotion somewhere manageable. “I think this place has changed my life. What else will it do?”

* * *

Alpha found Fiona near the stairs leading out of the training wing.

Fiona had left the training area quickly after testing, but changing clothes had done nothing for the fatigue sitting in her muscles. She wore black athletic shorts and a gray tank top from the Hotel’s endless supply. Her damp hair had been pulled into a rough knot that was already coming loose.

Alpha appeared beside her with silent footsteps.

Fiona’s shoulders tightened in surprise. “Do you practice being creepy, or is it your default setting?”

Alpha matched her pace. “Your muscles are so tight right now.”

Fiona kept walking. “Good afternoon to you too.”

Alpha smiled. “You look like a deep relaxing steam bath would help. Just ten minutes will help reduce stiffness before dinner.”

Fiona glanced at her. “Why are you being weird?” She stopped walking and continued, “Well, more weird than usual.”

Alpha pointed toward the recovery wing. “I’m your trainer and your health is my responsibility!” She finished her sentence with an upraised finger and a look of moral innocence.

“We wouldn’t want anything to happen to that, high performance vehicle you walk around in.” She was looking up through heavily lidded eyes at the taller red head. “Would we?”

“Fine! Just stop. God, that’s hard to listen to.” Fiona turned down the indicated hallway. Seemingly in a hurry just to create distance from the too-eager woman.

At the landing, she looked back, but Alpha had already disappeared.

“Creepy robot,” Fiona muttered.

The sauna waited behind a cedar door marked RECOVERY TWO. A narrow changing room opened before it, supplied with towels, water, and shelves for clothing.

Cassie’s clothes occupied one shelf.

Her voice drifted from behind the inner door.

“If that’s Alpha, I am recovered and armed.”

Fiona pulled her shirt over her head. “It’s me.”

There was a pause. “Good, we need to talk.”

Fiona stripped without hurry. She wrapped a towel around her ribs, opened the sauna door, then removed it and placed it on the bench before sitting.

Cassie occupied the opposite side, one knee raised, forearms resting loosely over it. Sweat had begun to gather along her hairline. She looked at Fiona. Then looked away too quickly.

Fiona sat on the upper bench. Heat closed around her immediately, dense and clean. Her muscles resisted it for several breaths before beginning to loosen.

Cassie poured water over the stones, steam rising with a violent hiss.

“So,” she said. “Five hundred pounds.”

Fiona closed her eyes. “Don’t.”

“You’re the one who spent ten minutes staring at him like he was three raccoons in a trench coat.”

Fiona opened one eye.

Cassie was smiling.

Fiona shut it again. “You wanted theories. Ask Dane.”

“My theories are already excellent.”

Fiona leaned back against the cedar wall. “This should be painful.”

“Option one: isekai.”

Fiona opened both eyes.

Cassie lifted one finger. “Van died in another universe and woke up here with a cheat skill. Maybe his special ability is lifting heavy objects or making women uncomfortable.”

“Stop.”

“Option two: space alien father.”

“Cassie.”

“Government experiment.”

Fiona’s mouth tightened.

Cassie saw the change and leaned back. “Fine. Radioactive gym equipment.”

“No.”

“Bitten by a weightlifter.”

“Stop talking.”

Cassie grinned.

The movement exposed the long line of her torso. The sauna heat made every familiar line of Cassie’s body more apparent: compact muscle in her shoulders, lean strength through her middle, and the softer curves her altered clothes usually made impossible to ignore. Fiona’s attention touched the details and moved away.

Assessment filled her mind with information. Balance. Muscle. Tension along the right shoulder.

Just information, nothing more.

Cassie’s gaze had returned to her. This time it remained too long.

Fiona glanced down at herself. “What? You’re staring.”

“I’m not.” Cassie looked toward the stones and poured another small measure of water over them. “You’re just being sensitive.”

Steam rolled between them as she spoke, hiding her face.

* * *

Unknown to either woman, the wall beyond Fiona’s shoulder carried their voices into Recovery One.

Van sat alone on the upper bench of the adjoining sauna with a towel around his waist and his water bottle on the floor.

He had been there for four minutes when Cassie proposed the isekai theory. At first he thought the voice came through the door. Then Fiona answered from somewhere directly behind the wall.

