The stairwell smelled like bleach with ambition.
Solan could taste it every time he inhaled — sharp disinfectant riding the back of his throat, the kind that didn’t belong inside a residential hall unless someone had decided the air itself was evidence.
Matt didn’t seem to notice. Or maybe noticing was a luxury, and Matt treated luxuries the way he treated rules: something to mock until they broke.
“This is bullshit,” he announced, loud enough for three doors down to hate him. “This is literally Silly Week. The best week of the semester. ”
“And instead we're under house arrest with mood lighting. You know what I was supposed to be doing tonight? I was supposed to be outside, being a responsible member of campus culture. Getting dangerously hydrated. Making memories I could cherish forever.”
Solan had no idea how Matt managed to talk and descend a dark stairwell without misjudging a step and dying on principle.
Matt jerked his chin toward the narrow window slit on the landing. Beyond it, the quad was mostly black, but every few seconds a sweep of floodlight carved the grass into harsh geometry. Red-blue pulses flashed against the trees. Somewhere out there, engines sat idling like they were waiting for permission to breathe.
Two hours.
That’s what people kept saying. Two hours since the lights went out. Two hours since that drakespawn had jittered onto campus and, in the process, slammed into the grid hard enough to dump the whole block into darkness.
“Okay,” Matt said, warming up to the idea of being offended. “You know what I’m thinking?”
Solan didn’t like the question in Matt’s mouth. It usually meant Matt was about to make their night worse on purpose.
“We take your sword,” Matt said, voice dropping into a conspiratorial pitch that would’ve been impressive if Solan didn’t know he was doing it for an audience of no one. “We walk up to the EB line. We make a tasteful little doorway through whatever they’re calling a ‘security perimeter’ tonight. We go out. We drink. We come back. We’ll be legends. They’ll name a bench after us.”
Solan’s hand slid, involuntarily, to his left forearm — the place where the Blade lived like a bad secret.
“It doesn’t always show up.”
“Then we do it the traditional way,” he declared. “Brute force. Like cavemen. We shoulder-check the emergency door until the frame gives up. Worst case, we die. Which, frankly, would still be more fun than sitting in our rooms listening to the building hum like it’s ashamed.”
The building did hum, enough that it felt like the walls were holding their breath.
As they hit the second floor landing, a gust of colder air slid through the stairwell, carrying that disinfectant bite sharper. Solan’s stomach tightened.
Somewhere outside — not far, maybe near the east gate — metal scraped against stone. Long. Slow. A sound like someone dragging something heavy across the world and trying not to make it audible.
Matt heard it too.
“Anyway, we’re not staying upstairs.”
They pushed out of the stairwell and into the main hall of the residential building.
It wasn’t crowded, exactly, but it was awake — doors cracked open, faces appearing in slivers of light, someone down the hall clicking a lighter on and off like they were testing whether the universe still responded.
Someone brushed past Solan in the dark and clipped his shoulder.
“Sorry,” a voice murmured.
“It’s fine,” Solan said, automatic.
Matt pointed down the hall with the confidence of someone who had never once questioned whether he was welcome. “Juno’s on one,” he said.
Matt didn’t slow down at the door. He pushed it open with his shoulder like it had already agreed to him and stepped straight inside.
“What up,” he called out, just enough to announce himself.
Solan followed a step behind.
The room was already arranged—desks shoved to the wall, blankets dragged down, people sitting cross-legged in an uneven circle. Candlelight softened the corners. The air was warmer than the hallway, and it smelled faintly of clean laundry and citrus shampoo, something bright and familiar that didn’t belong to panic.
The girl, Juno maybe, looked up from the floor and lifted her chin in acknowledgment. No ceremony. Just, yeah, you made it.
Matt dropped onto the rug without waiting to be invited, legs stretching into the circle like he’d been here all semester. He kicked off his shoes and shoved them under a desk with his foot.
Solan lowered himself down beside the wall, careful, automatic. Close enough to count as present. Far enough to leave if he needed to.
A couple of people shifted to make space. No one asked questions. Outside, the blackout hummed like pressure against the glass.
Matt clapped once, sharp and cheerful. “Alright. We’re not spending the night listening to generators and pretending that’s normal.”
He looked around the circle like he’d just taken charge of something that hadn’t asked him to.
“Ghost stories,” he declared.
A few groans. A few laughs. Someone tossed a pillow at him.
The room settled.
Solan leaned back against the wall. The candlelight moved gently across the ceiling. The air smelled steady. For the first time that night, nothing demanded an immediate decision.
Matt leaned forward, eyes shining in the candlelight. “Alright,” he said. “who wants go first.”
As if summoned by the phrase, the door opened again.
A boy slipped in carrying a plastic bag that clinked — something bottled, probably stolen from a lounge fridge or purchased with questionable ID. He held it up like an offering.
