20:46 - Vantaire Training Hub, Command Pod 3
Her fingers were flying.
Seven hours into the operation-four of prep, three of combat coding–and Alia's head was pounding like she'd been cracked open and soldered shut with caffeine and spite. Screens flickered in front of her, graphs overlapping graphs, her interface running silent, ghost mode.
Every blink stung. Her pulse was coded in binary at this point.
"Come on, come on," she muttered, typing fast, knuckles grazing buttons. "Just another line, just another injection-"
She clicked. A drive spun to life.
Firewall disabled. Secondary system overridden. External protocol hijacked.
Boom. Access granted.
She grinned.
Until she didn't.
The interface jolted. A line of red static slithered across the corner of the display.
A silent error code blinked at her like a smug little devil.
"No-no no no no–" she hissed. "What is that? That shouldn't be there."
A function was collapsing. She followed it up the pipeline. Traced the debug.
And then her stomach dropped.
She forgot a constant.
A single variable. The one that looped back through her entire simulation and quietly unraveled everything.
"Shit," she whispered, scrambling. "It's recursive, recursive-why is it recursive?!"
She yanked off her headset, fingers flying across the second screen, opening logs, cross-checking her stack.
Behind her, Callum Callahan was watching from the top-level console. Elbows resting casually on the rail. Not blinking. Not helping.
"Callum, a little help please?" she snapped, "I need input-my reference key isn't holding across the buffer and I can't-"
"Mmm," he hummed.
"Please."
"Figure it out," he said simply, and sipped from a bottle of water like they weren't seconds away from an exposure breach.
"You are the worst," Alia muttered furiously, eyes back on the screen. "You're literally standing there being rich and useless-"
"Technically I'm observing. Alder said to let you try alone."
Vos, from his own console, didn't say a word. His tablet reflected the crashing lines of Alia's misfiring variable but his face stayed blank.
You all enjoy watching me suffer, huh?
Fine.
She didn't panic. Not really.
Instead, she opened a side thread and rerouted the broken loop into a dummy variable. It left a loose end-one very visible to trained eyes-but she masked it under an encryption net just long enough to complete the task.
"Running closure scripts," she muttered, "3... 2..."
Done.
The entire framework shut down in perfect sync. The display turned green. Final log downloaded, exported, cleared. Her interface cleaned itself in a timed cycle.
Then–
Buzzer rang.
Soft. Mocking.
Callum leaned forward and slow-clapped from the railing above.
Vos tilted his head slightly, then turned off his tablet.
"Expected," he said.
Alia spun in her chair. Sweaty. Unhinged. Thrilled.
"I got in, didn't I?"
"You also left a hole big enough for a toddler to find."
"After I completed the task!"
Callum was grinning.
"And what was the constant you missed?"
She stared at him. Narrowed her eyes.
He smiled wider.
"Thread.Index minus one," he said like it was obvious.
Alia cursed under her breath and tossed her stylus at his general direction. He dodged it effortlessly.
"You suck."
"You passed," he said. "Barely. But you passed."
She slumped back into the chair. Neck sore. Eyes aching. Her heart was pounding-but in the right way.
She'd done it. She'd survived.
Vos glanced at the wall screen one last time before sliding her datachip into her coat pocket.
"Dismissed."
---
21:08 - Vantaire Hallways
The moment Alia stepped out, the cold hallway air hit her like a slap. Her fingers were numb. Her knees were jelly. Her brain was a used USB stick, vibrating with static and faint paranoia.
She walked slowly.
For the first time in weeks, her mind wasn't on Cade. Or Carmen. Or her roommates. Or the layers of drama and betrayal leaking from every hallway.
No. Tonight, her victory tasted like adrenaline and tech grease.
And no one could take that from her.
---
21:37 - Northwest Girls' Housing, Room 314
Alia's keycard gave its familiar chirp as the door unlocked, and the second she stepped in, the warmth hit her. Scent of lavender fabric softener and Zuri's jasmine hair cream lingering in the air, mixed with Tessa's obsession with sandalwood candles. Their little room didn't feel like much, but tonight-it felt like peace.
And God, she needed it.
Her steps were heavy. Backpack thunked to the floor. She made it five full paces in before-
"Whoa."
