Chapter 3
Locke
Harrick’s fist catches me across the jaw and I let it.
Not because I can’t block it—I saw it coming from the moment he stepped into the corridor—but because taking the hit gives me the half-second I need to close the distance.
His weight shifts wrong on the follow-through.
Amateur mistake. I drive my knuckles into his ribs before he can reset, and the sound he makes is deeply satisfying.
“Fuck—”
His friend moves in from the left. I clock him without turning my head, already adjusting my stance, but before either of us can commit, a voice cuts through.
“That’s enough.”
Eli.
The group rounds the corner like they own the hallway. Five of them, moving together without thinking about it, the kind of easy coordination that comes from a cluster that actually finalized. Eli’s at the front, one hand raised like he’s directing traffic.
“Walk away, Harrick.”
Harrick spits blood onto the floor. Looks at me, then at Eli, calculating odds he doesn’t like.
“This isn’t your business.”
“It’s not yours either.” Eli’s voice is bored. “And I don’t feel like filling out incident reports today. Move.”
For a second I think Harrick’s going to push it. His jaw is tight, fists still clenched, pride warring with the math of five-on-two. Then his friend mutters something I can’t hear and they’re backing off, disappearing down the corridor with the kind of retreat that pretends it was always the plan.
Zoe catches my eye as her group passes. Holds it a beat longer than necessary. She doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t need to. The message is clear enough. We handled it. You’re welcome. Don’t make us do it again.
Then they’re gone, moving together down the hall, and no one watches them go. Nobody whispers as they pass. Nobody stares. Just five people walking away like it’s nothing, because for them it is nothing.
Must be nice.
I wait until the corridor is empty before I touch my jaw. Already swelling. Harrick hits harder than he used to, or maybe I’m just tired of getting hit.
The walk back to the house takes ten minutes. I use the time to settle my breathing, unclench my fists, get my shit under control. By the time I reach the front door, my hands are steady and my expression is flat.
Rane is in the kitchen when I come in. He looks up from whatever he’s prepping, clocks my face, and sets down his knife.
“Harrick?”
“Harrick.”
“How bad?”
“He’ll piss blood for a week.” I cross to the sink, run cold water over my knuckles. The skin’s split across two of them, shallow but messy. “I’ll live.”
“You always do.” He’s watching me in that way he has, cataloging damage without making a production of it. “Someone step in?”
“Eli. His cluster with him. Sent him packing.”
“Nice of them.”
“It wasn’t for us.”
He doesn’t argue. We both know how it works. They intervened because incidents cause paperwork, and paperwork draws attention, and attention is the last thing any finalized cluster wants. They didn’t do it because they give a shit about us.
No one gives a shit about us.
I dry my hands on a towel and head for the common room. Kyron’s on the couch with his phone, not even pretending to read it. He saw me come in. He sees everything.
“You’re bleeding,” he says.
“I’m aware.”
“There’s a kit under the bathroom sink.”
“I know where the kit is.”
I don’t go get it. Instead I drop into the chair by the window and stare out at the courtyard.
Empty path, flat light, nothing moving. Bonded housing—close enough to campus to be monitored, far enough to keep us separate from everyone else.
Six clusters total, each of us tucked into our own little box where the system can watch us without the inconvenience of integration.
We’re the only incomplete set. Have been for two years.
Two years of waiting for something that never came. Two years of being studied and monitored and quietly written off as a statistical anomaly. Two years of Harrick and people like him deciding that unfinished means broken, and broken means target practice.
Two years of knowing I’d take the hit for the right person without hesitation—and having no one to do that for.
I’m so fucking tired.
Beckett appears in the doorway. He takes one look at me—not at the blood, at me, reading something in my posture or my silence that I’m not aware I’m broadcasting—and disappears again. Returns a minute later with the medical kit. Sets it on the table beside me without comment.
He doesn’t hover. Doesn’t ask if I’m okay. Just makes sure I have what I need and settles into the armchair with a book he’s probably already read twice. That’s Beckett—always noticing, never pushing, waiting for the moment someone actually needs to be seen.
