Day 3 - Pt 3/3

Lunch was served in a room smaller than the dining hall, with low chairs, pale wood tables, warmed stone underfoot, and one long window looking out over a garden that no one believed was real. The light was gentle. The food was simple by Hotel standards: soup, sandwiches, cut fruit, cold water, tea, coffee, and several dishes arranged to imply that fatigue had been anticipated, measured, and catered.

No one had needed to say they were tired.

Van sat like a man negotiating with his ribs. He lowered himself into the chair one inch at a time, paused halfway as though reconsidering the entire attempt at sitting down, then committed with a quiet exhale.

Across the table, Lizzy was trying not to look proud of herself. She was failing in a small, radiant way. Every few minutes, her hand drifted to the hem of her shirt, not clutching it this time, only confirming it was still obeying the laws of fabric and dignity.

Naomi kept both hands around a cup of tea she had not touched. Her gloves were back on. That fact should have restored the shape of her day. Instead, she looked at them as though they were a bandage over a wound.

Mara ate very little. She had taken soup, stirred it twice, and then allowed the spoon to rest against the bowl. Her gaze kept going unfocused in a way that made Lizzy’s chest tighten with things she had to keep to herself.

Cassie had approached lunch with the air of someone prepared to fight a sandwich on principle. Her tank top sat higher and tighter than the Hotel’s basic issue had any right to, and she kept tugging at it with increasing irritation, as if the fabric were not only betraying her but doing so smugly.

Katherine sat with one leg crossed over the other, clean and composed and apparently at ease. That was what made Claire distrust the impression. Katherine looked like a woman who was in a waiting room instead of a prison. There was something about the way she held her hands that made her seem like she was posing, trying to convince someone that she was composed.

“So,” Van said, after several minutes of eating had proven that food would not rescue them on its own. “I learned that a padded floor is going to be a close friend of mine going forward.”

Fiona took a drink of water. “The floor gave you more honest than Alpha did.”

“The floor never called me Master,” he said with a grimace. “Or made innuendo into a war crime.”

“The floor has higher standards.” Fiona couldn’t help smiling at her own joke.

Van nodded gravely. “I honestly liked the floor more than I did Alpha. It wasn’t lecherous”

Lizzy smiled into her soup.

Cassie pointed her spoon at him. “Did you actually learn anything, or did you just get thrown around until everyone got bored?”

“I learned how to abandon dignity and crawl for cover.”

Cassie blinked. “That’s your big lesson?”

“Apparently standing up is sometimes a tactical error,” he said the last two words with air quotes.

Fiona’s mouth twitched. “For him, standing was usually too ambitious.”

Van looked wounded. “You said I was fixable.”

“I said you were bad in a fixable way. That is different. Do not edit my words to add kindness.”

Evelyn set her cup down with careful precision. “He showed improvement. His response time was inconsistent, but his recovery sequence became more efficient once he stopped treating every fall as personal failure or embarrassment.”

The table went quiet for half a second.

Van looked at her. “That’s a devastatingly specific comment for a casual lunch.”

“It’s an accurate one.”

Something in the clipped edge of her voice made Katherine’s attention shift toward Evelyn.

Evelyn did not look at Katherine. She folded her napkin once, then unfolded it, as though the napkin had failed to meet a standard.

Cassie leaned back. “Great. While you were all learning advanced falling down theory, I got told to make my explosions smaller.”

Claire’s mouth curved faintly. “And you did. It looked like it offended your sensibilities, but you did manage it.”

Cassie glared at her. “Eventually, but one day princess, I’m going to make something explode exactly as big as I want, and you’re all going to appreciate my artistic vision.”

Lizzy let out a small laugh before she could stop herself. Cassie pointed at her next.

“You don’t get to laugh. You crawled through some kind of mystery plumbing for a box.”

Lizzy’s smile widened despite the flush rising in her cheeks. “It was crazy heavy and it kept shifting its density, but I did get the box, though.”

“You did,” Mara said quietly before her expression softened, just a little. “It was impressive.”

The praise affected Lizzy more than she expected. She lowered her gaze to the table, but she did not shrink from it entirely.

Naomi watched the exchange with a strange, fragile look on her face. Happiness for someone else, maybe. Or envy of a success that didn’t carry the weight of an embarrassing secret.

Katherine’s eyes moved to Naomi’s gloves. “And your test?” Katherine asked smoothly, “Was it the water?”

Naomi’s shoulders barely shifted. It was the kind of movement most people would have missed. Katherine did not miss it.

“It was definitely easier in the pool,” Naomi said. Her voice was careful, not false but without her usual openness.

She tried a smile and almost made it look natural. “It’s weird, but maybe I can find a way to make this work after all.”

“That would be good,” Katherine said.

She did not press. She did not look at Naomi’s hands again. She only took another sip of tea and gave the conversation permission to move on.

Katherine had seen this before. Everyone was saying the truth but with pieces missing. The room was becoming a collection of locked drawers, each labeled in a careful hand that said “Keep Out”.

Cassie picked at the edge of her sandwich, then looked toward Van with the quick annoyance of someone catching herself looking. “So, has anyone figured out why mine starts at four?”

Fiona’s head turned. “Your date with the bush league Master over here?”

Cassie grimaced. “Don’t say it like that, God.”

“I think Claire’s started at six,” Fiona said.

Van’s brow furrowed. “It did,” he confirmed.

Cassie looked from Fiona to Van. “So what, I need some extra credit humiliation?”

“Or they changed the schedule for some reason,” Claire said.

