The evacuation stream moved past them like a river with a fixed destination.
Eight hundred students filing through the sector threshold and turning toward the Academic District, toward the assembly points, toward the direction the protocol said to go. It was not panic—it was worse than panic. It was trained compliance, the specific orderly motion of people executing a known response.
And the response was wrong, and most of them did not know it yet.
Vane's chest tightened as he watched them pass. Hundreds of students moving in that controlled urgency, trusting the protocol, trusting that the Academy knew what it was doing.
He moved against it.
Ashe was at his left shoulder. Nyx was three steps ahead, moving at the fastest pace he'd seen from her. Not running—she never ran—but the performance of ease entirely stripped away. The opal eyes open and doing something he hadn't seen them do before. Not watching. Reading.
