She walked across her small apartment toward the single bathroom beside her bedroom, stripping off her clothes as she went. Instead of dropping them wherever they fell, she bundled them all up and chucked them in a pile in the bathroom's corner before turning on the shower. Everything felt fine except for the stinging scrapes on her knees, and she gritted her teeth when she peeled off her underwear and flung them onto the pile too. Before she stepped into the shower, she glanced at the clothes.
Blood is the one drawback to wearing so much black. Only place that crap shows up brick-red.
Stepping into the scalding water, Cheyenne hissed in pleasure and pain. The steam felt good. She used a washcloth to scrub her knees before bothering with the rest of the stains on her skin.
Twenty minutes later, her long hair toweled off enough to not soak the giant Slipknot t-shirt she’d pulled over her head, Cheyenne stopped at her desk to check her results. The code for her search scrolled across the black background of the center monitor. She was about to head toward her bedroom when the computer duck-quacked—the tone she’d set for notifications. Cheyenne sat at the desk and reached down to rub her raw, itchy knees. She leaned toward the monitor.
Durg Br’athol; pure O-class, 207 years; entered via Border 7 Reservation, March 2021
“That’s it? O-class, huh? What the heck is ‘Border 7 Reservation?’” Cheyenne grabbed her thick black hair in both hands, twisted it to make sure it was dry enough for sleep, then glanced at the time. “Ugh. Class in four hours. Durg Br’athol, you’ll have to wait a bit. I’m sure you don’t mind.”
Cheyenne left her searches running and retired to her twin bed covered in gray sheets and a black comforter with a cartoon skull. She grabbed her phone from the nightstand, set her alarm for 6:45 a.m., crawled under the covers, and turned off the small desk lamp.
I’ll get my answers. She turned on her side and pulled the comforter over her shoulders. Whatever Ember meant by “people like us,” I can’t talk myself out of it anymore.
Cheyenne fell asleep to the vivid memory of the chaos she’d unleashed on an O-class thug named Durg.
Chapter Eight
Just under four hours later, Cheyenne hurried through the campus’ IT building toward her first class of the day. Her backpack hung loose off her shoulders because only a few folders for her individual classes were in it. The sight of so many undergraduate students on the first floor made her push her memories of the first four years of college aside.
Ember was the only good thing that came out of four years of pretending to be stupid.
Some students stared at her as she walked past, the chains draping from her pockets jangling with every step. She’d braided her hair when she woke up after way too little sleep because she didn’t appreciate the wild curls after a shower and hadn’t had time to straighten it. And after years of practice at hiding and covering all her bases, it was second nature now to make sure every hairstyle came with a way to hide the tips of her ears just in case.
Cheyenne snorted. Like that’s the first thing people look at when they see somebody’s skin turn dark purple. It’s the first thing that changes, anyway.
But just to be sure, she’d put on a long-sleeve shirt today and pulled the sleeves down past her hands. Three hours of sleep and a friend lying in a hospital bed with a gunshot wound didn’t make it easier to keep her temper under control.
She found her first class on the third floor—Theory of Programming Languages, Tuesdays and Thursdays from 8:00 to 10:00. Her schedule tried to pass it off as a lab, but after only having had the class twice so far this semester, Cheyenne had already pegged it as a recap class. She wouldn’t learn anything in this “lab” she hadn’t been taught in her undergrad classes or mastered by the time she’d tested out of online high school at sixteen.
Just playing the game. It’s the second week, and I’m already bored.
When she slipped inside the open door to a computer lab, Cheyenne felt the stares of the other students on her. She picked a seat at a table in the middle row, slid her backpack off her shoulders, and settled in.
“Hey.” A kid in a white-and-blue-striped polo and his hair gelled into inch-long spikes took the chair next to her. “This seat taken?”
Cheyenne cast him a sideways glance and raised an eyebrow. “Just as taken as every other empty seat in the room.”
“Cool. Cool. I’m Peter.”
She nodded and unzipped her backpack to pull out her laptop.
“Mind if I ask you a question?”
Cheyenne shrugged as the dude named Peter kept talking. “‘I was wondering if the ‘90s called and asked for their death gear back. You still have a landline too?” Hushed laughs came from the group of other grad students beside the door.
“Don’t be a jerk, Pete.” A girl leaned against the wall with some books clutched to her chest. “She’s not gonna get the joke. The Goth kids I went to high school with never laughed.”
Cheyenne slid her laptop out of its sleeve and centered it on the table in front of her. She pushed aside the provided keyboard to make room and opened her computer.
“Seriously, though.” Peter propped an elbow on the table and stuck his chin in his hand. “I wanted to ask when I first saw you, but I figured it was better to wait until at least the second week of the semester, right? When everybody’s a little more open to getting to know each other. In grad school. So, what’s up with all the piercings? Do they mean something, or are they just supposed to make you look extra scary?”
“If you think this is a lot, I used to set off metal detectors at the airport.”
