Asa
I open my eyes and find myself staring at a ceiling that is too smooth, too white, and far too reinforced. There are no seams, no cracks, and no signs of life. Just a smoke detector and a recessed camera lens that glints like a dead eye.
I shift on the narrow mattress, and the institutional sheets crackle beneath me. The room is small, a utilitarian box that makes my college dorm look like a palace.
“You’re awake,” a voice says, and the air in the room suddenly feels breathable again.
Jorak is sitting on the floor by the bed, his back against the reinforced wall.
He looks exhausted. His hair is a mess, and the dark circles under his eyes are bruised-looking, but when he sees me sit up, his expression softens into something so tender it hurts to look at.
He reaches for a plastic cup on the desk and hands it to me.
“I slept? How long was I out?” I ask, my voice sounding like I’ve swallowed a handful of dry needles. I drink the water in greedy gulps, feeling the chill of it settle in my chest.
“A few hours,” he murmurs. “The resonance testing always leaves a hangover. Your nervous system isn’t used to carrying that much static. I should have stopped them sooner.”
“You couldn’t have,” I say, setting the cup down on the floor because the desk feels too far away. I look around the room again, my eyes stinging as I finally take in the cage he stays in. “Is this it, Jorak? This is where they keep you?”
He follows my gaze, his jaw tightening. He doesn’t answer immediately, but the way he looks at the walls tells me everything I need to know.
“They call it the Enigma Wing,” he says, his voice flat.
“It’s lead-lined. Grounded. Every surface is designed to absorb a Class-S discharge without melting.
If I lose control, the room just eats the energy.
It saves the building, even if it doesn’t save me. ”
I pull the blanket tighter, the fabric scratching against my neck.
I think of my condo, the messy stack of journals on the coffee table, the mismatched pillows, the way the light hits the kitchen floor at four in the afternoon.
There isn’t a single thing in this room that Jorak chose for himself.
Not a single thing that belongs to the man who likes whiskey and black cedar and quiet moments in my office.
“Where are your things?” I whisper, my throat closing. “Your books? Your clothes?”
Jorak lets out a short, huffing sound that might have been a laugh if it weren’t so bitter.
He sits on the edge of the bed, his weight making the thin mattress dip.
“I don’t have things, Asa,” he says quietly.
“Assets don’t need personal effects. Everything I have is issued.
The clothes, the food, the medication. Even the air is filtered to keep my hormone levels within a specific range.
Mercer says it’s for my safety. He says if I have too many distractions, I can’t focus on the current. ”
I reach out, my fingers trembling as I touch his forearm.
His skin is hot and I can feel the low-level vibration of the Black Current humming just beneath the surface.
It’s a restless, angry energy, and I realize with a jolt of horror that he’s been carrying this pressure alone for years.
Every day, every hour, he is a bomb that isn’t allowed to explode.
“The medication,” I say, remembering the vials Dr. Rue was holding during the testing. “What does it do?”
“It blunts the edges,” he answers, and for the first time, he looks away.
“It keeps the power from peaking, but it also keeps everything else from peaking. It’s like living under a layer of wet wool.
You can’t feel the cold, but you can’t feel the sun either.
When I’m in rut, they double the dosage.
It keeps me from tearing the door off the hinges, but it makes me feel like I’m drowning in my own skin. ”
I feel a hot, stinging prickle behind my eyes.
I’ve spent my life complaining about being F-Class, about being the Guide the system forgot to count.
I thought I was the one who had it hard, living on the margins of a world that didn’t want me.
But I had my books. I had my grandmother’s stories. I had my autonomy. Jorak has… nothing.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper, and the first tear escapes, tracking a hot path down my cheek. I don’t even try to wipe it away. I just reach out and pull him toward me, my head resting against his chest.
He freezes for a second before leaning into me, his forehead coming to rest on my thigh as he sinks to his knees on the floor.
It’s a position of total surrender, a man seeking sanctuary from a world that has never given him an inch of it.
“Don’t,” he says, his voice muffled by the blanket.
“Don’t cry for me, Asa. I’m not worth the salt.
I’m exactly what they say I am. I’m a weapon.
I’m the thing they send in when everything else has already failed. ”
“You’re not a weapon,” I say, my fingers tangling in the dark, messy silk of his hair.
I comb through it, my touch slow and deliberate, trying to ground him the only way I know how.
“You’re a man who’s been failed by every person who was supposed to protect him.
The ESA, Mercer—they all looked at you and saw a resource.