“Juno,” he said, voice low. “You said to bring—”
Juno waved him in without looking away from Matt.
More footsteps followed — soft, tentative. People kept arriving in pairs and singles, drawn by the same instinct that made animals cluster when the forest went quiet.
Each time the door opened, Solan felt the disinfectant smell for a half-second, like the outside world trying to remind them it still existed.
Then the room swallowed it with laughter.
Twenty minutes in — or maybe five; time was weird in the dark — the door opened again. Just enough to let colder air slip in along the floor.
Two people glanced up. One of them—mid-sentence—finished the joke a little too quickly. The laugh that followed came out softer than the one before it.
Matt leaned sideways toward Solan, barely moving his mouth. “Scratchlist ninety-one.”
Not impressed enough to whisper like it was myth. Just informational, like noting the weather.
Across the circle, someone shifted their legs to make room without being asked. Another guy straightened slightly, then pretended he hadn’t.
The girl stepped forward and sat near the outer edge of the circle. She folded one leg under herself and rested her elbow loosely on her knee, posture relaxed in a way that suggested she had never needed to check whether she belonged.
Solan watched the adjustment happen and then finish. That was the part he noticed the way the room recalibrated around her presence and then pretended it hadn’t. The way currents changed when something heavier entered the water.
Tomorrow was a weekday. The thought arrived uninvited. Lectures. Foundation courses. Crowded halls. He tried not to picture her in one of them—halfway down a row, sunlight cutting across her shoulder, someone else taking the seat beside her. It was none of his business. He forced the image away before it could settle.
“You missed Matt trying to convince us to breach the perimeter.”
“Tempting, but I’d rather not test my phase tonight.”
Solan felt the reflex tighten in his shoulders before he could stop it. He kept his face neutral, eyes lowered to the candle between them. Wax bent inward, flame steady.
Someone nudged the plastic bag of bottles toward her. She didn’t take one immediately. She set her hands on her knees instead, fingers loosely interlaced—controlled, like she’d walked in carrying something heavier than vodka.
“You come from the clinic?” Juno asked, not loud, but the question traveled.
Ninety-One’s eyes flicked up. A beat. Then she shrugged, like it was stupid to pretend it wasn’t obvious. “Health center, yeah.”
Matt passed Solan a bottle. “God. Even your errands sound like lore.”
“It’s not lore,” she said. “It’s a line. And a locked door.”
The room quieted a fraction. Even the candles seemed to tighten their light.
“They’re sealed?” someone asked.
“Campus security taped the whole corridor,” Ninety-One said. “Blackout protocol. ‘Preventing opportunistic theft.’” The words landed with the flatness of something repeated by a man with a badge. “No staff in. No students in. Doesn’t matter if you’re picking up a dose or bleeding out. They’re waiting on ‘clearance.’”
“For the record, I already picked up my regular for the month. I’m not panicking.”
Solan twisted the cap and took a swallow. Immediate regret.
Carbonated .
The fizz hit like static—sharp, metallic, buzzing across his tongue and up into his sinuses. For half a second he tasted metal and thought, great, now my nervous system is carbonated too.
What is this. Lightning water?
He swallowed anyway.
Someone asked: “Then why were you there?”
Ninety-One rolled one shoulder, as if loosening a knot she refused to name. “Extra allocation.”
Someone made a small sound—half disbelief, half envy. “You can do that?”
“You can apply,” she said. “If you’re above baseline consumption, you submit the request. They run the DF labs. They ask for a signature. They make you explain your body like it’s a budget.”
Matt whistled softly. “And it got approved?”
Ninety-One nodded once. “Approved. Today was pickup for the extra.”
“And now it’s not,” someone murmured.
“Now it’s tomorrow,” Ninety-One said. She finally took a bottle, not to drink—just to have something in her hand. “Just one night without it. Most people do. It’s not the end of the world.”
For him, it never mattered. None of the things Stabilin was meant to keep away ever showed up at his door—no fevers, no misfires, no ugly nights that needed explaining.
He should probably be terrified by that. He wasn’t.
He hadn’t heard of anyone who could use Kamuy and just… not need Stabilin.
Which probably meant there weren’t any. Which probably meant—if people found out—he’d end up on a table somewhere. Cold lights. No privacy. A lot of people with gloves.
Fantastic .
He should start working out. No point getting dissected and looking like this.
The door opened again. This time it didn’t hesitate.
A tall guy slipped in sideways, one arm hooked around a bottle so big it looked stolen from a duty-free shelf. Clear glass. Cheap label. The kind of vodka that came with a screw cap and bad decisions.
“Okay,” the guy said under his breath, kicking the door shut with his heel. “Tell me nobody started without me.”
Matt’s eyes locked on it like it was divine intervention. He pushed himself up onto his knees, grin snapping into place.
“Now we’re talking.”
Something scraped outside—metal on stone, long and slow. Solan held still. When he listened again, there was only laughter.