06:04 – Northwest Girls' Housing, Room 314
Monday.
The alarms started before the sun even considered waking up.
Alia groaned into her pillow. Her muscles screamed. Tessa rolled off her bed like a ragdoll. Zuri was already up—because of course she was—tying her braided hairs back like she was prepping for war.
"Up, up, up," Zuri barked. "Unless you're planning to let the laziness sweat off your GPA."
Alia flipped her the finger before sitting up, eyes crusty and soul absent.
"You're lucky I don't throw this slipper at your head."
"You couldn't even lift it right now."
The drills started at 6:30 on Mondays. But because they'd ranked mid-tier in the last assessment, Noctis and Caelus had been scheduled to run bonus drills for the week. A special kind of hell. The instructors called it "Character Fortification." The students just called it "Try Not to Die: Monday Edition."
---
06:50 – Training Grounds
The morning air was cold. Not cool. Cold. Like it hated you personally.
Alia had mud on her left sleeve, a scraped knee from diving too hard, and a cramp in her side. Carmen had been on the field too—running her own laps, watching from afar, completely unreadable.
When they locked eyes for a split second, Carmen looked away first.
Something about that made Alia flinch harder than the push-ups.
---
08:20 – Noctis Lecture Hall, East Wing
She'd barely had time to shower and half-dry her curls when she slid into her Mafia Governance lecture, notebook barely holding together. Professor Lucier was already mid-rant about syndicate diplomacy.
Alia sat beside Kenzie again. Kenzie passed her a wrapped peppermint silently.
"For your death breath," she said.
Alia sucked on it without arguing.
"So... did you figure out what I meant?" Kenzie muttered as Professor Lucier turned to write something on the board.
"About Cade?"
Kenzie nodded, eyes ahead. "I didn't say anything exact, because saying the truth can get people disappeared."
Alia blinked.
"Disappeared?"
"Like—reassigned. Quietly. Just... be careful."
Before Alia could push further, Carmen entered the hall—late.
The room straightened without being asked.
Alia watched her walk to the front row and sit, posture like a drawn sword.
"She always shows up like she owns oxygen," Kenzie whispered.
---
10:45 – Back to Vantaire Grounds
Her Noctis classes ended by mid-morning, but there was no rest.
She had exactly 15 minutes to make it to the lower level of the Vantaire tower. There, Alder Vos and Callum Callahan stood waiting.
"You're early," Callum noted, raising a brow.
"I'm always early," Alia lied.
Today's Vantaire session wasn't theory. It was deployment. She was being handed her first real-world trial. Not a simulation. Not a mock.
"You'll be intercepting and decoding a live data transmission from an offshore shell firm laundering funds for a known arms ring," Vos said like he was reading a grocery list.
"Is this legal?" Alia asked, eyes wide.
"No," Callum and Vos said at the same time.
"Cool."
---
11:10 – 18:40
Mission Execution Room 9B - Vantaire Tower
This wasn't coding in her room. This was multi-layered surveillance, deep-dive decryption, and a dizzying number of backdoors and fake ports. She had six hours to gather the intel and hide her digital footprint-without tripping the firm's alert system.
Alia worked like a woman possessed. Caffeine in one hand. Keyboard under both. She cracked the first two firewalls in less than an hour, but the third one had a strange proxy mirror that relooped her logic path. Vos watched like a statue while Callum twirled a pen between his fingers.
By 18:30, she had almost finished—then noticed a code segment had regenerated itself. She'd missed a recursive constant.
"Ughhh, not again," she muttered.
"Time's ticking," Callum offered smugly.
"I swear if you don't shut-"
She patched it. Quick. Dirty. Functional.
The buzzer went off.
"Success," Vos said flatly.
Callum clapped twice, obnoxiously slow.
"You're a menace," Alia huffed.
"And you're gifted. Try to keep it up."
---
19:08 – Northwest Girls' Housing
She stumbled into Room 314 like a soldier returning from war.
Tessa and Zuri were face-deep in noodles again.
"You're alive," Tessa chirped.
"Debatable," Alia said, dropping her bag.
She sat, slurped, sighed, and checked the tablet near her pillow.
An encrypted message flickered in.
