“Bestia? I don’t know that one.” We fell in step, and the chatter helped ease my increasing nerves.
“It means she can turn into all sorts of creatures and get into their mindset, which gives her a massive edge when hunting.”
“Isn’t that just Shapeshifting?”
“Kind of, but it’s exclusive to animals. I hear she can even change into a few Purge beasts, but you know what the rumor mill is like.” She sighed, as if she were already besotted with this Basani woman. “Still, it’d be amazing if she could, and it would definitely explain the glowing resume.”
Turning the corner of the cavernous hallway that led into the main body of the Institute, where the old collided with the modern, I spotted two more hunters who were doing a terrible job of acting nonchalant. They’d obviously been stationed there to keep an eye on me. I didn’t mind, given my history, but their presence made me feel like a pariah before I’d even gotten started. A watched enemy in the ranks, one who could go rogue at any moment. I was really trying to be optimistic, but every time I glanced at my knuckles and thought of the curse that had brought me there, my lungs seemed to shrivel like prunes and my throat got tight.
You will smash them all. Leviathan’s words hadn’t sounded at all comforting while I was deep in the tangle of the dream. But now… I remembered the panic I’d felt pummeling that glass, willing it to break beneath my futile fists. Faced with the prospect of life in a box if I couldn’t make this work, those words now acted as a weird salve to my fears. And that worried me most of all.
Two
Persie
“Would a signpost be too much to ask for?” Genie came to a stop beside a display case containing two wrist cuffs that had belonged to Artemis herself. They gave off distinct Wonder-Woman vibes, but they wouldn’t give us the superpowers required to find the main assembly hall. We’d spent the better part of twenty minutes trying to find the banquet hall so I could pick up breakfast and a coffee, and had spent another twenty minutes running around, looking for the assembly hall. Shaky splashes of coffee had spilled out of the paper cup in my hand, leaving a wet trail behind us like I was some kind of caffeine-deprived Theseus.
“I was sure it was this way.” I was wheezing, thanks to my general aversion to cardio. “But then, I thought the banquet hall was in the opposite direction to where it was, so I’m not much of a tour guide.”
Genie huffed, putting her hands on her hips as she scoured the Institute’s baffling layout. Every hallway looked the same, with endless corridors leading to endless destinations.
“I could’ve sworn I put the orientation map in my bag,” I lamented. I had a sparkly new pencil case, a bevy of empty notebooks, a half-filled sketchbook, and a pastry wrapped in a napkin from the banquet hall, but no map to speak of. I must have left it on my desk this morning in my nightmare-addled state.
“Well, we need to keep going and hope the assembly hall throws us a bone and appears out of nowhere.” She checked her phone. “It’s ten to nine, so we’ve got nine minutes and fifty-nine seconds to get there. I can almost hear the whispers already—can’t you?”
No whispers, please… I knew the curiosity would come, but if they kept it for another day—tomorrow, even—I would be forever grateful.
Genie took off again, and I followed on weary legs. I’d recovered from the banshee-Purge, but last night’s dream had taken more out of me than I’d first realized. My hands and wrists and arms throbbed as though I’d been… well, slamming them helplessly against a sheet of glass. And my chest still felt heavy and clenched, like some of that unnerving dark sludge lingered in each lung.
“There! Cadets!” Genie punched the air and picked up speed, chasing after a gaggle of cargo-panted students who appeared to know precisely where they were going. It made me feel a tad uncomfortable, seeing how professional and clean-cut they looked, while Genie and I ambled along in our civilian get-up of T-shirts and athleisure pants. They’d probably spent the last five days studying the orientation map religiously instead of recuperating and strolling around like this was a holiday camp.
We hurtled after the militant contingent, our shoes screeching on the polished concrete as if we were doing laps of a basketball court. In focusing on the other students, we might have neglected our spatial awareness. Skidding around a corner into a narrower corridor so as not to lose sight of our unwitting guides, we crashed straight into a figure hurrying out of a doorway on the right.
The three of us went flying. Papers and folders erupted in a snowfall, the sheets fluttering down in a chaotic whirlwind as I bounced backward and hit the floor with a thud that knocked the wind out of me. My coffee arced into the air and landed in places unknown. Staring up at the paper blizzard, I cocked my head, distracted from the pain shooting across my shoulders. Every sheet was etched with intricate illustrations of monsters, labeled and detailed with technical jargon in elegant handwriting. They were on par with my own drawings, though I noticed some discrepancies from my useful angle: too-small