They never bothered to look for the person inside. ”
He let out a shaky breath, his shoulders trembling beneath my hands. I lean down, pressing a kiss to the crown of his head, breathing in the scent of him that is finally starting to overwrite the clinical smell of the room.
“I’m not a stabilizer, Jorak,” I say, my voice steady despite the tears. “I’m not a tool. And you aren’t a monster. We’re just two people the system tried to break, and it didn’t work. It’s not going to work.”
He lifts his head, his eyes searched mine.
They are dark, swirling with that entropic power, but beneath the storm, there is a vulnerability that breaks my heart.
He looks at me like I’m the only solid thing in a world made of smoke.
He reaches up, his thumb brushing the dampness from my cheek with a touch so light I can barely feel it.
“If you stay,” he says, and the word is heavy with a warning he doesn't want to give. “If you let Mercer pair us officially, you won’t be a professor anymore. You’ll be mine.
But not the way I want you to be. You’ll be part of the inventory.
They’ll monitor your cycles, your blood pressure, your resonance levels.
They’ll treat you like a component of the system. A leash.”
“I know,” I say. “I’m a mathematician, Jorak. I’ve seen the equations. I know what happens when a variable like me enters a closed system like this. Mercer thinks he’s found a way to contain you. He thinks he can use me to keep the bomb from going off.”
“And?” Jorak asks, his hand moving to the back of my neck, his grip firm and possessive.
“And he’s wrong,” I say, leaning in until our noses touch.
Jorak closes his eyes, a low, rumbling sound vibrating in his chest before pulling me down, his mouth finding mine in a kiss that is soft, slow, and devastatingly honest, just a promise, whispered in the dark of a cage that is starting to feel a lot less permanent.
We stay like that for a while, tangled together before he speaks again.
“I’m sorry I can’t give you more,” he murmurs, his voice thick with sleep and something that sounds suspiciously like hope. “I’m sorry this is all I have to offer you. A gray blanket and a room that smells like bleach.”
I shift, pressing closer until there isn't a single inch of space between us. “This is enough,” I say, and for the first time since I woke up in this facility, I actually believe it. “For right now, this is enough.”
I don't tell him that I’m already thinking about the next step. I don't tell him that I’m already mapping out the flaws in the suppression network or that I’m thinking about the way his power felt when I anchored it. Mercer thinks he’s won because he has us in a room with a monitored lock.
He doesn’t realize that the most dangerous thing in the world isn’t an S-Class Enigma or their Guide. It’s two people who have nothing left to lose and everything to gain by burning the system to the ground.
Jorak's fingers trace the ridge of my spine through my shirt, his touch a slow, grounding friction that makes the fine hairs on my arms stand up. I can feel the shift in him, the way his focus narrows until I am the only thing in the room that matters.
"Asa," he says, his voice a low vibration against my collarbone.
He pulls back just enough to look at me, his eyes searching.
"When you leave this room, Mercer is going to offer you a contract.” He presses a kiss to my forehead.
“If you sign, you'll be 'cleared' for duty.
You'll have a badge and a clearance level, but you'll never leave this building without an escort.
You'll be just as much of a prisoner as I am, only your cage will have a desk and a salary. "
I think of my office at the university, the way the students argue over grading rubrics, the smell of old paper and cheap coffee.
Mercer wants to take that life and compress it into this lead-lined box.
He wants to turn my ability to stabilize the Black Current into a daily chore, a scheduled maintenance task performed under the watchful eyes of cameras and sensors.
Jorak's grip on my waist tightens, his knuckles white. "I won't let him do it. I'll tell him the synchronization was a fluke. I'll tell him I'm rejecting the bond."
"He won't believe you, Jorak. He saw the monitors. He saw the resonance levels. We can't lie our way out of this." I reach up, taking his face in both of my hands, forcing him to look at me. "We have to play his game for now but we’ll find a way out, okay?"
Jorak's eyes flash with a momentary spark of the current, a jagged streak of black against the amber of his irises.
"And in the meantime? You'll be subjected to more of those tests.
More 'entropic loads.' I can't watch them do that to you again, Asa.
Seeing you collapse... it felt like the world was ending. "
"I'm stronger than I look," I say, though my voice is a bit shaky. "And I'm smarter than Mercer thinks I am. Every time they test me, I'm learning. I'm seeing the patterns in your power, Jorak. I'm seeing the way the facility's suppression nodes interact with your current."
He takes my hand, his palm rough and warm, and presses it over his heart.
The beat is frantic, a wild thing trapped in a ribcage.
"I have spent my whole life being handled," he murmurs, his lips brushing against mine.
"But this... the way you touch me... it's the only time I've ever felt like I wasn't being used. "