Lost

No one saw the newbies until the next week. By then, my nerves had eased by much. If there was a new girl they would have already assigned a room to her by now. She had to stay somewhere. And since I still had my room all to myself, that meant even if there was a girl, they had given her a separate room instead of rooming her with me. Though it didn't help me sleep, I breathed easier at nightfall in the darkness knowing that no one was going to be hurt.

The first one of them was spotted at lunchtime. I didn't go to lunch hall, but I heard someone talking about it in the lesson after. "He couldn't have looked any more out of place," one of the younger girls said. "He wore glasses. His hair was combed. Can you imagine him pouncing on an eight-foot tall dummy like that? Like, I'm gonna slay this monster. Here, hold my glasses for me."

According to their observation, the new guy they saw in the lunchtime was a clumsy 'dork' with no muscle mass. "That's what happens if you skip the initiation," another guy said. "Makes you stay soft."

Everyone seemed to disapprove of the newbies getting admitted straight to the advanced training without having to take hard examinations like we all did. Unless they had been trained somewhere else prior to their arrival, they would fall behind on our lessons. But since the first sighting of the newbie, everyone doubted that possibility. Those trained would look…trained. And Lysandra wouldn't have asked me to give them lessons on the basics if they did.

Past dinnertime, I headed out to the gardens on the southern part of our academy complex. The evening sky was bleak gray tinged with the barest hint of purple. I wasn't the only out here; many other students were strolling, getting some air before the curfew closed in. The formidable Lady Earhart closed the dorm gates straight at eight and no later. Getting caught outside the dorm past curfew meant punishment, and no punishment was ever light in the academy.

It really shouldn't come off as a surprise when I ran into him, but I still couldn't keep the pounding in my chest when I saw him flinch at the sight of me.

"Cordelia?"

I ran all the way back to my dorm.

Case Studies used to be one of my favorite lessons. It was everyone's favorite. The class encouraged us to develop solutions to real problems we could face in the field by weighing every possible events. I didn't like it as much today. Our main topic was teamwork.

"What do you do if your colleague is injured in the middle of the fight?"

That was the standard question for every lesson with this topic, but today our trainer Hurst wanted to do something different. He wanted to pair us in teams and made us pull our decisions based on our subjective views of our teammates. "Because," Hurst said, "that's what will happen in real life. You will see a friend, not a colleague."

Well, he didn't need to worry about that when it came to me. No one here considered me a friend and as far as I was concerned they were welcome to feed me to the wolves anytime.

There were three people in every group. When everyone has grouped, it left me with Willy Vermont, a tall girl I recognized from my dorm. She was the regular target of Lady Earhart's wrath, thanks to her many escapades in the boy's dorm. "I don't want to be with her," she complained to Hurst. "Can't you make an exception to one group and make it four?"

I watched wordlessly as she argued with our trainer. What would I do if we were fighting together and she got injured? I had a tempting image of leaving her hanging one-handed at the edge of a building while I walked away. My hand twitched. I closed my eyes and breathed slowly.

When I opened them, it was because the class had gone silent. I thought it was something I did at first—I checked my hands twice to make sure it wasn't—and then I saw the person they were all staring at, a guy standing at the doorway looking at us.

He couldn't be anyone but the new guy, but he wasn't anywhere close to the reported description I had been hearing everywhere. If there was a guy who looked like he could stop a whole room from talking with just his presence, it would be him. For starters, he was tall—most of us were taller than average, but he was really tall. Some people couldn't handle that much height, but he carried himself like he owned the room instead of like a lost giraffe in a field of pigs. He wore no smile, but it wasn't a volatile expression; it was only a neutral juxtaposition to his somber features: deep brown eyes, dark hair, and thick brows that met together in the middle.

Beside me, Willy has cleared the scowl off her face and traded it for her trademark suggestive smile.

Hurst cleared his throat. "Mr. Lyall, I presume? You are late by twenty minutes."

"I got lost."

Looking like he didn't believe the new guy's claim, Hurst waved a hand our way. "It's fortunate that your arrival is just in time to even our numbers."

The new guy went to stand with us. Hurst explained the rules to him and set off to analyze the other groups. Willy inched closer to him not so surreptitiously, and he asked, "So this is a discussion, right?"

"Right," Willy said. "The question is what we're going to do if we fight alongside each other and one of us is injured. The answer has to be personal. But I don't know you yet, so…" Her eyes flitted to me with a glint. "Maybe we can start easy. If she's injured, I definitely know what to do." Without even pausing, she continued, "I would leave her and go save myself. From her. Anyway, what's your name?"

If he was thrown by the change of subject, he didn't show it. He hadn't even looked my way, but I was sure he must have seen the scar. Stealth was an uncommon trait among people like us, but somehow he mastered it. "Raphael."

"You don't look like a Raphael. But I guess I don't look like a Wilhelmina, either." She grinned. "Call me Willy."

I couldn't wait for the lesson to be over. If there was something worse than being virtually teamed with people who disliked you it was being teamed with people who disliked you but were flirting with each other. Tuning out and letting them talk should help, but I couldn't just stand still and do nothing, think of nothing. Every part of me was looking for a fight. It was in our nature, more so in mine than the others. My heart was racing, my muscles pulsing in spasms. I had to do something.

Thankfully, the time was out for the lesson. I pushed my way through the crowd in the hallway, trying to take the straightest road back to my dorm room. By the time I made it inside my room, I locked the door and threw the key under my bed. My sweater was sticking to the cold sweat covering my back. Feeling suffocated, I pulled it away from my skin, and then stopped when I heard a ripping sound behind me.

In the dresser mirror, I saw the knit lines shredded by a set of long incisions made by long pointed ends, covered in my own blood.

Stop, I told myself. Stop it. But I couldn't calm myself, and the more panicked I felt the longer the claws grew. It wasn't working. This wasn't what I wanted to be. I didn't want this.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the edge of my training blade on my dresser. Diamond edge. That should work. Before I lost my nerve, I grabbed the knife awkwardly with my right hand and slammed it down on my claws.

Agony. Slipping down to the floor, I couldn't even bite off my scream, but a sick sense of satisfaction came over me as I saw the mutilated claws retracting back into my hands.

I leaned against the wall and breathed as I studied the damage. My left hand looked disfigured in every way, the fingers crooked so badly it was barely recognizable. At least it still had bones. Maybe. They were still dripping blood everywhere.