In her advanced age, Tallulah needed a footstool to reach the top of the not-particularly-tall display cabinet in her office. She brushed aside a letter opener given by the Feds apparently as a threat, and grabbed a disc of compressed white tea—a cha bing—which she'd been saving for a special occasion.

  The Elder chipped a few grams off with the letter opener and passed the filled gaiwan to Io. The hot golden liquor had a sugared mouthfeel and a medicinal aroma to it, like nothing Marat ever brought her. It tasted like something you were prescribed rather than gifted.

  "You'll need this," she said, wrapping the remainder and sliding it across the polymer table. "Boiling water and longer than you'd think. Don't baby this leaf."

  "You seem excited," Io pointed out, her expression cordial.

  "I'm fucking miserable. Have you noticed your rations getting smaller? No, you wouldn't have, would you." Tallulah reached over and pinched the white fat of Io's flank, which made her flush.

  "In hindsight Marat did good to spoil you. Houser girls are delicate, refined. They drink tea. He's taken you on a few field trips to the Huang and you can um..." The Elder stroked her chin, trying to think of something flattering to say. "Name some planets. Read store signs. Wouldn't expect that of Melchizedek, for instance."

  She groaned at Tallulah using her brother as the picture of an uncultured Drifter, but accepted the sentiment.

  "And while the Guard under your command hasn't been the best at... Guarding things, it's been great at destroying the enemy. That's good. Housers respect power.

  "Pod rustlers, Federalists—the Zeb has a lot of enemies these days. I want you to make some inroads into the Houses, for our sake. That entails a level of delicacy, but surely much of it will come naturally."

  Her dark, calloused fingers closed the tea cake in Io's hands and patted them lightly.

  "And above all, don't forget to have fun."

  "Don't let her come up for air," one of the Vestas grunted.

  Io closed her eyes in anticipation of the wall of cold water that slapped her face. Her hair found its way every place it shouldn't—up her nose, between her teeth. The girls shoved her neck against the porcelain lip of the convenience; she couldn't breathe even if she wanted to.

  Poisoned laughter surrounded her as they surfaced her by the scruff of her hoodie. She didn't even fight it, just squeaked air into her lungs until they were painfully full, as if her life depended on it—because it did. There was no telling when they'd let her breathe next.

  "She can't even Elevate, can she? How's she supposed to get out of the unpowered section?"

  "That's the thing—she doesn't. Nobody's gonna miss a little lowborn who chickened out before class assignment."

  Of course Io had tried to fight them. But she noticed something immediately: none of the boys or men on the Zeb were ever as strong as these girls. Their limbs felt like moving statues; like the robot arms in the hangar, which she'd seen take someone's face off. She froze like a doe. She didn't want to die.

  "She's done," one of them said, audibly dusting off her suit. "Let's go."

  She heard the girls somehow lock the stall behind her, and sniffled.

  Eventually Io squeezed through the gap between the stall and the ceiling. She flopped into a gilded lavatory somewhere on the ship; earlier, they'd inverted the hem of her now soaked hoodie over her head to keep her from figuring out where they were taking her. A single sconce on the wall shed a warm glow into the powder room. She couldn't see her face in the corroded mirrors, maybe for the best.

  Patricia had given her this uniform. It was on her to take care of it. So she slipped out of those sopping wet layers and hung them on the sole running lamp to dry.

  Earlier, the Vestans had mentioned an 'unpowered section', which proved an appropriate name. The hall outside was just as dark as the one she'd been in earlier, minus any signs of life at all; not even the sound of life support in the walls. Her ears rang in the silence. Her whole body felt heavy and numb.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  This hall was decidedly finite. After a few minutes of walking, she reached the end, where a towering, wrought iron double door blocked her off from the rest of the ship. She banged her fist on its cool black surface, hoping to at least slip out before the class assignment Lin had scheduled for the end of the day.

  But of course, nobody answered the door.

  It stacked neatly in the deck of her life in general. Because Io had said a single thing wrong, she was about to miss the one appointment she knew to be mandatory—although who knew what else she'd fucked up, unwritten?

  How long could she even survive here without her luggage? No—she'd done this so many times already on the Zeb. Io felt spent. This time her stupid mouth had done it for real. Her shoulders slumping, she turned around to go find somewhere appropriate to die, when—

  “Hey, watch where you’re goi—Ow!”

  Io found herself flat on her butt, a dull ache spreading across her shoulder where she’d managed to bump into... another student?

