The Tactical Interface Simution Lab hummed with artificial life—walls of hexagonal gss panels flickering with data streams, desks arranged in a sleek curve around a floating holo-instructor, the floor beneath every terminal pulsing with cold neon-blue light that cast everyone's features in stark relief.

  The air tasted faintly of ozone and burnt copper—residual voltage from the previous group's failed synchronization attempt. Arcadia's particur brand of failure always left a signature.

  Kae Virex leaned against the b's far wall, arms crossed over her chest, a neural stylus caught between her teeth like some twentieth-century rebel with a cigarette. Her golden eyes performed a methodical sweep of the room, predatory and calcuting. Always hunting. Always evaluating.

  Rin Sori sat near the center, cross-legged in her chair, datapad banced on her knees. Her hood was down for once, revealing the gentle curve of her neck, dark hair falling to her shoulders in a soft cascade that contradicted the rigid lines of the academy uniform. Her violet eyes remained fixed on her screen, fingers moving in precise, elegant patterns across the interface as she rewrote defense algorithms with frightening efficiency.

  Kae watched her.

  Watched the way Rin's brow furrowed in concentration. Watched how her bottom lip caught briefly between her teeth when a sequence wouldn't align properly. Watched her squirm imperceptibly when the weight of Kae's gaze lingered too long.

  She knows I'm looking. She always knows.

  And yet she never looked back.

  Not until Kae made her.

  Instructor Vos flicked her wrist, sending a shimmer of holographic commands cascading into the center of the room. Her eyes glowed crimson behind narrow lenses that seemed grafted to her face rather than merely worn.

  "Pair up," she announced, voice coldly synthetic. "You'll be syncing minds for this simution—dual-path intrusion protocol. One creates the firewalls. One breaches. If your sync falls below seventy percent efficiency, you'll both receive neural feedback. Painful, but educational."

  The room rustled with reluctant movement.

  Chairs scraped against polymer flooring. A few students groaned, memories of previous failures still burning in their synapses.

  Kae pushed away from the wall with nguid confidence.

  And that's when he appeared.

  "Hey, Rin, right?" The voice was smooth. Practiced. Deliberately disarming.

  Kae turned just as Ash Riven stepped into view—tall and broad-shouldered, dark copper hair swept back to showcase the neural bands pulsing at his temples. He wore the Arcadia uniform like it had been vacuum-sealed to his frame, every edge crisp, every line deliberate. His smile calcuted for maximum charm with minimal effort.

  Rin blinked up at him, momentarily dislodged from her code trance. "Um... yeah?"

  Ash leaned his weight against her desk, just close enough to suggest interest without triggering arms. "You mind partnering up? I've read some of your firewall sequences in shared archives. You're brilliant."

  Rin flushed, the color spreading across her pale cheeks like a system alert. Her eyes flicked toward Kae—just for a heartbeat.

  That was enough.

  Kae was already moving, her footsteps silent despite the hard surface of the b floor. Years of training had erased even the smallest sounds of her approach.

  "She's taken," she said, voice smooth as synthetic silk as she slid between them like a security protocol engaging.

  Ash's perfectly manicured eyebrow arched upward. "Didn't realize we were working with assigned pairs."

  Kae's smile spread slowly—predatory, territorial. "We're not."

  She held Rin's gaze, golden eyes meeting violet in silent communication that spoke volumes in code neither had consciously designed.

  "But we work well together. Don't we, genius?"

  Rin, ever the study in quiet contradictions, hesitated. Her voice emerged soft but unmistakable: "...Y-Yes. We do."

  Ash lingered, carefully managing his disappointment to appear gracious rather than rejected.

  Kae didn't spare him another gnce. Her attention had already shifted to pulling a second neural interface cable from the console, plugging one end into her own desk port and the other into Rin's.

  "Ready?" she murmured, gaze fixed on her console as it initialized the connection.

  Rin nodded, already flushing at the prospect of what was to come.

  The simution began without warning.

  A wall of digital fire erupted across their shared screen, golden threads weaving through bck-code branches like veins through flesh. Data walls stacked and folded in on themselves like impossible origami, pulsing with artificial resistance. The task was clear: slip through undetected—one guiding, the other pushing.

  Kae took firewall duty.

  Rin breached.

  And something clicked between them.

  Their thoughts aligned before words could form—before intentions could be vocalized. Kae's hand hovered over her interface, but Rin was already moving—shifting packets, rewriting paths with liquid precision. Kae mirrored without instruction, her side closing vulnerabilities before Rin even fully exploited them.

  They weren't just synchronized. They were symbiotic.