Van looked up at the ceiling. A narrow ventilation channel ran above the cedar panels. The structure probably served both rooms. Apparently it also carried conversation with remarkable clarity.

He considered leaving immediately. Then Cassie suggested his father was an alien. Van stayed because confusion briefly defeated ethics.

In the other room, Fiona said, “There’s something wrong with the test.”

Van straightened.

Cassie’s joking tone softened. “Dane said it wasn’t impossible.”

“It isn’t impossible, but come on.”

Fiona’s voice carried differently through the wall than it did in person. Lower. Less sharpened for impact.

“A few days ago, I knew where he stood,” she said. “He was strong for a regular guy his age. Better endurance than usual, but bad posture, and wasted movement.”

Van looked down at his hands. The textured marks from the grips remained faintly visible across his palms.

Cassie said, “You make him sound like a promising rescue dog.”

“I knew he was weaker than me.” The certainty in Fiona’s voice made the statement feel less like vanity than measurement.

“He was,” she continued. “Not by a little. Today, he changed while I was watching.”

Van held still.

Fiona’s voice came again. “The first pull was wrong. His back rounded. His feet were badly placed. He corrected because Dane told him to, but he didn’t suddenly learn how to lift. His body just kept finding more.”

Cassie said, “That sounds horrifying when you say it like that.”

Van tried to remember the lift.

The weight had felt impossible, then not impossible, then unbearable, then somehow above the floor. Five hundred pounds sounded like a great deal, but he didn’t know what it meant.

Van had always been strong. He had moved restaurant equipment coworkers struggled with and carried more boxes than most people.

Cassie asked, “If he was empowered shouldn’t he lift something closer to a thousand? I think I read that somewhere.”

Cassie filled the silence. “Maybe Verena upgraded him at night.”

Fiona did not answer immediately. When she spoke again, some of the certainty had left her voice. “I don’t know.”

Heat pressed against Van’s skin. He became aware of his pulse in his neck, the ache across his shoulders, and the fact that two women were discussing his body through a wall while he listened without permission.

Silence followed. Then Fiona said, “Come with us tomorrow.”

Cassie blinked audibly in the pause. “What?”

“Riverstone Trail. You said asking me to teach him was a good idea.”

“No.”

“Why not?” Fiona demanded.

“Because I value my organs.” Cassie scoffed, “Your version of a training run is considered cruel and unusual punishment.”

“My cardio is waiting tables at my family’s restaurant on Lunar New Year while three uncles argue about seating and a child sets a napkin on fire.”

“You fight Alters.”

“In short, violent bursts. Like a sensible person.”

Fiona was silent for a moment. “You’ll be fine.”

Van stood. He had already heard more than he had any right to hear. The corridor outside the sauna was cool enough to hurt.

Van dressed quickly in the changing room, keeping his attention on the floor while muffled voices continued beyond the walls. He could no longer make out words.

He left through the recovery wing before Fiona or Cassie emerged.

—------------------------------------------------------

After Van’s footsteps disappeared down the outer corridor, Cassie stood inside the women’s sauna and reached for her towel.

The movement sent a fresh line of heat across her damp skin.

Fiona remained on the upper bench, watching her. “You decided pretty quickly.”

“I decided before you asked, I hate recreational running.”

Fiona’s eyes narrowed, but she did not press.

Cassie turned toward the door before her attention could settle anywhere else. Cooler air should have helped. It did not.

She reached for the shelf where her clothes waited. Fiona came out behind her without the towel, carrying it in one hand while she used the other to pull the clip from her damp hair.

Cassie’s attention caught on the movement.

Fiona’s red hair fell across her shoulders. Sweat traveled in thin rivulets over her abdomen and along the slope of her chest. Her body remained flushed from the heat, every line of strength made sharper by moisture and shadow.

Cassie looked at the shelf. Her clothes had become difficult to understand.

“Are you going to get dressed?” Fiona asked. “Or have you embraced nudism?”

Cassie grabbed her shorts. “Shut up.”

Fiona reached for her own clothes.

Cassie dressed too quickly, fabric catching against damp skin. Her top rolled beneath her breasts and had to be pulled down twice. Each mistake increased her awareness of Fiona moving nearby.

