She kept her head down and walked quickly, occasionally glancing up when a student shouted in surprise or laughed too loudly or ran too close in front of her on the walkway. Something’s wrong. Why can’t I pin it down?
When she reached the front door of the Computer Sciences building and grabbed the handle, a tingle of itching energy raced across the back of her neck and along her shoulders. Cheyenne turned and scanned the grass and the neighboring buildings, then jerked open the door and slipped inside. Just keep paying attention. That itch means something.
Getting to the empty classroom where she taught her Advanced Programming class ten minutes early didn’t help the feeling of impending wrongness. Cheyenne pulled out her laptop and checked her email for something to do, but the only emails she had were from the students who’d turned their work in early for the week. She snorted and shut her laptop. “Overachievers.”
The tingling energy raced across her neck and shoulders again, pulsing. She grabbed her backpack, pulled the activator out of the front pocket, changed to her drow form, and stuck it behind her ear. The sharp pinch made her eyelids flutter, then she gazed around the empty classroom and sat back in the chair behind her desk. Nothing lighting up with this thing, so at least there’s that. I sure as hell better be able to see what’s happening. If it even does.
“Morning.”
Cheyenne glanced quickly at the classroom door and switched back to her human form as the first two students stepped inside. “Hey.”
“TGIF, right?” The first girl who’d spoken let out a nasal giggle that ended in a snort. Her smile died when Cheyenne went back to gazing around the empty classroom. “Okay.”
The undergrad students taking Maleshi’s Advanced Programming class filtered quickly into the room, and at 10:31 a.m., Cheyenne stood from the chair behind the desk and nodded at the last kid to come inside. “Can you grab the door?”
“Oh. Yeah.” The kid, who had a shaggy mop of dirty-blond hair, spun quickly and did as she asked before taking a seat.
I’m still calling them kids. They’re only a year younger than me, if that.
“Okay. This is it. Just a regular class on a Friday morning.” Cheyenne’s eyes darted toward the door when the shadow of someone passing in the hall flickered across the narrow window. “Some of you are still working on the last tiny assignment from Wednesday, right?”
Her students nodded slowly, wondering what was up with their odd new instructor and sharing a round of confused glances.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” She slid her laptop aside on the desk and sat again. “Whoever hasn’t finished that up yet, go ahead and take the rest of this class to do that. If you have any questions, I’m right here.”
“What if we already finished it and turned it in?” The girl who’d laughed at her own lame joke leaned forward in her chair. “You did get my email, right?”
“Probably, if you sent it. I’ll go through everything over the weekend. Everyone else, be sure to have it in by midnight tonight.” Right, like I’m gonna be going through assignments tonight.
The girl raised her hand and slowly lowered it again. “If we already finished, what do you want us to do?”
Cheyenne laughed at that. “Whatever you want. I don’t think I need to give you—"
The tingling energy raced across her back and shoulders again, and she sat up straight in the chair. This feels familiar.
“Give us what?”
“What?”
The girl shook her head, and the other students around her shifted uncomfortably in their seats. “You said you don’t think you need to give us what?”
“Step by step instructions on how to use your time.” Cheyenne tilted her head, wanting to shudder and roll the tingling energy off her back. “That comes standard with, you know, the fact that we’re all adults.”
Someone in the back row sniggered, and the eager student turned to glare at him. “Yeah, real adult.”
Cheyenne swallowed. What’s going on?
The next second, the activator flared to life with a burst of flashing lights and a blaring siren shooting right through her head. She grimaced and clenched her eyes shut, leaning over her lap at the sudden onslaught to her senses.
“Are you okay?” The girl with the half-shaved head who always sat in the front row leaned forward and tried to peer over the top of her instructor’s desk. “Cheyenne?”
“What? Yeah, I’m fine. Bad headache just hit me.” She could barely hear her voice over the blaring siren pulsing in her head. When she opened her eyes again, a blazing orange message flashed across the front of her vision.
Warning. Incoming threat approaching. Location pinpointed at forty yards southeast.
What the hell? Cheyenne pushed herself to her feet and turned to her right. A flashing yellow arrow blinked in the center of the wall, slowly rising and growing larger as the activator tracked the threat. She turned off the alarm with a thought and stepped away from the desk.
“I’m just gonna step out for a—”
The ground rocked and trembled beneath them, sending Cheyenne staggering sideways. The students shouted in surprise, clutching their backpack and laptops and looking wildly around.
“What is that?” someone yelled.
Cheyenne gripped the edge of the desk and caught her balance. “Earthquake, maybe.”
“What kind of earthquake shakes like this?”
“Every kind!”
“This isn’t an earthquake.”
“Then what is it?”
The halfling ignored her panicking students and turned toward the classroom door. “I’m gonna go see what’s happening.”
The ground bucked again, and half the classroom erupted into screams when the overhead track lighting popped and sent a shower of sparks down on the room.
Cheyenne held out her hands and headed carefully toward the door, trying to keep her balance on the trembling floor. “Everyone just pretend this is one of those hurricane drills you had to practice in elementary school, right?”
“What?”
“Just duck and stay away from
