Pedestrians moved around them, unaware of their sudden appearance. It was New York; people didn’t ask questions if they wanted to live long. But a few lower-ranking hunters nearby paused, even they could sense the dense cloud of mana still radiating faintly from where the twins had nded.

  Ava stretched zily. "So… You think we just walk in and hope for the best?"

  Emma nodded once. "Standard procedure."

  Ava cracked her knuckles. "Let’s go then."

  And together, they walked toward the entrance, two teenage girls carrying the presence of two teenage girls. They apparently had better mana control than the majority of the awakened popution, who just let it run off of them.

  The gss doors parted with a gentle hiss as Ava and Emma strolled into the Scavenger Guild’s headquarters. The first thing that hit them was the cool rush of air conditioning, followed by the subtle undertone of mana residue. The lobby was massive, with smooth marble floors, high vaulted ceilings, and hanging banners showing Scavenger’s insignia, but it was also packed.

  A crowd had gathered around the front desk, most of them dressed in workout gear or loose-fitting clothing. Everyone was either looking at their phones, staring straight ahead, or fidgeting nervously. The air was thick with a kind of pressure that wasn’t overwhelming but definitely noticeable to those sensitive enough.

  Ava and Emma stepped into line without compint.

  "Wanna bet how long this’ll take?" Ava muttered, eyeing the lethargic movement of the queue.

  Emma sat down on a nearby bench instead of answering. "Be patient."

  Ava rolled her eyes but decided to join her. They sat quietly for a while, allowing the idle chatter to pass the time. Nearby, a girl was pacing and muttering about her potential rank, while a tall guy in a hoodie hopped around, shadowboxing until one of the attendants scolded him.

  Eventually, after nearly twenty minutes of slow progress, the front desk came into view.

  The receptionist was a woman in her te twenties, with short bck hair pulled back in a low bun and a headset clipped around one ear. Her namepte read "Kara." She appeared to be efficient. The kind of person who could do her job blindfolded after so many years of doing it.

  "Next."

  Ava and Emma stepped forward together. Kara barely gnced at them.

  "Name?"

  "Emma and Ava Smith," Emma answered. This was the most basic st name she could think of.

  Kara typed quickly, her eyes flicking from screen to screen. "Alright. You’re not registered under any current guild, and this is your first evaluation attempt?"

  "Yes," Emma said again.

  Kara didn’t blink. "Two evaluations. Each is two hundred dolrs. Paid now or before results are finalized."

  Emma slid a card she had pocketed from the richest-looking bloke in there across the desk and let the transaction complete with a soft beep.

  "Thank you," Kara said. "Take your numbers and wait in the lobby until you're called."

  She handed them two slim pstic cards with bck print: #43 and #44.

  Ava took hers and leaned against the desk. "So, how many people usually come out of here with an S-rank?"

  Kara barely looked up. "Fewer than one a year. Most people test around C. Some Bs. The occasional A."

  Ava smirked and tapped her card against her palm. "Cool."

  Kara gave her a tired smile. "Good luck."

  They stepped aside to make room for the next hopeful applicant and headed toward the waiting area.

  The adjacent waiting room was spacious but modest. A few rows of pstic chairs, some vending machines along the wall, and a ft-screen TV pying a muted broadcast of top hunter interviews.

  Emma took a seat in the middle row and crossed her legs.

  Ava sat backward in hers, arms resting on the backrest. "You think we’ll trigger anything interesting?"

  "No," Emma said. "We’re suppressing our output. It’ll read the cap, not the ceiling."

  Ava hummed. "I kinda wanted to break something."

  "Well, don't."

  Time passed. Slowly. The numbers climbed. A speaker above the TV pinged every few minutes with a new call:

  "Number thirty-six. Please proceed to the Evaluation Room."

  Eventually-

  "Number forty-three. Please proceed to the Evaluation Room."

  Ava jumped to her feet. "Finally."

  Emma stayed seated.

  Ava leaned down and grinned. "Don’t be jealous when I get my S-rank first."

  Emma waved her off without looking. "I’ll wait here."

  With that, Ava disappeared through the frosted gss doors marked Authorized Personnel Only, her card in hand.

  The receptionist didn’t even look up. It was just another number in a long, long line of others.

  No one realized what was walking through that door.

  The Evaluation Room was quieter than Ava expected. It was sterile and white, with a few scuff marks on the floors and walls from past applicants who may have uselessly fred their mana a little too hard. The only person present was a technician, looking bored, seated behind a reinforced gss partition. A rge bck orb sat on a raised podium in the center of the room, with cords trailing from its base into a humming machine covered in blinking lights and digital readouts.

  The technician looked up when Ava walked in and gestured zily. "Pce your hand on the orb. Don’t actively pour any mana into it; it only picks up residuals."

  Ava grinned and strolled over. "Got it, got it."

  She pced her palm on the cool surface of the orb. Instantly, a faint glow began to pulse beneath her hand like a heartbeat.

  The machine came to life, lines of code and numbers scrolling across the dispy at a rapid pace.

  Then the glow intensified. The lines of code froze. A long, low beep echoed in the room. The screen flickered red.

  ERROR: MANA THRESHOLD EXCEEDED. SUBJECT: CLASSIFIED.

