Chapter 2
Nova
I’ve been here for three fucking days.
I know because they keep replacing the food.
Three trays a day—morning, midday, night.
Nine trays I haven’t touched. The headache started somewhere around tray five.
The shaking started this morning, fine tremors in my hands that I can hide if I keep them pressed against my thighs or curled into fists.
The current tray is still there, sitting on the dresser where they left it. Bread and soup and something that might be meat, real meat, more food than I’ve eaten in weeks. The smell fills the room every time they bring a new one.
I don’t touch it.
I’ve heard stories. Probably rumors, probably exaggerated, but I’ve survived this long by treating probably as definitely. Food makes you grateful. Food makes you compliant. Food makes you owe something to the people who gave it to you, and I don’t plan on owing these people anything.
So I sit on the bed with my empty stomach and my shaking hands and I wait.
The lock clicks on the morning of the third day.
Same woman. Same folder. Same flat expression, like the seventy-two hours I’ve spent staring at these walls didn’t happen at all.
“Come with me.”
I stand. Too fast—my vision swimming for half a second before it clears. I lock my knees and follow her out.
The hallway is the same as before. Clean, bright, empty. Our footsteps echo. She doesn’t look back to see if I’m keeping up, just walks like she expects me to follow, and I do, because what else am I going to do?
We pass the room where she asked me questions. Keep going. Through a door I didn’t notice before, into a corridor that’s colder, brighter, lined with doors that all look the same.
She stops at one of them. Opens it.
“Inside.”
The examination room is white and chrome and cold enough that I feel it through the thin gray fabric they gave me. There’s a table in the center, padded, with paper stretched across it. Cabinets along one wall. A counter with instruments I don’t look at too closely.
A man is standing by the counter, writing something on a clipboard. He doesn’t look up when I enter.
“Sit,” he says.
I sit on the edge of the table. The paper crinkles under me.
The woman leaves. The door clicks shut. Just me and the physician now, and he still hasn’t looked at my face.
“Name?”
“Nova.”
“Age?”
“Twenty-six.”
He writes it down. Flips a page.
“Hold out your hands.”
I do. Palms up. He takes my left wrist without asking, turns it over, studies the inside where the mark should be. His fingers are cold and dry and clinical. He holds it for three seconds, maybe four, then drops it and takes the right one.
Same examination. Same nothing to find.
He makes a note.
“Lift your pant legs.”
I bend down and roll the fabric up to my knees. He glances at the skin there—inside of the ankles, backs of the calves—and nods once.
“Stand and turn around. Lift your shirt.”
I turn. Pull the gray fabric up to my shoulder blades. The air is cold on my bare skin. I stare at the wall and count my breaths while his eyes move across my back, looking for something that isn’t there.
“Down.”
I drop the shirt. Turn back around.
He’s writing again. Hasn’t said a word about what he found or didn’t find. Hasn’t looked at me once except to examine skin.
“No visible mark,” he says to the clipboard. “Confirmed.”
That’s it.
He opens the door. The woman is waiting in the hallway.
“She’s done,” he says, and walks away.
The woman looks at me with the same flat expression she’s had since the day I got here. “This way.”
I follow her again. Different direction this time. The corridor curves, opens into a wider hallway with actual windows—first natural light I’ve seen in three days—and then stops at a door that looks different from the others. Warmer somehow. Less institutional.
She opens it.
“Wait here.”
Then she’s gone.
The room is small but not a cell. There’s a chair that isn’t bolted down, a small table, a window with actual light coming through it. No bed. No food tray. Just a space that feels like it’s meant for people, not processing.
I sink into the chair because my legs are shaking and I’m not sure how much longer I can hide it.
Five minutes. Ten.
The door opens.
The woman who enters is not the same one. Different age, different build, different everything. She’s maybe forty, with lines around her eyes that look like they come from expression, not exhaustion. She’s carrying a cup of water and a blanket and she’s looking at me.
Actually looking. At my face. Like I’m a person.
“I’m Linda,” she says. “I’m sorry it took this long.”
I don’t say anything. I don’t know what to say.
She sets the water on the table. Holds out the blanket.
“You’re shaking,” she says. Not an accusation. An observation. “You haven’t eaten, have you?”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not.” She sits in a chair across from me. Doesn’t push the water closer, doesn’t insist on the blanket, just leaves them there. “Three days without food is not fine. I can see your hands trembling from here.”
I curl my fingers into fists under the table.
“I’m not going to force you to eat,” she says. “I’m not going to force you to do anything. But I need to tell you what happens next, and I’d rather do that when you’re not about to pass out.”
The water is right there. Clear and cold and probably not drugged, probably not a trap, probably just water.
I don’t reach for it.
Linda watches me. I wait for the lecture about taking care of myself, the soft voice people use when they’re about to make you do something for your own good.
“Okay,” she says. “We’ll do this your way.”
She folds her hands on the table.
“We’ve had a team working on your case since you arrived. Searching for precedent—any record of someone your age without a mark. We couldn’t find one. You’re the first documented case of a permanent unmarked adult in the system.”
I knew that already. I’ve always known that. Probably.
“The decision came down this morning. You’re being transferred to the Academy.”
The Academy. I’ve heard of it. Everyone’s heard of it. The place where marks get confirmed, where House assignments get finalized, where people get sorted into the lives they’re going to live.
I never thought I’d see the inside of it.
“There are three reasons,” Linda continues.
“First, you’ve never been through intake.
The Academy is the standard process, even now.
Second, there’s some belief that the environment might increase the likelihood of manifestation.
If there’s a mark that hasn’t surfaced yet, that’s the most likely place for it to appear. ”
“Third.” Linda pauses. “You’ve been flagged as part of a cluster.”
The word means nothing to me.
She doesn’t say anything. Not immediately. Just watches me, like she’s giving the word time to settle.
“What’s a cluster?”
“A grouping. It happens sometimes—certain individuals show markers that suggest they should be grouped together. It’s rare, but documented. You’re showing those markers.”
“Grouped with who?”
“A group at the Academy. Five men. They’ve been flagged for two years, but their cluster never finalized. The system thinks you’re the missing piece.”
I stare at her.
Five men. A cluster. Something that never finalized because I wasn’t there.
“I don’t know these people.”
“I know.”
“I didn’t ask to be—”
“I know that too.”
She says it simply. She doesn’t get defensive about it.
“The transfer happens tomorrow. I wanted you to have time to understand before they move you.”
“Understand what? That I’m being shipped off to live with strangers?”
“That you have more information now than you did an hour ago.” Her voice is steady. “That’s not nothing.”
I want to argue. Want to tell her that information isn’t the same as choice, that understanding doesn’t mean accepting, that none of this is okay just because someone finally bothered to explain it.
But my head is pounding and my hands are shaking and I can feel the emptiness in my stomach like a living thing, and all I can manage is, “Why do you care?”
Linda looks at me for a long moment.
“Because someone should,” she says. “And because I’ve been doing this job long enough to know that how you treat people in the initial days determines everything that comes after.”
She stands.
“The water isn’t drugged. Neither is the food they’ve been bringing. I know you don’t believe me, and I’m not asking you to. But when you’re ready, it’s there.”
She moves toward the door. Pauses.
“I’ll check on you before the transfer. If you have questions, I’ll answer what I can.”
Then she’s gone.
The room is quiet. The light through the window is thin and gray.
I look at the water on the table. The blanket she left on the chair.
My hands are still shaking.
I don’t reach for either one.
But I think about it.
That’s new.