The heat in Cassie’s stomach had deepened. She blamed the sauna. The explanation lasted until Fiona bent to pull on her shorts and Cassie’s pulse jumped hard enough to expose the lie.

Cassie turned toward the door to avoid looking down to catch another glimpse of Fiona’s heat swollen slit.

“You ready?” Cassie demanded a bit too gruffly.

Fiona straightened. “Almost.”

“I’ll wait outside.”

Fiona looked at her strangely, but Cassie was already gone.

—---------------------------------------------

Fiona and Cassie returned to their room with twenty-three minutes before dinner.

The exact number appeared on the wall clock the moment they entered, as though the Hotel had been waiting to judge their pace.

Fiona dropped her towel and training clothes into the laundry basket.

“I’m showering real quick, gotta rinse the sweat off.”

Cassie stopped near her bed, very intentionally not watching the curve of Fiona’s ass as the red head vanished into the bathroom.

The bathroom remained open to the room. No door. No curtain. Nothing separating the sleeping area from the tiled wash space except a change in flooring and the pretense that distance counted as privacy.

Fiona stripped with the same practical efficiency she used around training. Shirt. Shorts. Underwear. None of it meant anything to her.

Cassie wished she could stop sneaking glances.

The shower came on. Water struck tile, then Fiona.

Cassie sat on the edge of her bed. She needed to change for dinner. Her clean clothes waited in the wardrobe. She needed to dry her hair properly. Any of those thoughts would have been useful.

Instead she remembered sweat gathering in the shallow lines of Fiona’s stomach. Cassie pressed her palms against her thighs. The image changed.

Fiona leaning forward in the sauna, forearms braced over her legs, chest rising as she spoke with that blunt certainty that made the lines in her neck stand out.

Cassie shifted on the mattress. No, she thought. Let’s try to figure out the thing with Van. She thought about Van lifting the bar.

Five hundred pounds. Possible hidden power. Government experiment. Alien parent. The shower water moved across skin hiding taught muscle behind her.

Cassie’s mind supplied Fiona lifting both arms to wash her hair. Her stomach tightened. She stood too quickly and crossed to the wardrobe.

Dinner clothes. That was a real task. She opened the wardrobe and stared at the available shirts. Cover Girl had modified every issued option. Necklines lower. Sleeves reduced. Fabric pulled tighter around her chest or shortened over her stomach.

Cassie selected the least offensive one and dragged it from the hanger.

Behind her, Fiona moved beneath the water. Cassie could hear each small change in the spray. She closed her eyes. That made the images clearer.

Fiona’s abdominal muscles tightening when she shifted. The swell of her chest when she drew breath to argue. Water—no, sweat—tracking downward between them.

Cassie’s eyes opened as she sat on the bed. Heat pooled between her thighs with humiliating clarity. Her body was making decisions she wasn’t ready for.

Cassie pressed her legs together, but the movement helped nothing.

From the shower, Fiona called, “Are you getting dressed or do you want to shower?”

Cassie was caught halfway while removing her shirt. The brief image of her showering with FIona stormed through her mind.

“What?” She asked, somewhat dully.

“Do you need to shower or can I take a few extra minutes?”

Cassie looked down. “No, go ahead and take your time.”

“Thanks.” The words were casual.

Cassie swallowed. “Thanks.”

Fiona returned to washing.

Cassie sat on the bed hand frozen in the act of removing her shirt. She had noticed women before. She wasn’t shy about beautiful girls, but something about the way the sweat rolled down Fiona’s body had her more than distracted.

She remained there with her knees together, trying not to imagine Fiona’s body in the open shower.

Water continued to fall. Fiona began washing her hair and Cassie realized she could clearly see Fiona’s back through the steam in the room’s only mirror. Had they placed it there to deny even the attempt at privacy?

Cassie’s hand clenched against her shirt when she saw the curve of Fiona’s spine and the cleft of her ass through the shifting steam. Her clenching hand squeezed one breast without her really meaning too. The sudden jolt of pleasure that ran through her made her other hand almost slip between her squirming thighs.

She stood suddenly and dragged her top over her head. She dressed with hurried jerking motions, denying herself even a moment to examine what had just happened. She would dress and eat dinner and ignore FIona’s body.

That’s what she would do.