The academy at night was not the same place as it was during the day.
The corridors that had been rivers of sound and motion only hours ago were now slow, echoing channels of shadow and faint light. The air felt cooler, the hum of the climate systems sharper, like the entire place was holding its breath.
Vadel walked those corridors like he belonged to them.
No curfew patrols crossed his path. No curious eyes peeked out of doors. The only movement came from the occasional sweep of automated cleaning drones, their polished carapaces reflecting the pale blue strips of floor lighting.
"North sector, sublevel one, your pace is slow," EON's voice murmured in his head. "You're waiting for them to make the first move."
"That's the point."
"They might just choose not to."
"They've been watching all day. Curiosity that strong doesn't vanish at night."
A pause. "Unless curiosity isn't what's driving them."
He didn't reply.
The truth was gnawing at him already — the idea that whoever was tailing him might not be curious, but testing. Probing for weakness. Measuring his habits.
And that thought led to the obvious conclusion: this wasn't some overeager rival student. This was a professional.
He turned down a narrow connecting corridor between two lecture wings, his boots silent on the composite floor. Overhead, the curved glass skylight let in a sliver of cold moonlight, broken by the ribs of steel framing.
The sound came next.
Not loud. Just the faintest scrape of weight shifting against a wall, too careful to be an accident.
Vadel kept walking.
His route took him toward the east observation decks — a place few students visited at night, partly because the massive glass panes looking out over the city gave a subtle feeling of vertigo. It was also an excellent spot for a tail to stay hidden, using reflections as both a shield and a lens.
EON whispered in his ear, "Thermal reading, thirty meters behind. They're masking, but the bleed is faint. Whoever this is knows tech."
"Keep it quiet. Don't ping them."
"I'm not stupid."
The deck opened before him — a vast, semi-circular space with floor-to-ceiling glass and steel, the academy grounds sprawling below. At this hour, the city beyond was a sea of scattered lights, flickering faintly under a haze of mist.
He stepped up to the glass, his reflection faint but enough to work with.
There.
The figure moved in slow, controlled arcs across the far side of the deck, using the black vertical beams between glass panels as cover. Their clothing was darker than regulation uniforms, matte enough to kill most reflections, and the mask — if it was a mask — absorbed the faint light instead of catching it.
Vadel didn't turn.
Instead, he let his breath fog the glass faintly, as though lost in thought. In that fog, his peripheral vision mapped the figure's pacing — four steps, pause, lean. Four steps, pause, lean.
They were studying him.
"Want me to pull up facial recognition?" EON asked.
"No. That's exactly the kind of sweep they'd feel."
"And you don't want them to know you're aware."
"Not yet."
The silence between them was heavy.
Finally, Vadel turned from the glass and walked away, leaving the observation deck behind. The footsteps didn't follow immediately. That alone told him more than he'd expected — whoever this was had discipline enough not to rush.
By the time he reached the lower levels of the west wing, the faint shadow of pursuit was back.
"You could lose them in the lab block," EON suggested. "It's full of blind corners."
"I don't want to lose them," he said. "I want to see how far they'll go."
He took the long route through the unused robotics labs. These rooms were glass-fronted, the interiors dark except for standby lights on dormant equipment. In the reflections, he caught flickers of motion at least twice.
It became a pattern.
Hallway after hallway, room after room, the tail kept their distance, never too close, never too far. Each time he shifted direction unexpectedly, they adjusted with unnerving smoothness.
Finally, he gave them the opportunity they had been waiting for.
The door to a restricted archive room stood ajar — just enough to tempt the unwary. Vadel slipped inside. The room smelled faintly of dust and cold metal, lined with tall shelves of crystalline data-storage spines. Only a single row of overhead lights was active, leaving deep shadows in every corner.
He walked between the shelves, slow, controlled, listening.
Five seconds. Ten. Fifteen.
Then — a faint hiss as the door slid the rest of the way open.
The figure stepped in, silent as breath.
Vadel kept moving as though unaware, taking a slow turn into another aisle. This time, he didn't bother pretending not to look.
The tail froze when their eyes met across the aisle.
For the briefest moment, there was a standoff. Not tense in the way a fight was, but in the way two predators assess each other, each one knowing the other will act if provoked.
Then the figure moved — not forward, but back. Into shadow. The door hissed open again. Closed.
Gone.
Vadel stood there for a long moment, the faint smell of their presence — something chemical and cold — still lingering in the air.
EON's voice was quiet. "No ID. No facial profile. That outfit was custom stealth gear — energy-dampening weave, zero-reflection mask. Whoever that was, they're not a student."
"I know."
"They're not even from this planet."
That made him pause.
"You're sure?"
"The weave pattern — I've seen it before. Off-world contract work. Expensive."
Vadel left the archive without another word. The corridors were empty again, but the academy didn't feel empty.
If anything, it felt like the walls themselves were holding secrets now.
---
The next day didn't bring answers — it brought more questions.
Classes moved in their usual rhythm, instructors speaking, holo-displays flickering with diagrams, training matches unfolding in the Sigma-4 arena. But between each class, in every reflection, every crowd, Vadel searched.
The tail didn't appear again.
"Maybe they got what they wanted," EON suggested during Weapons Systems Lab.
"Maybe," Vadel said. But he didn't believe it.
You didn't watch someone for hours just to walk away.
By late afternoon, he changed tactics. If they wouldn't show themselves during the day, he would force the issue at night.
When the academy's lights dimmed and the common halls emptied, he headed straight for the central glass dome.
The dome's interior walkways were deserted, the curved panels of crystal and steel arching far above like the inside of a colossal lens. Below, the gardens of the central courtyard lay in neat geometric patterns, faint light catching on silver-leafed plants genetically bred to thrive in minimal sun.
He waited there for twenty minutes without moving.
On the twenty-first, there was movement.
Not behind him. Not even on the walkway.
Up above, moving along the structural ribs of the dome itself, a shape glided silently from one anchor point to the next. The angle was perfect — high enough to see him, but not to be seen from below unless you knew where to look.
"EON," he murmured, "how many students have clearance to walk the upper dome beams?"
"None," she replied flatly.
The figure kept moving until they were directly above him. Then they stopped, perfectly balanced on a narrow steel arc.
Vadel didn't look up.
He simply stepped back into the shadows cast by one of the dome's massive support pillars and waited.
The figure didn't follow.
They simply… watched.
It was a long time before they moved again, gliding soundlessly toward the far side of the dome and vanishing into shadow.
When they were gone, EON broke the silence.
"They're not just watching you, Vadel. They're studying the academy."
He knew she was right. And that made the game far more dangerous than he'd thought.
Because whoever was behind the glass veil wasn't just after him.
They were after something bigger.