Luna realized very quickly that at Elite Academy, being ignored was the only safe state.
And she had clearly missed that window.
Less than two hours after entering the research building, her terminal lit up three times in succession—confirmation of equipment access, laboratory usage guidelines, and a formally worded welcome email.
She glanced at the sender.
It wasn't the administrative office.
Nor the research coordination department.
It was a name she had never seen before.
Luna did not open the message.
At this academy, anything that approached on its own usually carried a price. It either demanded a response—or marked a position.
She needed neither.
She turned her attention back to the workbench, adjusting parameters and recording baseline data. Her movements were steady and precise, as though she were deliberately proving that she was nothing more than an ordinary researcher.
She knew it was pointless.
She could feel it— the attention.
Not coming from a single direction, not a direct stare, but something broader and colder. As if she had been folded into a running model, assessed, quantified, recalculated.
Not who she was.
But whether she was worth continued notice.
The sensation unsettled her.
"You don't like being observed."
The voice came from behind her.
Luna didn't startle.
She had already sensed the shift at the boundary of the experimental zone—the subtle change in airflow, the softened footsteps, the careful maintenance of distance.
She turned.
Ethan Bennett stood just outside the marked line, hands relaxed at his sides. His posture was easy, but clearly intentional.
Not unconscious politeness.
A choice.
"That's the nature of academic environments," Luna said calmly.
"Yes," Ethan replied, nodding. "But not to this extent. At least not on your first day."
She studied him briefly.
"And you are?"
"Ethan," he said. "I coordinate academic collaboration for visiting researchers."
It was an official answer.
And a deliberately simplified one.
He did not mention what his surname represented. Nor his relationship to the Academy's board.
Luna noticed.
"So you're here for work," she asked, "or personal curiosity?"
Ethan paused for a moment, then smiled faintly.
"What if I said both?"
She didn't respond.
He didn't seem to mind.
"Your research focus is… unusual," he continued. "Survival and adaptation modeling in extreme environments isn't part of the Academy's current priorities."
"Mainstream projects rarely need me," Luna replied.
It wasn't modesty.
It was fact.
Something sharpened in Ethan's expression.
"Then what do you need?"
The question made her pause.
What did she need?
There were many answers— safety, time, distance, the freedom not to be defined too early.
None of them belonged here.
"Quiet," she said at last.
Ethan nodded, as though carefully noting a condition.
"That, I can try to ensure," he said. "At least within the academic sphere."
He didn't leave immediately.
His gaze rested briefly on the data model running on her screen, never crossing the boundary.
"Do you know how Elite Academy was originally founded?" he asked suddenly.
Luna didn't look up. "I assume you're not about to give me a campus tour speech."
Ethan let out a soft laugh.
"It wasn't originally a academy," he said. "It was an agreement."
Her fingers paused on the keyboard.
"After the war, many old orders didn't disappear," Ethan continued, his tone calm but deliberately detached. "They simply adopted more respectable forms. Knowledge, resources, talent—centralized, filtered, redistributed."
"Elite Academy," he paused slightly, "is what remains of that mechanism."
Luna finally looked up at him.
"That doesn't sound like the version on your website."
"The website exists to reassure," Ethan shrugged. "Its real function was never meant to be public."
He gestured toward the corridor outside the laboratory.
"This place doesn't just train scholars," he said. "It produces decision-makers, heirs, and the next holders of resources."
"Research is only one of the filtering tools," he continued. "What's truly tested is judgment, the limits of obedience, and how much of oneself remains intact in the presence of power."
Luna remained silent.
"So when you said you could guarantee 'academic quiet,'" she said evenly, "that wasn't entirely within your control."
Ethan didn't deny it.
"No," he said. "Because 'academics' here have never existed in isolation."
"They're bound to families, capital, and political choices." "Most people only realize that after graduation."
"And you?" Luna asked. "When did you realize it?"
Ethan looked at her.
This time, he didn't answer immediately.
"Early," he said at last. "Early enough that leaving was no longer an option."
The air fell briefly still.
"At Elite Academy," Ethan added quietly, "being ignored is the safest position."
Luna returned her attention to the screen.
"Unfortunately," she said, "that doesn't seem to be an option for me."
Ethan's lips curved slightly, though there was no humor in it.
"Then you'll have to learn something else," he said. "How to retain agency while being watched."
At that moment, the atmosphere changed.
Not in sound. Not in movement.
But in instinct.
As if an invisible thread had been drawn tight.
Luna looked up.
A man stood at the entrance to the laboratory.
He was tall, impeccably dressed. He didn't step forward immediately—his gaze swept across the space before settling on her.
Her body tensed before her mind could catch up.
Not because it felt threatening—
—but because the attention itself was unwarranted.
It was the look of someone accustomed to control, momentarily unsettled by an unexpected variable.
"Adrian Moreau," he said calmly. "I oversee certain aspects of the Academy's research resource coordination."
Another incomplete introduction.
And this time, she understood—
This wasn't coincidence.
It was a mark.