The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism

Chapter 303: 303 | The Instructor With The Unreadable Gauge

I watched Sloane disappear up the hill toward 1-A’s Prometheus House, her ponytail swinging with each step, and the bond between us settled into a low hum of nervous excitement that wasn’t mine. She was already thinking about Radiant. Already running simulations in her head about what she’d say, how she’d stand, whether her Detonation output would impress the man who’d reshaped her entire concept of what a person could be.

I stood at the fork for maybe ten seconds longer than was reasonable, then turned and walked toward Building C.

My afternoon class was Hero Agencies and Bureaucratic Studies with Vera Castillo. The course title alone sounded like it had been designed by committee to make first-year students question their life choices, which, knowing Halloran’s curriculum designers, was probably the point. The institution that produced Radiant and housed the world’s most dangerous teenagers apparently also believed that proper documentation was a cornerstone of heroic development.

Percy materialized at my shoulder somewhere between the cafeteria and the academic quad, his navy blue hair catching the sun as he fell into step beside me. His notebook was already open to a fresh page.

"You have approximately fourteen minutes before class begins. The route from here to Room 316 in the Athena Wing takes seven minutes using the covered walkway, nine if we encounter vending machine congestion near the 1-A corridor."

"Percy."

"Yes?"

"Has anyone ever told you that leading with time calculations makes you sound like a GPS with anxiety?"

"Rina told me the exact same thing at breakfast." Percy didn’t look up from his notebook, pen moving in quick strokes across the page. "She said I was like a very helpful train schedule someone hung in a nice frame."

I shot him a look. His expression carried that particular quality of someone turning over a compliment in their head, trying to figure out if it actually qualified as one. The pen had stopped moving. His brain was still running calculations.

"That’s weirdly sweet, actually."

"I documented it as positive social interaction number fourteen." A beat. "Rina’s responsible for six of those fourteen since Monday."

We crossed through the Athena Wing’s south entrance. The corridor opened up with polished floors and lighting that reminded me more of a corporate office than anything resembling a school. Room 316 sat at the far end on the third floor, past a row of administrative offices and a glass-walled conference room where two faculty members were hunched over a tablet. The nameplate beside the door was simple, elegant serif font that didn’t waste space on decoration. HERO AGENCIES AND BUREAUCRATIC STUDIES. Below that, smaller. V. CASTILLO, INSTRUCTOR.

I pushed through the door and found myself in a room that looked nothing like the amphitheater layouts I’d been sitting in all day. The space was configured like a corporate boardroom. A long oval table dominated the center, polished dark wood with leather swivel chairs arranged around it, each place setting marked with a thin folder and a Halloran-branded pen. Floor-to-ceiling windows ran along the east wall, flooding the room with afternoon light that turned the wood surface into amber. A smart board occupied the north wall, currently displaying the course syllabus in clean white text against a navy background.

No tiered seating. No podium. No distance between instructor and student.

Vera Castillo wanted us close.

The woman herself stood at the far end of the table with a ceramic mug in one hand and a tablet in the other, reviewing something with the focused attention of someone who had been awake since five and considered everyone else’s tardiness a personal insult to her morning routine.

Castillo was about five-eight, maybe five-nine in the low heels she wore, with a build that suggested consistent physical maintenance without obsessive dedication to any particular aesthetic goal.

Her black hair was pulled back in a practical low bun that framed her face with the efficiency of someone who considered appearance a professional credential rather than a vanity project worth excessive investment.

High cheekbones. Strong jawline. Brown eyes that carried the specific warmth of someone who genuinely enjoyed her subject matter and the specific intensity of someone who would absolutely fail you if you wasted her time with inadequate preparation or excuses she’d heard seventeen times already this semester.

She wore a charcoal blazer over a fitted white blouse, dark trousers, and a watch that cost more than anything in my closet combined.

Possibly more than everything in my closet combined, depending on whether the System’s equipment drops counted as clothing or tactical gear.

The blazer’s cut emphasized the narrowing of her waist while the blouse pulled just enough across her chest to suggest that Castillo’s professional wardrobe had been selected with the same attention to detail she probably applied to contract review and regulatory analysis.

The overall effect communicated someone who understood exactly how she read to other people and had decided that their reading was their responsibility rather than hers to manage through wardrobe apologetics.

A small scar cut through her left temple, faint but visible in the afternoon light. Agency incident, if I had to guess. Something that had left a mark she hadn’t bothered covering with makeup or strategic hair placement.

The Oracle Feed offered nothing. No gauge. No profile beyond public record that anyone with internet access could pull up in thirty seconds. Faculty remained outside the System’s romantic categorization, which meant Castillo was either genuinely off-limits by institutional design or the System hadn’t gotten around to her yet and was saving that particular problem for when I least needed additional complications in my academic life.

Given the System’s track record, I wasn’t optimistic.

Students filtered in behind me. Caden dropped into a chair with the boneless confidence of someone who had decided that boardroom seating was just a fancier couch, kicking his feet up on the edge of the table before Marco swatted them down. Felicity claimed the seat beside mine without asking permission, setting her bag on the floor and crossing her legs in a way that made her skirt shift two inches higher on her thigh.

"This room is corporate as hell," she said, running her finger along the folder. "I love it."

"You would."

"What’s that supposed to mean?"

"It means your natural habitat involves leather chairs and power dynamics."

She considered this for half a second. "That’s either a compliment or an insult, and I’m choosing compliment."