Chapter 593 | You’ll Be There

Chapter 593: 593 | You’ll Be There

The room cleared out in waves. People filed toward the door with their envelopes tucked under arms or shoved into pockets, already pulling out phones to text parents or scroll the district crime maps they’d been pretending not to care about. I stayed in my seat because getting up felt like admitting the assignment had done something to me, and I wasn’t ready to give Steele that data point yet.

Sloane didn’t move either. She sat three chairs to my left with her Creston Hills sheet face-down on her lap and her attention locked on me like I was a flight risk. The bond hummed between us, and I felt her running through the same questions I was running through, except her version included significantly more anger and mine included significantly more calculation.

"Eastside," she said, low enough that only I could hear.

"Yep."

"They sent you to the Eastside."

"I can read, Fitzgerald."

Her jaw set in the way it did when she was deciding whether to yell at me or hit me, and the answer was usually both, delivered in whatever order annoyed her less. "This is bullshit. This is institutional bullshit. Steele looked at you when she handed it over. She knew. Someone told her to do this, or she decided to do it herself, and either way—"

"Either way," I said, "I’m going."

The bond went sharp. Sloane’s pink eyes narrowed, and her hand found my wrist under the row of chairs where nobody walking past could see it. Her grip was harder than necessary, which was how she showed affection when she was too angry to be gentle about it.

"You almost died three weeks ago."

"I’m aware. I was there."

"And now they’re sending you back to the district where your parents—"

"Also aware."

"Stop doing that."

"Doing what?"

"The thing where you act like nothing gets to you so I can’t tell if you’re actually fine or if you’re filing it away to deal with never."

I looked at her. Sloane Fitzgerald, second-highest combat score in the cohort, Legendary Detonation Aspect, the girl who’d watched me die for three seconds in a plaza and had been counting my breaths ever since. Her pink hair was pulled back in the ponytail she wore when she was ready to fight something, and her jaw was still set, and her hand on my wrist was still too tight, and the bond between us was running so hot I could feel her heartbeat layered under my own.

"I’m filing it," I said. "I’ll deal with it. Not never. Just not here."

She held my gaze for a beat longer than was comfortable for either of us. Then her grip loosened, and her thumb brushed the inside of my wrist once, and she exhaled through her nose in the way that meant she was letting me have this round but keeping score.

"Fine. But I’m coming to Eastside with you."

"Your placement is Creston Hills."

"I’ll visit. Off hours. Supervisor can’t stop me from walking through a district."

"Sloane."

"Don’t Sloane me. I spent days in a hospital chair watching a green light and wondering if it was going to turn off. I’m not doing that again because some Rank C hero in a bad district didn’t watch your back."

I wanted to argue. The transmigrant part of me, the part that had been calculating angles since I woke up in this body, wanted to point out that her visiting would draw attention, that Fitzgerald Media’s daughter walking through Eastside would generate questions, that questions were the thing I was supposed to be avoiding while Director Park’s observation flag sat on my file like a time bomb.

But the part of me that had been living with her for nine years, the part that had watched her face when she pulled me out of that plaza and felt the bond go dark for three seconds before it came back, didn’t have the energy to be strategic about it.

"Fine," I said. "But you text first. And you bring food. The Eastside doesn’t have the good Thai place."

Her mouth twitched. It wasn’t a smile, but it was adjacent to one, and the bond settled into something warmer.

"Deal."

We stood up together. The room was nearly empty now, just Steele at the front pretending to organize papers and a few stragglers near the door pretending not to watch us. I felt the weight of the envelope in my hand, the paper that said EASTSIDE and DRALUN and EIGHT WEEKS like those were neutral facts instead of the exact shape of whatever trap the institution had decided to set for me.

Petra was waiting outside the door.

She stood against the wall with her planner tucked under one arm and her geometric waves held in place with the kind of professional precision that made everything about her look expensive. Her cream sweater and dark skirt cost more than my entire wardrobe, and her posture said she knew it and did not consider this information relevant to the conversation we were about to have.

"Belmont."

"Lang."

Sloane’s attention sharpened beside me, the bond registering Petra’s presence like a territorial marker going up. Sloane and Petra had not figured out how to exist in the same space without the air getting complicated, and I had not figured out how to explain to either of them that the complication was my fault.

"We need to talk," Petra said. "Privately."

"About?"

"Your placement. The timing. The fact that someone in administration decided to send the son of Vanguard and Lumina back to the district where they died, three weeks after the entire country watched you fight in gold light, and nobody in this building considered how that might complicate the observation flag that Director Park filed on your name four days ago."

She said all of this without raising her voice or changing her expression, because Petra Lang did not perform concern. She simply had it, and she deployed it like a resource that needed to be managed rather than felt.

Sloane’s hand found my arm again. "We should go."

"Fitzgerald." Petra’s emerald eyes moved to Sloane, and something passed between them that I was not fully equipped to translate. "Your mother is expecting Lukas at six for the placement briefing. I assume you’ll be there."

"I live there."

"Yes. You do."