The gate incident should have made her more cautious. It should have taught her patience, planning, restraint.
But hunger is a poor student.
By Tuesday, the gnawing was back. Not as desperate as before Theta-9, but persistent. A constant reminder that her body was building at a pace her discreet CYAP snacks couldn't sustain.
The numbers haunted her during "Cooperative Rainbow Building," where the children tried to combine their lights into a single spectrum. Astraea's silver contribution was steady, but inside, she was calculating. Planning.
Theta-9 was out. Too risky after the guard incident. But there were other minor gates. Beta-4, a water treatment stabilization gate near the river. Delta-12, supporting the city's mana-grid backup systems.
Both were farther. Both required longer absences. Both increased risk.
But the alternative was watching her hard-won growth stall again. Feeling her wings regress. Her scales dull.
She couldn't. Not after waiting so long.
The plan formed during naptime. Wednesday afternoon, Mrs. Evans had a dental appointment. She'd be gone from 2:00 to 4:00 PM. Astraea would be home with the elderly neighbor, Mrs. Gable, who napped more soundly than the children at CYAP.
It was a window.
Beta-4 was her target. A water treatment gate had constant, heavy flow—more mana to mask her draw. And it was near a playground. Plausible cover.
Wednesday arrived with nervous energy that Astraea had to carefully dampen. At CYAP, she performed her sparkles with mechanical precision. She ate her lunch without tasting it. She nodded at Teacher Milly's stories without hearing them.
"You're twitchy today," Leo observed during free play. He was building a tower of blocks with his non-glowing hand, his green finger resting on top like a beacon. "Like you have to be somewhere."
"Just tired," Astraea said, which was true in a way. Maintaining normalcy while planning theft was exhausting.
Mrs. Evans dropped her off at home at 1:30 with a kiss on the forehead. "Mrs. Gable's in her apartment if you need anything, sweetie. I'll be back by four!"
The moment the door closed, Astraea moved. Hooded jacket. Sneakers. A note left on the kitchen table: *Gone to playground. Back before 4. -Raea*
She took the bus this time—a calculated risk. A child alone on a bus might draw attention, but walking two miles would take too long. She paid with coins from her allowance, keeping her head down.
Beta-4 was exactly as she'd envisioned from the city infrastructure maps she'd studied online: a small, fenced facility beside the water treatment plant, with a larger, more stable gate than Theta-9. The hum of mana was a physical vibration in the air, mixing with the smell of chlorine and wet concrete.
And the security was even lighter. No guard booth. Just a fence and a sign: CITY MANA UTILITIES - AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
She found a gap in the fence where piping entered the ground—a narrow space just large enough for a small child. She wriggled through, her jacket catching on the chain-link, tearing slightly.
The gate itself was impressive: a five-meter circle of shimmering blue energy, contained within a ring of copper pipes and quartz crystals. Water flowed through pipes around it, being infused with cleansing mana. The air smelled of ozone and fresh water.
Astraea approached cautiously, her senses extended. No alarms. No watching eyes. Just the steady thrum of a utility doing its job.
She placed her hands on the containment ring.
And this time, she was smarter. She didn't gulp. She drank steadily, matching her draw to the gate's natural rhythm. She took what she needed—a substantial amount, but spread over time, masked within normal fluctuations.
It was working. The gate hummed contentedly. No flickers. No alarms. She was a shadow drinking from a river, not a drain opening in a bathtub.
She lost herself in the flow. The mana was cleaner here, purer. Water-aligned. It cooled the burning in her wing buds, smoothed the edges of her hunger. For the first time in days, she felt… balanced. Whole.
Time passed. Her core reached 67%. Then 72%. The wing buds hummed at 74% development. Her growth, stalled since Saturday, resumed with a gentle ache in her bones.
She should have left then. At 75% core, with time to spare before Mrs. Evans returned.
But it felt so good. After centuries of starvation, then weeks of rationing, this was a feast. And she was so tired of being hungry.
She took a little more. Just a little.
She didn't stop.
Still she drank.
That got her attention. She yanked her hands back, breaking the connection. The gate's blue shimmer flickered once, twice, then stabilized. But a low alarm began sounding from somewhere inside the treatment plant—not a siren, but a steady, pulsing beep.
And then she heard the voices.
"—fluctuation in Sector B. Probably another sensor glitch."