  Too perfectly matched.

  Kae's breath caught when Rin's fingers brushed hers across the narrow space between their stations—a contact that seemed accidental but carried deliberate warmth.

  Rin didn't apologize. She didn't even acknowledge it.

  Her eyes remained locked on the screen, but a ghost of a smile curved her lips.

  That smile hit Kae like a system shock. She knows. She fucking knows.

  But how much? Was it the shower incident? A glimpse beneath fabric? Something else entirely?

  Kae's pulse accelerated, but her fingers remained steady on the interface, never missing a beat.

  Instructor Vos was speaking somewhere at the edge of awareness—metrics, synchronization ratios, disbelief—but Kae registered none of it.

  Because Rin had shifted her position, the side of her leg now pressed against Kae's beneath the desk.

  Not forceful. Not accidental.

  Just... present. Unavoidable.

  And Kae looked over.

  Rin's gaze remained fixed on the screen.

  But her cheek had flushed pink. Her lips parted slightly as if words were forming but being deliberately held back. And that smile... persisted.

  The simution closed with a chime of completion.

  Sync ratio: 100%.Dual command efficiency: Top 2% in academy records.

  Vos was speechless.

  Kae was not.

  She disconnected her neural band, setting it aside with practiced ease, and leaned close enough that her words would remain between them.

  "You trying to impress someone, Sori?"

  Rin finally turned to meet her gaze.

  Violet eyes. Calm. Dangerous in their quiet certainty.

  "Just doing my part."

  Kae leaned back slowly, reassessing.

  Rin knew. There was no proof, no confirmation, but the certainty settled like lead in Kae's stomach. She knew, and she was pying a game of her own design.

  Kae wanted to drag her into a darkened corner and extract the truth from those soft lips.

  Instead, she merely smirked.

  "Let me know if you want to run the sim again ter. I'm not tired."

  Ash materialized at their station just as Rin stood to gather her things.

  He cleared his throat, offering a water bottle like a peace offering. "Hey, great work in there. If you ever want to practice after css—"

  Kae intercepted the bottle with fluid grace, passing it directly to Rin without breaking eye contact with Ash.

  "She stays hydrated. Thanks for your concern."

  Ash blinked. "Right. Okay then."

  Kae watched him retreat, satisfaction curling through her veins.

  Rin didn't comment—just accepted the bottle and took a measured sip.

  Then, without looking up:

  "You're not jealous, are you?"

  Kae's smile returned, sharper now, edges gleaming.

  "I don't get jealous, Sori. I get territorial."

  Rin choked slightly on her water.

  Kae leaned closer, her voice brushing against Rin's ear like velvet static.

  "And you're in my territory, sweetheart."

  Rin recovered, composing herself with visible effort. "You know, if you keep snarling at every person who speaks to me, people might think you're possessive."

  Kae raised an eyebrow. "Aren't I?"

  Rin turned then, chin tilted in a quiet challenge. "You're going to make me challenge you in a combat sim just to knock that smug look off your face."

  Kae grinned, teeth fshing in the b's blue light. "You think you could?"

  Rin shrugged, a new confidence transforming her usually cautious demeanor. "Only one way to find out."

  Kae leaned in, close enough that her words became intimate secrets. "Dorm. Tonight. No holds barred."

  Rin's pupils dited, heart visibly quickening beneath the thin fabric of her uniform. "You're serious?"

  Kae straightened, her smirk radiating dangerous promise. "Deadly. Don't be te."

  Then, as if nothing significant had transpired between them, she turned toward the exit. "Now come on. Let's eat before I start picking fights in the food line too."

  The Neon Arcadia Cafeteria wasn't merely a pce for sustenance.

  It was a battlefield disguised as architecture.

  Tiered in subtle gradients of status and ambition, yered with translucent ptforms and sky bridges, the dining hall stretched like a gleaming atrium at the academy's core. Gss walls opened to panoramic views of the neon skyline, ceiling panels shifting in perfect synchronization with external time and weather patterns. Rain from outside spshed against the transparent dome above, casting liquid shadows that danced across every surface.

  The lighting was deliberately subdued, casting everyone in fttering ambiguity. The social hierarchies were not.

  To the left, in a shadowed corner surrounded by signal scramblers and bck-market access ports, lounged the Hackers—draped in mesh hoodies threaded with conductive fibers, fingers twitching against phantom keyboards, eyes gzed with scrolling lightcode that reflected on their irises. One girl had silver dreadlocks directly wired into her neural ports; the boy beside her hadn't broken his screen trance in what appeared to be hours.

