Chapter 581 | Welcome Back, Lukas Belmont

Chapter 581: 581 | Welcome Back, Lukas Belmont

The second checkpoint was at the base of the access road. This one had actual barriers, the concrete kind that don’t move for anything less than a freight truck, and four Heroes in visible costume standing in a formation that covered every approach angle. One of them had wings folded against her back. Another was seven feet of something Branded that made the car feel small as we rolled past.

They didn’t scan us. They scanned Diane’s credentials, and then a woman in a grey suit walked up to the driver’s window with a tablet and asked for both our student IDs by name.

"Fitzgerald, Sloane. Confirmed." Tap. "Belmont, Lukas." She paused. Looked at me. Looked at the screen. Looked at me again. "Confirmed. Biometric re-enrollment is mandatory at the main gate. Both of you."

"Re-enrollment," Sloane said.

"The perimeter system was rebuilt. Every student ID has been voided. You’ll need new Aspect-signature encoding before you can access any building on campus." She handed the tablet through the window for Diane’s signature. "Expect a wait. We’re processing eight hundred students in two days."

The main gate had become something else entirely.

They’d put up a structure over the entrance, white steel and glass in the same aggressive optimism as the rest of the school, and inside it were fourteen processing lanes with a queue snaking back through the lower quad. Students stood in it in clusters, first-years and second-years and third-years all mixed together, everyone with the specific restless energy of people who’d spent eleven days at home being told by their parents that they were absolutely not going back.

We joined the line. Diane parked in the visitor lot and walked in with us, because Diane does not do drop-offs, and because she wanted to see the system herself.

At the front of each lane was a black pillar about chest height with a rounded top, glassy and featureless, and mounted above it a lens the size of a dinner plate. A staff member in Halloran white stood beside each one with a tablet.

When it was our turn, the woman gestured me forward.

"Palm on the pillar. Look at the lens. Don’t blink deliberately, it reads that as evasion."

I put my palm down. The glass was warm.

"Good afternoon," the pillar said.

I did not expect the pillar to talk to me. The voice came from everywhere and nowhere, pleasant and androgynous, with the specific flatness of something that had been designed to sound helpful without sounding human.

"Identity verification in progress. My designation is WARDEN. I am the integrated security intelligence for Halloran Academy. I will be conducting your biometric enrollment and I will be present at every access point on this campus going forward."

"Great," I said. "I love that for me."

"Humor is logged but not evaluated." A pause. "Reading Aspect signature. Belmont, Lukas. Class One-B. Registered classification, Channeler, Class One. Force Manipulation variant, Rare tier, designation Phantom Touch."

The lens made a sound. Not a click, more a shift, like something inside it had reconsidered its position.

"Anomaly," WARDEN said.

Every hair on the back of my neck stood up at once, and I want to be clear that nothing about my face changed, because I have spent months building the exact set of muscles required for that specific task.

Beside me, Sloane’s presence went hot through the bond. Diane’s Luster field pulsed once and settled.

"Clarify," the staff member said, tapping her tablet.

"Subject’s Aspect signature reads as diffuse rather than concentrated. Core localization unclear. This is inconsistent with Channeler-class morphology but consistent with the notation on file under Progressive Manifestation Syndrome, Category Seven." Another pause. "Cross-referencing Commission advisory, dated four days ago, filed by Director Yun-Seo Park. Advisory instructs that Belmont, Lukas is flagged for observation but not restriction. Enrollment approved."

The pillar under my hand went cool.

"Welcome back, Lukas Belmont," WARDEN said. "I am glad you survived."

I took my hand off the glass. "Did it just say it was glad?"

"It says that to everyone who was inside the dome," the staff member said, not looking up. "The behavioral team added it Tuesday. They ran focus groups."

"They ran focus groups on whether the security robot should be nice to us."

"It tested very well."

Sloane went next. Palm down, eyes up, and WARDEN read her Legendary classification out loud and then paused in the same way it had paused for me.

"Anomaly," it said. "Subject’s documented Detonation output ceiling is six full-force discharges per engagement cycle. Current biometric readings indicate an output ceiling between ten and twelve. Variance of sixty-seven to one hundred percent above baseline."

The staff member’s stylus stopped moving.

Sloane’s jaw set. "That’s because I’ve been training."

"Training does not typically produce a sixty-seven percent ceiling increase in eleven days," WARDEN said, with absolutely no malice, which somehow made it worse. "Recommend diagnostic re-scan within thirty days. Flagging for Aspect Development Lab review. Enrollment approved. Welcome back, Sloane Fitzgerald. I am glad you survived."

She pulled her hand off the pillar like it had bitten her.

We walked through the gate together and did not talk for about forty feet.

"Well," Diane said, in the voice she uses when a deal has just acquired a complication she was already expecting, "that’s going to be a conversation."

"Mom."

"Thirty days, sugar. I’ll handle the paperwork, but you’re going to sit in that lab and you’re going to let them scan you, because the alternative is a machine that flags you and a file that says you refused." She adjusted the strap of her bag. "We’ll talk about the why later. At home. Where the walls are mine."

Sloane’s ears went red. The bond carried something I could only describe as the emotional equivalent of covering your face with both hands.

Because we both knew exactly why her ceiling had jumped, and it had nothing to do with training, and the System had very casually informed me weeks ago that every time I finished inside a heroine her Aspect ceiling went up three percent permanently, and neither of us had done the arithmetic out loud until a talking pillar did it for us in front of a woman with a stylus.

Campus itself had been rebuilt in ways that went past the security theater.