"Third one this month. Maintenance says the dampeners are wearing out."
"Let's check it anyway. Protocol."
Footsteps on concrete. Coming closer.
Astraea looked around wildly. The fence was twenty meters away across open ground. The piping gap was on the other side of the compound. She'd never make it.
Her eyes landed on the gate itself. The containment ring had an access panel, a metal door about half her height. For maintenance. Currently closed.
But not locked.
She wrenched it open. The space inside was cramped, filled with humming crystals and warm pipes. But there was just enough room for a small child to curl up.
She scrambled inside, pulling the door closed behind her just as two workers in city utility uniforms rounded the corner of the building.
The metal door had a small ventilation grate. Through it, she could see their boots stopping near the gate.
"See? Normal," said one voice.
"The sensor's still reading a dip," said the other. "Look—output dropped fifteen percent for about three minutes. That's not a glitch."
"Could be a draw from the grid. Hospital's mana ICU sometimes pulls extra."
"At 2:47 on a Wednesday?"
A pause. Astraea held her breath, curled in the dark space. The crystals hummed around her, warm against her back. Mana flowed through pipes inches from her face. If they opened this panel…
"Let me check the access log," said the first worker. She heard the beep of a tablet, then tapping.
"No unauthorized entries. Last maintenance was… two weeks ago."
"Check the perimeter."
She heard their footsteps moving away, circling the fence. This was her chance. While they were on the far side, she could slip out and run.
But as she reached for the door latch, she heard a third voice—a new one, sharper, more authoritative.
"What's the situation?"
"Minor fluctuation, Supervisor. We're checking the perimeter."
"Fluctuation my foot. Look at this." The sound of another tablet being activated. "That's a consumption signature. Something drew from the gate. Something big."
Astraea's blood ran cold. Consumption signature. They could track that?
"Like what? A rogue Awakened?"
"Or something else. We've had reports of minor gate incidents citywide. Theta-9 last weekend. Gamma-3 the week before. All the same pattern: brief, massive draw, then nothing."
She hadn't known about Gamma-3. She hadn't been there. Which meant… she wasn't the only one feeding from the city's gates.
The realization should have been comforting—she wasn't alone in her hunger. Instead, it was terrifying. Because if someone was tracking these incidents, and they found a pattern…
"Could it be a new type of mana-vore? Some Awakened mutation?"
"Or something that's been hiding and just woke up hungry." The supervisor's voice was grim. "I'm reporting this up the chain. If whatever this is keeps feeding, it's going to trigger grid alarms. And then the Association's Special Investigations unit gets involved."
Special Investigations. The words tasted like cold metal. That was Hunter Kestrel's department, according to the blueprint's future notes.
"Should we increase security?" one worker asked.
"On all minor gates, effective immediately. And I want a review of all surveillance footage from today. If something came through that fence, I want to know what it looked like."
Astraea closed her eyes. The ventilation grate. Had it caught her face as she scrambled inside? Had there been cameras she missed?
Too high. Far too high.
The workers' footsteps faded as they moved back toward the plant building. Astraea waited, counting seconds in the dark. When she reached three hundred, she carefully pushed the access door open.
The compound was empty. The alarm had stopped. The gate hummed normally.
She ran for the fence, through the piping gap, out into the afternoon sunlight. The bus ride home was a blur. She made it back at 3:52, just as Mrs. Evans' car pulled into the parking lot.
"Did you have fun at the playground, sweetie?" Mrs. Evans asked, giving her a hug.
Astraea nodded, her face pressed against Mrs. Evans' coat. She could still smell the gate's ozone, the chlorine. "It was… educational."
That night, as she measured her height (0.55 cm cumulative—growth resumed), the supervisor's words echoed in her mind.
Something that's been hiding and just woke up hungry.
He was right. That's exactly what she was.
And now, they were looking.
She touched the scale on her arm through her pajamas. It was warm, humming with fresh mana. She was fed. She was growing.
But the cost was becoming clear. Every meal left evidence. Every theft tightened the net.
And somewhere in the city, something else was feeding too. Something that left the same signature.
The hunger had brought her to the edge of discovery. Next time, it might push her over.
Tonight: fullness and fear. Tomorrow: new strategies, or new dangers. The hunt was no longer just about feeding. It was about not being caught.