  She'd managed to flatten a much shorter girl. Her nose was smushed into the tile, crushed under a massive ripstop backpack that dwarfed her body. It was difficult to determine her House affiliation from the synthetic anorak piled on her shoulders. Her golden hair was tied into pigtails with paper amulets.

  The interloper groaned as she tried to peel herself off the floor, but her hands slipped in the dust and she replanted her forehead with a crack.

  "Shit, sorry!" Io prostrated herself and helped the girl to her feet. "Are you hurt? I didn't mean to."

  Sweat ran down her neck as she belted out indistinct apologies. This girl might be her only ticket out.

  "...I'm Io. What's your name?"

  "M...Mica Pallas Malvern," the pipsqueak said, dusting herself off and propping her hands on her hips. "House Tian Lung. But just a branch family. We're um, merchants, mostly raw materials." Her lip quivered as she specified this, her eyes wandering off to the side.

  "Eyes in the back of the head?" Io muttered unconsciously.

  "You... you betcha!" The girl winked and made a gun with her hand—a sudden about-face that made Io grimace. "So how long have you been looking for the exit?"

  "H...Huh?" Io blinked. "Some girls... left me here about an hour ago," she said, neglecting to mention the toilet part.

  "Oooh." Mica glanced at a men's watch on her wrist. "I've been looking for another student for about a week. My mom said the same thing happened to her back in the day, so I packed appropriately." She shimmied her backpack proudly, where a soiled bedroll jiggled from the latch tab.

  "How does that even happen?"

  "Excuse me." Mica pulled a chalky white bar from her pocket and filled her cheeks with half of it. Io recognized it as a desiccated silkworm ration. It smelled like a cupboard.

  She continued with a full mouth, "When my dad dwopped me off, there was this girl who said she was a 'prefect'. Gulp. She confiscated the knife that came in the acceptance letter, said we 'weren't allowed to carry weapons' or something. After that, I never saw anybody again."

  Now that she mentioned it, Mica didn't seem to be wearing an Athame. One by one, the pieces assembled in Io's mind.

  "You... you idiot!" She shook Mica's shoulders. "How the hell did you fall for that?"

  "E...Excuse me?"

  Mica's eyes widened with indignity, but her face softened as she seemed to actually consider the bullshit she'd proactively prepared for and accepted. For a second there was a hint of wetness in her eyes—but she quickly blinked it out and speared Io with a scowl.

  "You don't understand!" She looked away. "I just... wanted everything to go smoothly. If I said anything... they'd..."

  The way she sulked looked like Melchizedek, back when the bigger boys would bully him.

  Io couldn't help herself. She hugged Mica tight against her chest.

  "From now on, I'm your big sister," she insisted.

  "D... Don't get ahead of yourself!" Mica stamped her feet. "I mean... It's not even a guarantee we end up in the same class..."

  The two hugged silently in the darkness beside the gate, their bodies the only warm thing in the unpowered section. After a while, Mica sniffled and pulled away to wipe her nose. There was blood on the back of her hand, probably from falling flat on her face.

  "Shit," Io apologized again. "I'm sorry. Let me get you a tissue."

  "I got this." Mica held her at arm's length and rummaged in her backpack. As her hands pawed at the pockets, a single drop of blood, black-green in the emergency lighting, slipped from her chin and fell on the marble floor.

  For a moment, nothing happened. Then the grout between the tiles began to shine.

  "M...Mica," Io stammered, pointing. "Look down."

  "Wh... WHAT?"

  The two jumped away as streaks of light spidered across the floor and seared their dark-adjusted eyes. In the distance, a series of gargantuan relays slammed shut with a sound like cannon fire. Waves of cold downlights flickered to life and banished the dark between the marble columns until they'd spread all the way down the corridor.

  Io's eyes stung. She didn't know what to think of it until she saw a thin ring of light hovering above Mica's head, apparently unnoticed.

  "N-N-Network Gene detected." A woman's voice emanated from the ring, distant and cold. "Granting User Elevation. Restoring power to section D."

  "...so that explains the knife," Io said.

  Both of them screamed again as the black gate swung open, striking its hinges in a metallic crash.

  Who was there on the other side but a familiar group of four students in Vesta uniforms, chatting in hushed tones. One of the girls had two Athames around her neck instead of just the one. Her face turned pale when she saw Mica.

  Despite all of them being larger than the diminutive Tian Lung, the whole group, confusingly, turned to run.

  "Get back here!" Mica shredded after them, the luminous ring bobbing up and down with her head.