Chapter 13

I opened an eye and glanced across the surface of my desk, littered with notebooks, textbooks, and my Fourth Level-issued tablet. After several days in our new classes, my five Third Level classmates and I were buried in homework. We'd hardly seen each other outside of class in the last week.

So I'd fallen asleep while studying. Not that it hadn't happened several times during Third Level, but it meant one more thing to get used to.

And I hadn't intended to wake up to the dream from a few days ago. The image of the dark-haired guy was clearer now, his over-the-shoulder glance more prominent and his face easier to see. But not enough. Not enough.

I still couldn't tell who he was or why he seemed so familiar and yet so unknown. A classmate, I'd thought at first. But how could I have forgotten a classmate? Had he become a criminal and been put in Hex before he even got out of school?

And if I'd forgotten him, how had I remembered him?

No . . . I had to have things all wrong. People didn't spontaneously remember criminals who had been erased. When they were erased, they were erased forever. That much was common knowledge. It had to be. Otherwise, there was no fear of being forgotten.

My thoughts had strayed from my homework, but I let them. I thought back to the incident on the day we'd left the academy. I could still clearly remember the hooded man, shattering the front window, bursting into the restaurant, creating an outbreak of chaos. He hadn't been erased.

And I still remembered the clarity of his eyes, the sharpness in the planes of his face. As if he had looked not at me, but into me. Whose eyes could do that? I didn't know anyone with eyes like his.

I stared at my textbooks in front of me for a minute. I couldn't concentrate on what the small-print words said. I stood up and left my room, crossing into the kitchen and grabbing my coat before heading for the door. On my way out, I made sure to pick up my sword and throw the sheath over my shoulder.

"Miranda," a voice called, and I turned to see my mother standing in the door to the kitchen, a simple silhouette against the light from behind her. "Where are you going?"

"I'm taking a break from studying," I said. "I'll just go to the student resource center. I'll be back soon."

She nodded. "Be careful."

"Okay." I reached back for the handle of my sword, checking to make sure it was present and accessible before pushing open the door and stepping outside.

The sun had just set, but there was still a little light left to go by. I navigated the streets of our residential division until I reached the Plaza, and by then most of the light had all but vanished. The guide lights had come on, illuminating the sidewalks and roads in an iridescent teal. The front doors of the student center were ablaze with the eerie light when I opened the doors.

I had hoped to find other students from my classes here - if not the five I knew from Third Level Programming and Operations, then people I had just met in my Fourth Level classes. But if they were there, I didn't recognize them. I moved through the student center's main room, passing by tables full of people studying, and opened the next door, where the cafeteria was. I still saw no sign of anyone I knew, but some of the window tables in the back were open, so I took a seat at one of them and returned to my thoughts.

As I stared out the window, I thought of Shiri and Tristan, of my Pairing with Cas, of the hooded man in the restaurant. Things should have been going smoothly. Or at least, I had thought so at one time. For some reason I'd imagined my transition to Fourth Level to be a thousand times easier than this.

On the pale road behind the student resource center, I could see a figure moving through the shadows. It looked like a male, but that was all I could see. Most of him was thrown into darkness, and he appeared to be clothed in all black. He stood at the edge of the road before moving slowly across it.

I wondered what on Terminus he thought he was doing. If he wanted to get hit by a transport vehicle, that was his choice, but . . .

The figure vanished. I continued to watch the shadows beyond the window, and sure enough, he appeared again.

He resurfaced just a few steps in front of the window and raised a hand in greeting. His eyes were forest-green, his facial features sharp and accentuated, his smile meaningful and venomous.

"Oh Triad above," I gasped and stumbled back, accidentally knocking over my chair in the process. It hit the tiled floor with a loud crack and caused several heads to turn in my direction. But by that time, of course, the hooded figure had vanished.

"Damn it," I muttered under my breath, picking up the chair and crossing the room. I felt pairs of eyes follow me across the cafeteria, but I pretended not to notice them as I moved toward the counter and asked for some tea.

Minutes later, I was on my way out of the student center, tea in hand, break taken. I watched my back, keeping the hand that didn't hold my tea free to grab the handle of my sword.

There was no doubt about it. That had been the guy from the restaurant. But what could I do about it? Even if I reported it to the System's Officers now, he'd probably already fled the scene.

I went home.