"Damn."
Zuri and Tessa turned from where they sat at the edge of Tessa's bed, heads tilted in sync like owls.
Alia didn't answer. She groaned and dropped facedown on her bed like gravity had yanked her soul out through her spine.
Zuri blinked at her dramatically, like she was studying a crime scene.
"She lives."
Tessa crossed her legs, her glossy braid sliding over her shoulder.
"Where have you been? School ended ages ago, babe. I was two heartbreak songs and a toe cramp deep waiting for your ass."
Alia rolled onto her back, limbs flung out like a crime scene chalk outline. Hair half-tied, hoodie sleeve shoved halfway up her arm, eyes unfocused.
"I had... things."
Zuri snorted.
"Mysterious. We love a girl with secrets."
Tessa perked up, mock-gasping.
"Are you secretly seeing someone? Is it Cade? Are you pregnant?"
"I hate you," Alia mumbled, voice hoarse. "So much."
Zuri kicked her heel off and lobbed a mini pillow at Alia's head.
"Shut up and eat. She made you food."
"Ramyeon," Tessa said proudly, holding up the bowl like she was delivering a newborn. "I even added a boiled egg and scallions. We ran out of seaweed strips, sue me."
Alia sat up, sniffed dramatically, and took the bowl like it was a holy offering. She slurped the first bite like a woman possessed, and groaned.
"God. Yes. Wife me."
"She's spoken," Zuri smirked, propping her chin on her knuckles. "Tessa Caldwell: official house chef and certified baddie."
Tessa grinned like she won an award.
"I do put the 'yum' in 'delirium.'"
They all laughed.
For the next few minutes, the room was filled with the sounds of Alia inhaling noodles like she hadn't just hacked through a digital fortress, Zuri moisturizing her elbows with terrifying intensity, and Tessa rubbing balm into her cuticles while humming along to the faint music from her speaker.
Then Zuri glanced up, lips curving into something sharp and amused.
"Oh, by the way–ask Tessa what she told me today."
Tessa immediately turned pink.
"Zuri," she whined. "You said you wouldn't bring it up!"
"Nope," Zuri said, holding a hand up. "I said I wouldn't bring it up in public. This is a safe zone."
Alia raised an eyebrow mid-bite, pointing at them with her chopsticks.
"Someone better start talking before I drop this egg in protest."
Tessa groaned and grabbed a pillow to hide her face.
"Fine. I said... maybe I might actually like Malik. Like, for real."
There was a beat.
Alia gasped, nearly choking on her noodles.
"Tessa! Are we talking feelings?"
Zuri grinned.
"And not the flirty kind she usually keeps in the bottom of her Dior bag."
Tessa peeked out from behind the pillow, her cheeks flushed.
"I don't know! He's just... soft. Like, when he listens to me, it's not the performative kind. It's like he's actually hearing me."
Alia smiled, nudging her with her toe.
"He better. Or we start a petition to break his kneecaps."
"We'll name it 'Justice for Caldwell,'" Zuri added.
They all broke into giggles again. That warm, girly kind that only happens in safe places.
Tessa curled her legs under her, hugging her pillow.
"I don't know where it's going. I just... I feel safe with him."
Alia blinked at her friends–one now obsessed with perfecting her liquid eyeliner in the mirror, the other still hiding her blushy face in a pillow. And despite the way her body still hummed with exhaustion and her mind buzzed from everything she couldn't say, she smiled.
This–this moment–felt real.
"God, I missed you guys."
"You better have," Zuri said without looking up. "You've been in ghost mode for days. What were you even doing today? You looked like someone hit you with an exam paper dipped in gasoline."
Alia hesitated for a beat, twirling her noodles.
"Just... a lot of thinking."
Zuri raised an eyebrow but didn't push.
Tessa passed her the lip balm.
"You need this more than we do. Your lips are doing the apocalypse."
Alia took it without argument.
They sat in quiet for a moment, the three of them orbiting each other's energies like planets. The comfort of sisterhood thick in the air. Secrets still existed–some too sharp to spill just yet–but that didn't matter tonight.
Tonight, they were just girls.
Tired, bruised, borderline unhinged–but whole.
And for now... that was enough.