  On the mezzanine perched the Tech Geniuses—sharing nutrition bars while arguing in binary shorthand too rapid for standard human cognition. Their tables overflowed with disassembled devices, blinking prototypes, and military-grade stimunts. Most looked like they existed solely on caffeine and ambition.

  Along the centerline stood the Modified—the Soldiers, the Enforcers, the combat elite. They moved with mechanical precision, half of them more machine than human. Steel limbs gleamed under the ambient lighting, joints glowing with proprietary tech, and reinforced skeletal structures visible beneath translucent skin. They consumed their meals with efficient, joyless movements.

  At the edges, bathed in artificial daylight, sat the Cyborgs—sleek, aloof, almost transcendent in their hybridized beauty. Their bodies alternated between polished chrome and matte carbon fiber, expressions rendered unreadable by subtle augmentations. One particurly advanced specimen didn't even pretend to eat—simply plugged a hair-thin cable into their forearm port and stared at the rain-drenched skyline with unblinking focus.

  And above them all—watching from elevated ptforms—loomed the Instructors.

  Thin-lensed. Perpetually evaluating. Always recording.

  Kae and Rin entered the cafeteria, and a ripple of attention swept through the space—not because they announced themselves, but because they moved in unconscious synchronization.

  After their performance in the simution b, word had traveled with electronic efficiency.

  Kae navigated the hall like liquid darkness poured into human form. Rin followed close behind—hood pulled up once more, datapad clutched against her chest like armor, eyes downcast to avoid the scrutiny that followed them.

  They cimed a spot in the mid-tier zone—neutral territory where most factions tolerated mingling.

  "Stay here," Kae murmured, her hand brushing the small of Rin's back in a touch too deliberate to be casual. "I'll get us something that wasn't grown in a vat yesterday."

  Rin nodded, cheeks coloring at the contact. "Okay."

  Kae disappeared into the food dispensary corridor—a luminous pathway of synth-food emitters, hyper-nutrient stations, and neon-fizz beverage taps.

  Rin sat, forcing herself to breathe normally.

  Trying to quiet the echo of Kae's voice that still resonated in her nerves.

  "That seat taken?"

  Rin looked up, startled from her thoughts.

  Ash Riven stood before her, that same calcuted half-smile in pce, a tray banced in one hand. His wrist dispy cycled through a custom meal order—warm, expensive, and tailored to his specific metabolic profile.

  Rin blinked. "Um... no. I guess not."

  He settled beside her with practiced grace.

  "You were incredible in sim css. Genuinely impressive. It's rare to see that kind of synchronization—especially with someone like Kae Virex."

  Rin's brow furrowed slightly. "Someone like...?"

  "You know," he said with a ugh that seemed designed to disarm. "Intense. All sharp edges and sharper looks. She's impressive, certainly, but not exactly known for pying well with others."

  Rin studied her hands. "She's just... good at what she does."

  "So are you." His voice dropped an octave—smoother now, more intimate. "If you ever want to try syncing with someone less... intimidating, I'd consider it an honor."

  Rin's flush betrayed her before words could form.

  Ash leaned closer, lowering his voice. "You really don't know how captivating you are, do you?"

  "She knows."

  Kae's voice cut through the air between them, cold and precise as a surgical bde.

  Rin straightened immediately.

  Ash turned—poorly concealing his surprise—as Kae materialized behind him, a tray banced in one hand, illuminated drink containers stacked in the other. Her eyes weren't actively glowing.

  But they burned with something primal nonetheless.

  "Didn't expect to find you here," she said, tone deliberately neutral as she set the tray down with unnecessary force. "Thought you'd be sitting with your usual admirers."

  Ash recovered his composure, smile never faltering. "Just being friendly."

  "She has friends."

  Kae pced a steaming bowl of noodles before Rin without looking directly at her.

  Ash raised an eyebrow. "Do you always speak for her?"

  Before Kae could respond, Rin reached out.

  She pced her hand gently on Ash's arm.

  Soft. Deliberate. Lingering.

  "You can stay," she said, voice honeyed with an innocence that rang false to anyone paying attention.

  Kae froze.

  Not visibly—not to anyone watching casually.

  But Rin saw it.

  The subtle tension that locked her jaw. The way her fingers tightened imperceptibly around her chopsticks.

  Ash beamed. "Thanks. I appreciate that."

  Kae lowered herself into her seat with controlled precision, lips curling at one corner in an expression too complex to name.

  She leaned back, one leg stretching beneath the table until her calf pressed firmly against Rin's.

  She didn't move it away.

  Neither did Rin.