I wonder sometimes if he’s as tired of waiting as I am.
I clean the cuts because it’s easier than arguing.
Vaelor comes in an hour later, back from whatever training rotation he’s been running. He smells like sweat and effort and something that might be optimism, which means he had a good session and hasn’t heard about Harrick yet. He’ll find out eventually. He always does.
“Food?” he asks the room.
“Already cooking,” Rane calls from the kitchen.
“Need help?”
“When have I ever needed help?”
Vaelor ignores him and heads for the kitchen anyway. I hear them moving around each other, Vaelor pulling out plates before Rane can ask, Rane adjusting without breaking rhythm. Six plates. Always six.
This is normal. This is every day. The five of us in this house, moving around each other like we’ve been doing it for years—because we have—filling space that was designed for six and pretending the gap isn’t there.
Except we don’t pretend. Not really. We just don’t talk about it.
Vaelor sets the sixth plate on the table like it’s nothing. Like it doesn’t mean anything. Like he hasn’t done it every single night for two years, making space for someone who never showed up.
The notification comes at 7:43 PM.
I know the exact time because I’m looking at my phone when the message appears, and something in my chest cracks open before I even read the words.
Cluster status updated. Missing element identified. Intake processing complete.
I read it three times. The words don’t change.
My hands are shaking. I don’t know why. I’m not scared. I’m not relieved. I’m—
Where the fuck have you been?
The thought comes from nowhere, aimed at no one, and it doesn’t make any sense.
I don’t know this person. I don’t know anything about them.
But something in my chest is furious—two years, two fucking years of waiting and fighting and carrying this space that was supposed to be filled, and now a message, now a notification, now intake processing complete like they’ve been sitting in some office somewhere while we—
I breathe. Force my hands flat on my thighs.
The common room has gone quiet. I look up and find four sets of eyes on me, because of course they noticed.
Of course they felt the shift before I said anything.
That’s how it’s always been with us—this awareness that isn’t quite finalized, this almost-connection that the system has never been able to classify or complete.
“What?” Vaelor says.
I turn the phone around. Let them read it.
Silence.
Rane is the first to speak. “Missing element identified.”
“That’s what it says.”
“So there’s—” He stops. Starts again. “Someone’s coming.”
“Someone’s already here.” Kyron’s voice is flat, but I can see him leaning forward slightly, that restless attention finally finding a target.
“Intake processing complete. That means they’ve been in the system for at least a few days.
Identified, located, processed. They were just waiting to notify us. ”
“Or waiting to make sure,” Beckett says quietly. He’s set his book down. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him set a book down in the middle of a chapter before.
“Make sure of what?”
“That they had the right one.”
The room settles into something that isn’t quite silence.
Vaelor’s still standing in the kitchen doorway, like he can’t decide whether to come closer or give us space. The rest of them are just… waiting.
All of them looking at me.
And someone is about to walk into our lives and become part of whatever this nightmare is.
Two years.
And now a message that barely says anything. No name. No timeframe. Nothing usable.
You’re not incomplete anymore.
“So,” Rane says finally.
“So.” I set my phone down. My knuckles are throbbing where the cuts are already starting to scab over. “They’re late.”
No one argues.
I stand up and the room shifts with me.
“I need air.”
No one stops me.
The courtyard is empty this time of evening. The lights are starting to come on, artificial and too bright, casting everything in that flat institutional glow that makes shadows look wrong. I find a bench and sit and stare at nothing until the anger settles into something quieter.
Not gone. Never gone.
Just… waiting.
Someone is coming. Someone the system thinks belongs to us. Someone who’s been processed and classified and scheduled for transfer like cargo, like a missing part finally located in a warehouse somewhere.
I don’t know their name. I don’t know anything about them.
But I already know I’d take a hit for them. I don’t know why. I don’t need to know why. The certainty is just there, sitting in my chest like it’s been waiting for somewhere to land.
I stay on the bench until the lights finish coming on and the campus goes quiet and my hands stop wanting to form fists.
Then I go back inside.
The kitchen is clean. The food is put away. Five plates washed and stacked.
The sixth is still on the table.
Waiting.