From: Callahan
"New trial in 36 hours. Don't get sloppy."
She didn't know whether to feel thrilled or terrified.
Alia didn't respond to Callum's message at first.
She stared at it while half-laying on her bed, the room glowing dim with the warm light of a setting sun filtered through gauzy curtains. Zuri and Tessa were arguing over playlist rotations, but their voices were background static to the noise in her head.
Then finally, she typed:
ALIA:
"Where do I find students logs that aren't meant to be found?"
No emoji. No greeting. Just that. Sent.
The three dots appeared almost instantly-then disappeared. Then again.
Callum was either amused or suspicious. Or both.
His reply came through after a beat:
CALLUM:
"Odd question for someone who hasn't even mapped the Vault's north corridor."
Cryptic. Evasive. Classic.
Alia narrowed her eyes at the screen.
"We're doing riddles now?" she muttered under her breath.
She shot back a reply.
ALIA:
"Humor me. Theoretical curiosity."
Another pause.
Then:
CALLUM:
"Try the eastern descent. If you know what you're looking for, the walls will tell you."
She read it three times, then locked her tablet.
The Vault.
She'd only heard whispers. She thought it was all tech-servers, weapon logs, funding trails. But people? Students who weren't meant to be found?
There was no reason to be digging around that kind of history. And yet...
"You good?" Zuri asked from across the room, one earbud still in.
"Yeah," Alia said, too quickly. "Just thinking about... laundry."
"Uh-huh."
Zuri didn't buy it, but she didn't push.
Tessa, bless her heart, was too busy texting Malik a meme about sparring drills to notice anything.
---
Later that night, Alia lay in bed staring at the ceiling. She couldn't sleep. Callum's words looped in her brain like bad code. "The walls will tell you."
It wasn't just about Cade anymore.
It was about something deeper.
Someone was hiding something.
Maybe... more than one someone.
And Alia Reivas was starting to learn that at St. Bernard's, everyone had a vault—of secrets.
Even her.
---
00:34
It was well past midnight when Alia cracked open the service door to the roof.
She wasn't sure what she expected to find—maybe a moment of peace, maybe a breeze to clear her head—but the second she saw Carmen sitting cross-legged on the concrete, head tilted back, eyes closed, wind pulling strands of hair across her face like a whispered spell... she forgot how to walk.
Forgot how to breathe, too.
Carmen didn't notice her at first. The wind was strong, combing through her curls. Her hoodie was too big, sleeves pulled over her hands, and her boots were unlaced. She looked... undone. Like a page torn out of something too personal to share.
Alia stepped out quietly, then shut the door behind her.
The click made Carmen's eyes open.
She looked at Alia for a beat, face unreadable.
Alia's mouth parted slightly, but no words came. She had her hoodie thrown over a tank top, hair tied back with a loose band. Her face was bare. No secrets. Just exhaustion from drills, aching fingers from code, and a restlessness she didn't know how to name.
So she crossed the rooftop and sat down in front of Carmen.
No words. Just that.
The wind tangled in their silence.
Then, softly:
"You did a good job yesterday," Carmen said, eyes back on the skyline. Her voice wasn't cold—it was neutral, but the kind of neutral that made you lean in.
Alia blinked. A small huff of a laugh slipped out.
"Thought you didn't care that much."
She glanced away, pretending not to wait for a response.
For a long moment, Carmen said nothing.
But then Alia caught it—the corner of her lips, twitching. Not a full smile. Just a crack in the armor.
So Alia leaned forward, slow, fingers brushing a strand of wind—tossed hair out of Carmen's face. Her knuckles grazed Carmen's cheekbone as she tucked it behind her ear.
Carmen stilled completely.
So did Alia.
They were so close.
Alia's voice dropped to a whisper.
"I really thought I saw a smile there."
She pouted slightly, exaggerated, her eyes playful but careful. Soft. Like she was asking for permission without saying it out loud.
Carmen scoffed under her breath. But it was the kind of scoff that had weight to it. Meaning.
"Don't push your luck," she murmured.
But her voice wasn't sharp.
It was tired. And warm.
Like she hadn't had someone close enough to tuck her hair in a long time.