  The technician jolted upright. His chair tipped and cttered to the floor behind him. "Sh-shit," he stammered, nearly knocking over his clipboard as he scrambled to grab his phone.

  Ava smiled and removed her hand. "Uh. That normal?" She already knew what this meant, but what's a little fun?

  The man was already dialing. "Yeah. Yeah, it’s normal," he said distractedly, eyes flicking between her and the screen. "Just standard procedure when it hits the red."

  He paused, listening to the person on the other end. "Yep. Another one. Cssification error. Mana’s too high for the machine to calcute. It defaulted."

  There was a second of silence as the person he called reacted on the other end.

  "No. I haven’t seen her before. She’s not registered."

  Another pause.

  "Teenager. Bck hair, dyed red ends."

  Ava winked at him.

  "Yeah."

  He hung up and immediately shot off a couple of texts, his professionalism starting to catch up with the adrenaline spike. He knelt to pick up his clipboard but ended up just shoving it onto the desk and stepping out of the gss box instead, walking up to Ava a little stiffly.

  "Right, so," he said, offering her a clipboard with a fresh form clipped to it. "We need you to fill out this S-Rank Provisional Intake Form. Don’t worry, it’s just standard. Name, birthdate, contact info. Oh- and, uh, don’t leave just yet. We’ll have someone from upper management come down and speak with you shortly."

  Ava plucked the form from his hand, already scribbling Ava Smith in an unreadable print. "Do I get a sticker or something?"

  He blinked. "A sticker?"

  "Yeah. Like... a ‘Congratutions!' sticker."

  The man didn’t ugh, exactly, but he made a sound like a stressed chuckle. "Right. I’ll suggest that to HR."

  Ava walked over to the side table in the room, grabbed the pen tied to it, and leisurely filled in the form. Her expression was low, bordering on bored.

  Outside, in the waiting room, the number clicked again over the speaker.

  "Number forty-four. Please proceed to the Evaluation Room."

  Emma stood calmly, tucking her card into her sleeve, and walked toward the doors. She stepped through just as Ava leaned casually against the wall, idly spinning the pen she’d "forgotten" to return. Ava gave her sister one of those looks that said more than any words could.

  "All good?" Emma asked softly as she passed.

  Ava smiled, amused.

  Emma didn’t bother responding. She walked into the Evaluation Room, which was exactly the same as it had been for Ava. The technician, still clearly fluttering about, but now trying hard to appear composed, straightened his back and gestured toward the orb. "Pce your hand on the orb. No active output."

  Emma nodded and walked over. She pced her hand on the orb without any wasted time.

  And just like before, the bck surface lit beneath her touch. But this time, the glow didn’t increase gradually. It jumped instantly to an intensity that caused the lights in the room to dim slightly. The machine’s scroll of numbers jittered, froze, and then fshed red just like before.

  ERROR: MANA THRESHOLD EXCEEDED. SUBJECT: CLASSIFIED.

  The technician paled. He looked between the orb, the screen, and Emma, then over his shoulder toward the wall separating them from the waiting area.

  "You’re kidding me," he mumbled, staring at the screen as if it might change if he just blinked hard enough.

  Emma lifted her hand from the orb and calmly looked at him. "Is this a problem?"

  He swallowed. "No. Not a problem. Just surprising. We don’t usually get two cssification errors in a row."

  Emma arched a brow. "I imagine not."

  He didn’t respond. Instead, he tapped something into his console, fgged the file, and stood up again, slightly less stiff this time, though he still seemed to be working through it all in his head.

  "You wouldn’t happen to be reted to the st girl, would you?" he asked, even though it was painfully obvious.

  Emma didn’t even look up from the pen she’d picked up. "Identical twins."

  "Right. Thought so," he muttered, as if confirming it aloud made things both better and worse. "Same st name, same birthdate, both S-rank. This is gonna make national news."

  He passed her the second S-Rank Provisional Intake Form, which Emma took and filled out with neat, efficient strokes. Ava's form was still half-filled on the side table, resembling the work of someone who had written it using anything but their hands.

  As Emma handed it back, the technician picked up his phone again. He made a single call with a calmer tone than before.

  "Two S-Rank readings. Reted. Identical twins. The names are Ava and Emma Smith. Unregistered prior to entry."

  A short pause.

  "Yep. Not a joke."

  Another pause.

  "Confirmed. Both exceeded the machine’s mana threshold. The system fgged both as cssified. No anomalies in entry."

  The person on the other end didn’t respond with more than a single word, but the technician nodded. "Understood."

  He hung up and then turned back to the girls, addressing them more formally this time. "You’re going to want to stay put. We’ve contacted someone from the Federal Bureau of Hunters. He’s on his way down personally."

  Ava leaned around the doorframe with a grin. "Ooh, we’re getting VIP treatment?"

  "You could say that," the man said, rubbing the back of his neck. "Deputy Director Michael Connor will be here in about thirty minutes." He then cleared his throat awkwardly. "You don't have to just stand here," he said, gesturing toward a side door. "There's a more comfortable waiting room down the hall. It's more private. Just until Deputy Director Connor arrives."

  Ava stretched zily, hands above her head. "Sounds good to me. C’mon, Em. Let's go get comfy before boss man shows up."

  Emma gave a small, noncommittal shrug but followed without objection.