Chapter 246: 246 | My Chip Zone is Sacred Ground [GT BONUS]
The cafeteria at twelve-fifteen on a Monday operated at a different register than the sleepy weekend version I’d visited two days ago. Every table occupied. Every food station running at full capacity. The sushi chef moved behind his counter with the focus of someone performing surgery on tuna, and the ramen station had a line that snaked past the Mediterranean counter and wrapped around the salad bar like a siege formation.
I loaded my tray with Korean BBQ short ribs, a bowl of tonkotsu, two gyoza, and a bread roll that looked suspiciously artisanal for institutional dining. The cafeteria’s commitment to making its students eat well bordered on the psychotic. I’d had worse food at restaurants that charged four times what Halloran’s meal plan cost, and those restaurants didn’t come with a bathhouse and an apartment bigger than my entire previous life’s living room.
"Over here! Lukas!"
Felicity’s voice carried across the cafeteria with the volume and clarity of someone who had never once worried about being too loud in a public space. She stood on the balls of her feet near a long table by the south-facing windows, waving with an enthusiasm that turned several heads and made the two guys sitting at the adjacent table forget what they were eating mid-chew.
I couldn’t blame them. The Halloran uniform on Felicity was doing something that the designer probably hadn’t intended but definitely should have anticipated. The white fitted shirt sat tight across her chest where the top two buttons remained casually undone, showing the ridge of her collarbone and the faintest suggestion of pink lace beneath the cotton. Her charcoal blazer hung open, and the skirt stopped high enough on her thighs that every time she shifted her weight from one platform-sneakered foot to the other, the hem rode up another quarter inch. Blonde hair in a loose side ponytail, collar pin catching the noon sun through the windows, freckles visible even from twenty feet away.
Ecchi Logic hummed in the background of reality like a bass note I couldn’t turn off.
I walked over and dropped my tray beside hers. Percy already occupied the seat on my left, his notebook open next to a meticulously arranged plate of grilled chicken breast, steamed vegetables, and brown rice portioned into what appeared to be nutritionally optimized quadrants. Percy had apparently decided that lunch was a data input problem and solved it accordingly.
"You’ve been sitting for forty-seven seconds," Percy said without looking up. "The ramen will reach suboptimal temperature in approximately nine minutes at current ambient conditions. I recommend beginning consumption immediately."
"Percy."
"Yes?"
"Eat your chicken."
He ate his chicken.
Caden materialized from somewhere in the food court chaos and dropped into the seat across from me with a tray that contained nothing but three slices of pizza and an energy drink. No salad. No protein supplement. No acknowledgment that the cafeteria contained approximately forty other food options ranging from hand-pulled noodles to nitrogen-flash-frozen ice cream. Just pizza and caffeine, the dietary philosophy of a man who had made his peace with mortality.
"Gentlemen." He raised the energy drink in salute. "Lady." A nod toward Felicity. "And Percy."
"I am also a gentleman," Percy said.
"Percy, you brought a ruler to measure the distance between your plate and the table edge. You’re in a category all your own."
Marco claimed the seat beside Caden, carrying a tray with an impressive quantity of tacos and what appeared to be an entire basket of chips. Despite standing only five-three, Marco ate with the intensity of someone three times his size, and the logistics of how he packed that much food into that frame remained one of the early mysteries of Class 1-B.
"Move your elbow, you’re in my chip zone," Marco said, shoving Caden’s arm two inches to the right.
"Your chip zone is an imaginary construct."
"My chip zone is sacred ground and you will respect it."
Eden and Maribelle arrived together, which was the default state of their existence as far as I could tell. Eden carried a tray stacked with enough barbecue to cater a small event, his red hair spiked upward like a beacon of caloric ambition. Maribelle walked beside him with her characteristic grace, her crimson skin catching the light in a way that made the standard-issue Halloran uniform look like it had been designed specifically for her. The charcoal blazer framed her figure at the waist, and her skirt fell to mid-thigh where her tail emerged from a custom slit, the spade-like tip swaying with each step.
Her horns curved back from her temples in dark elegant arcs, and the gold of her eyes found our table with the relaxed attention of someone who’d spent her entire life being stared at and had decided somewhere around age twelve that other people’s discomfort was a them problem.
"Budge over," Eden said to Marco, then dropped onto the bench with enough force to make the table vibrate. A taco shell cracked on Marco’s plate.
"You just murdered my taco."
"It was already dead, man. It’s a taco."
"Show some respect."
Maribelle settled beside Eden with a plate of pasta and a green smoothie, tucking her tail against her thigh with the unconscious habit of someone who’d learned which furniture arrangements caused problems. Her nails, long and glossy and technically sharp enough to qualify as weapons, tapped the table surface twice before she rested her chin on her palm.
"So." Her voice carried the playful lilt of someone about to start trouble on purpose. "Who’s teaching Hero Basics?"
The table went quiet for half a second. Which, in a group that included Caden and Marco, constituted a near-religious event.
Hero Basics. The afternoon session that had been listed on the orientation schedule as the final class of the first day. The one session for which no instructor name had been published, no faculty profile had been uploaded, and no syllabus had been distributed. Every other class had arrived with enough advance information to let Percy build a comprehensive dossier before the first lecture. Hero Basics had arrived with a room number, a time slot, and nothing else.
"My money’s on Steele doing double duty," Marco said through a mouthful of taco. "She’s already running our conditioning. Makes sense she’d handle basics too."
Caden shook his head. "No chance. Steele’s specialty is breaking people down. Hero Basics is supposed to be foundational, right? The inspirational stuff. The why-we-do-this speech. Steele doesn’t do inspirational. Steele does suffering."
"Steele is inspirational," Camille said from two tables over without turning around. The fact that she could hear our conversation from that distance while appearing to read a book said everything about her passive awareness. "She just inspires through pain instead of speeches."
"Thank you for the unsolicited commentary, Ortega."
"You’re welcome, Holt."
Felicity leaned forward on her elbows, which did things to her neckline that I committed to ignoring with the focused discipline of a man walking a tightrope over a volcano. "I heard a rumor from a second-year in the cafeteria line that Hero Basics rotates instructors every semester. Apparently last year’s class had someone different for each unit."
"Who told you that?" I asked.
"A girl with green hair and very strong opinions about protein powder. She was in front of me at the smoothie bar. We bonded over our mutual belief that chocolate-flavored whey is a crime against humanity."
"You made a friend in the smoothie line."
"I make friends everywhere, Lukas. It’s my superpower. The illusions are just a bonus."
