With Illia's introduction over, Mr. Cassidy had started the lesson on the rapid evolution of birds worldwide—but not until after assigning her to the back row, between Filip and Malric.
Illia set her messenger-style bag down, took her seat, and locked her gaze in on the front board. Hearing a clicking noise, Malric quickly and subtly glanced over to her. The sound faded away into the low hum of the ventilation.
Refocusing, Malric wrote down a few notes before drifting off and sketching badly drawn cartoon cats across his notebook.
"Maybe cats will be next… Malric, why don't you explain what I just went over," Mr. Cassidy said plainly, stepping away from the front with a chalk-like electronic implement in hand.
Standing with more confidence than he had reason to, Malric racked his brain. "Umm, what part of what we were talking about, sir?"
"The history part," Mr. Cassidy replied, tightening his gaze.
"Well, in the past, evolution was seen as a gradual process," Malric began, drawing a rough timeline. "The events of the past few days show that under certain… unknown circumstances, evolution can happen rapidly. Minor trait changes in some—like the blue jay—while others, like the great eared nightjar, have gained prominent changes like new organs and scales."
"Thank you for the recap—and the added nightjar facts. Continuing on, other species have…" Mr. Cassidy moved on as Malric sat back down. Filip signaled that he'd almost blown it. Illia stayed silent, eyes on the board.
Malric glanced down at his sketches. The cats felt off. He drew a few more without thinking—one with elk horns, another shaped like a domestic land shark—before he even noticed what he was doing.
A small folded note landed across his desk.
Opening it, he watched his mind cycle through possibilities… only to deflate when it turned out to be in code.
Right, she likes cryptography. Well, I'm bored anyway—might as well try.
Having written his own substitution cypher for fun in second grade with his friends, Malric thought it'd be an easy crack. But by the time class was over, he had failed to get even a single letter.
"All right, we'll take a short break. Next period's free research," was all Mr. Cassidy said before stepping out.
Malric stared at his notebook, now filled with failed decipher attempts.
How else can you change a letter? If it's not substitution, then what? First I need to figure out what "plus" represents. It shows up a lot. Must be a vowel—maybe E?
Working through the message again, Malric slowly figured it out. He, Filip, and Juniper had all been given different texts encrypted with the same cypher by Illia.
Filip had already given up. Juniper was stuck, misled by faulty frequency assumptions. Illia, meanwhile, was watching Malric with a calm, analytical gaze.
He was close. Just a few more characters. Once he had them, he wrote his reply using the same cypher. Since his answer was simply "No," it only took him fifteen seconds.
As soon as he finished, Illia passed him a second note—longer this time.
It used the same encryption, and Malric began decoding immediately.
Juniper finished with less than a minute left in break, but didn't get another note—she'd come second. Malric was still finishing the final words of his message.
The note read: Why are your doodles so similar to the mutations of the birds?
Malric blinked. Flipping back to his drawings, he realized just how not-normal the cats were. And with that realization came a sudden, mild headache.
He scribbled a reply in his own substitution cypher, only to receive a new surprise.
Before the note had even touched her desk, Illia was already writing her response—in the same cypher.
She'd cracked it on sight.
"Are you ok? Your face just turned as pale as limestone."
This time Malric responded verbally. He glanced at Illia's unreadable expression.
"Yeah. I'm good. Just a slight headache."
Halfway through the exchange, Mr. Cassidy had returned and opened his book.
Class was now officially self-study.
Pulling out his laptop, Malric scribbled a note in a substitution cypher: "what's your phone number, so I can add you to the class group chat." Then he opened up his current study topic.
Illia's response came immediately—no phone. No laptop either.
Juniper and Filip, still invested but locked out by the new cypher, offered no help.
While Malric debated how to assist her, Mr. Cassidy walked to the back and placed a brand-new laptop and school-branded phone in front of Illia.
"Wait, teach—since when does the school have its own brand of laptops and phones?" Filip asked.
The devices were midnight blue with brass-beveled edges. Sleek. Matching.
"Honestly, you're better off asking Malric. I have no clue," Cassidy said, tossing up a hand.
All eyes shifted to Malric.
"Yeah, um… I've got no idea. I asked my dad if I could get a school-themed computer once and he said no. Said it wouldn't be good enough to show off our prestige.
A blatant lie.
Everyone could see it. Illia's device had built-in facial recognition that calibrated in a second. It ran its own operating system, and even its own browser.
Per Filip's request, Illia opened the system specs. The machine contained a miniature quantum processor—and a graphics card labeled only as CA0001.
"What the hell do your parents even do, man?" Filip blurted. "They come out of nowhere, build the best academy on Earth, and now they're casually handing out bleeding-edge tech no one's even heard of."
Malric's headache pulsed.
"I have no clue, man. Hey, Mr. Cassidy—can I go down to the nurse? I've got a pretty bad headache."
Cassidy gave a casual "Sure," and Malric waved off Filip and Juniper's offers to walk with him.
He stepped into the hallway alone.
The stone beneath his feet was uneven in that old-world way—cool and polished but slightly bowed from years of use. Carvings lined the walls: battles etched in sweeping motion, scientists mid-theory, mythic creatures twisted into spirals of chaos and revelation. Every figure, every shape, felt like it had been placed there for a reason.
The air was colder here. Not just in temperature, but in feel—thin, metallic, and dry.
And the clicking had returned.
At first, it echoed in rhythm with his footsteps. Then it began to overlap them. Mismatch them. Outpace them.
The nurse's office door was up ahead, just barely visible at the end of the corridor.
It swam.
Malric never made it.
Instead, he collapsed—quietly—just outside the door.