Chapter 197: 198 | Contact
I ripped my mouth away from Noel’s so fast she nearly toppled off my lap.
"What the hell," she started, her glasses fogged and crooked on her face, and I was already on my feet with both hands clamped around her waist, lifting her off me and setting her on the mattress like she was made of glass.
"Get your shoes on."
"Excuse me?"
"Noel. Shoes. Now."
Something in my voice must have registered because the argument died before it reached her throat. She rolled off the bed and shoved her feet into sneakers without tying them, her eyes never leaving my face. I watched the gold text scroll across my peripheral vision like a stock ticker from hell.
200 meters. 180. 160.
Whatever it was, it was moving fast. And it was coming straight for this building.
"Rome, what is happening."
"Something bad. Something I can’t explain yet. We need to get out of this room and we need to do it about thirty seconds ago."
Noel’s tactical brain engaged like a switch being thrown. She grabbed her phone from the desk, her portfolio case from beside the chair, and was at the door in four seconds flat. I was already pulling out my own phone, thumbing the group chat with Mera and Cheon.
ROME: Get out of the apartment. Something is coming to campus. Building F. Threat level catastrophic.
MERA: what
ROME: I’m serious. Whatever you do don’t come here.
CHEON: Define catastrophic.
I didn’t answer because the lights went out.
Not just the lamp in Noel’s room. Everything. The hallway. The emergency exit signs. The stairwell lights visible through the fire door’s narrow window. Building F plunged into total darkness so complete I couldn’t see my own hand. The only illumination came from the system text still burning in my vision, gold on black, scrolling the number down.
140 meters.
"Rome." Noel’s voice was calm. Combat calm. The kind of calm she manufactured when things got genuinely dangerous. "I can’t see."
I grabbed her hand in the dark. Found it immediately because I could feel her Essentia like a flashlight in a cave, that vanilla-frost signature broadcasting her position to my drain from three feet away.
"Stay behind me. Don’t let go of my hand. Don’t use your ability. Whatever happens, do NOT separate your astral form. If something happens to your body while you’re out, you die. Understand?"
"I know how my own Essentia works, you absolute—"
The building shook.
Not like an earthquake. Earthquakes build. This was a single concussive impact that rattled the walls, cracked the plaster above the doorframe, and sent Noel stumbling into my back. I braced against the doorframe and held us both upright. Down the hallway, someone screamed. Doors opened. Phones lit up like fireflies in the black corridor, twenty faces glowing blue and panicked.
100 meters.
I could hear it now. Not the footsteps. Not the approach. Just this sound. Low and constant and wrong. A hum that sat in my molars and the base of my skull and vibrated at a frequency that made my skin want to crawl off my skeleton. My drain reacted before I did, slamming shut like a blast door, every channel closing simultaneously in a way I’d never experienced. The connections to Mera. To Cheon. To Noel’s hand in mine. All of them snapped into lockdown mode and the taste in my mouth went from vanilla to copper to nothing at all.
Whatever was approaching, my body wanted no part of it.
"Everyone get to the stairwell," I called down the corridor. Students were stumbling out of rooms in pajamas and underwear, blinking against phone screens. "Move. Now. Ground floor. Don’t stop."
"Who the hell are you to—"
"MOVE."
They moved. Something about my voice in the dark. Something about the building shaking around them. The herd instinct kicked in and bodies shuffled past us toward the stairwell door. I pulled Noel against the wall to let them pass, her back against my chest, her fingers white-knuckled around mine.
60 meters.
My phone lit up. Mera.
MERA: im coming
ROME: DO NOT
MERA: already opening the gate. 30 seconds.
I wanted to scream at her. Wanted to type in all caps that whatever was heading for this building wasn’t just dangerous—it was the kind of thing that made my drain, my fucking SS-rank core ability that had never backed down from anything, seal itself off like it was preparing for atmospheric re-entry. The system had classified Nolan’s awakening as noteworthy. Worth attention. This thing registered as CATASTROPHIC in letters I could feel in my bones.
But Mera didn’t take orders. Mera made decisions and informed you about them after the fact, and right now I had exactly two hands—one holding Noel’s, one holding my phone—and neither of them were free to grab Mera by the shoulders and shake sense into her through a text message.
20 meters.
The hum climbed in pitch. My molars vibrated hard enough that I tasted blood where I’d bitten the inside of my cheek without meaning to. The air pressure in the hallway dropped, then spiked, then dropped again—the kind of atmospheric shift that happens before a tornado touches down. My ears popped. My sinuses compressed. The overhead lights flickered and steadied and flickered again, casting shadows that moved wrong.
Noel’s grip on my hand went from tight to crushing. I felt one of my knuckles grind against another and didn’t tell her to ease up.
10 meters.
I pulled her toward the stairwell. She came without resistance, her untied sneakers slapping against linoleum, her portfolio case banging against her hip with every other step. I kicked the fire door open hard enough that the metal edge slammed into the cinderblock wall behind it and left a dent. The sound rang out in the stairwell—concrete and metal amplifying it into something that echoed down all four flights at once.
We took the first half-flight at a run. Noel kept pace despite the shoes, despite the case, despite the fact that thirty seconds ago she’d been asleep and now she was sprinting down an emergency stairwell because I’d told her to. Her breathing was controlled. Even. She wasn’t panicking.
Smart girl.
0 meters.
CONTACT.
The south wall of Building F’s fourth floor came apart.
Not an explosion. Not a breach. The wall simply ceased to exist. Concrete and rebar and insulation tore away in a radius the size of a delivery truck, and the debris didn’t fly outward the way it should have. It pulled inward. Toward the source. Like something had reached into the structure of the building and crumpled it the way you crumple a paper cup.
Through the hole where Room 4-A used to be, something stepped inside.