“Because that’s better?” Cassie asked, ripping a piece off of the offending sandwich.

Van sat back slightly, the line between his brows deepening. “Did anyone say why?”

The air chimed and every conversation stopped.

A translucent screen unfolded above the center of the table, black glass and gold lettering, polished enough to reflect the faces staring up at it.

SYSTEM NOTIFICATION
Type: Assessment Awards
Source: Day 3 Power Assessment
Review Status: Complete
Mara Ellison
Reward: +2 VP / +600 BP
Lizzy Quinn
Reward: +2 VP / +500 BP
Naomi Hale
Reward: +1 VP / +400 BP
Cassie Lin
Reward: +1 VP / +300 BP
Claire Mercer
Reward: +0 VP / +200 BP
Katherine Wren
Reward: +0 VP / +100 BP

For a moment, no one spoke. The screen did not congratulate them. It did not explain. It did not soften the arithmetic with praise. It converted a morning of strain, exposure, discipline, panic, impact, and discovery into six clean lines.

Lizzy stared at her name, two VP and five hundred BP. She tried not to smile because she wasn’t truly happy to be rewarded by the hotel. But the reward reminded her of her success during testing. The smile happened anyway, small and helpless and quickly bitten back.

Mara saw it and seemed, for one breath, genuinely pleased, then her gaze returned to her own line.

Naomi’s fingers tightened around her cup. Only once. Only enough to make the tea tremble. She looked down before the movement could become visible to anyone who was not already watching.

Cassie squinted at the screen. “I hate that I’m happy to see money from the **** scoreboard.”

“Bonus Points are not technically money,” Evelyn said.

“Thank you, spreadsheet queen. That really changes the moral shape of the reward.”

Van had not looked away from the list. “Why don’t I like that it says complete? Does that mean a new phase has started?”

Fiona glanced at him. “Nothing about this place is ever complete. Next they’ll reveal our high school GPAs and how old we were when we first got our periods.”

The first screen dissolved before anyone could react to that and a second appeared in its place.

SYSTEM NOTIFICATION
Type: Current Contestant Totals
Currency Update: VP / BP
Claire Mercer: 9 VP / 5200 BP
Mara Ellison: 5 VP / 4600 BP
Evelyn Cross: 4 VP / 4500 BP
Naomi Hale: 3 VP / 3900 BP
Lizzy Quinn: 3 VP / 3500 BP
Cassie Lin: 1 VP / 1800 BP
Fiona Kavanagh: 0 VP / 2000 BP
Katherine Wren: 0 VP / 100 BP

The first screen was about the morning. The second made the morning part of a race no one had agreed to enter.

Claire felt several eyes not quite look at her. Nine VP. Five thousand two hundred BP. Numbers that should have meant resources, privacy, clothing, tools. Instead they sat beside her name like accusations of cooperation.

Fiona stared at her own zero with an expression so flat it became unreadable.

Cassie gave a short laugh. “Congratulations to me. I have one point in whatever nightmare category that is.”

“You earned it,” Lizzy said, then immediately looked as though she wished she had chosen a different way to say it.

Cassie’s eyes flicked to her. The expected retort did not come. “Yeah,” she said instead, quieter than usual. “Apparently.”

Katherine looked at her own line and smiled faintly.

Claire could not tell whether the expression meant amusement, annoyance, or the private pleasure of discovering where a trap had been placed.

The second screen folded away and a third screen appeared.

Mara went very still before she had finished reading the first line.

SYSTEM NOTIFICATION
Type: VP Milestone
Contestant: Mara Ellison
Threshold: 5 VP
Privilege Tier 1 Authorized:
Personal Wardrobe Access
Contestant-specific apparel allocation has been delivered to assigned dormitory storage.
Access permissions are now active.

No one had to explain what that meant. The Hotel’s basic clothing was clean, functional, and humiliating in dozens of small ways. It removed preference. It removed history. It removed the ordinary right to decide how much of oneself to show the world.

Mara looked at the screen as if someone had lengthened the chain she was bound with.

Lizzy’s face lit first. “Mara, that’s wonderful.”

“It is,” Mara said and she meant it. Everyone could tell she sounded genuine. But Mara’s hands had closed together in her lap, one thumb pressed hard against the other. Pleasure and guilt had met somewhere under her ribs and neither had yielded.

Claire understood more than she wanted to. Her own clothes had become more than clothes the moment she got them back. They were proof that some tiny piece of her previous self had not been entirely confiscated.

Cassie looked down at her shrunken tank top and made a face. “Great. One of us gets pants with civil rights.”

Mara laughed softly despite herself and the screen vanished, leaving the table brighter and emptier.

Van rubbed both hands over his face. “I hate that this helps.”

No one answered and he lowered his hands. “Sorry. That was—”

“Stop,” Evelyn said sharply. The word cut harder than anyone expected. It hit Van harder than the others and he froze.

Evelyn sat very straight, one hand flat beside her plate. Her expression remained composed, but her eyes were too sharp.

“Self-reproach is not a substitute for responsibility,” she said. “Nor is it a courtesy. Every time you make your discomfort the center of a room, someone else is **** to reassure you instead of addressing the problem.”

The sentence struck home like a sword thrust, all precision and blood. Van’s mouth closed with a click. Fiona and Katherine looked at Evelyn.

Evelyn seemed to hear herself a second too late. Something moved behind her face, not softness exactly, but recalculation. She folded the napkin again, perfectly this time, and set it beside her untouched plate.

“I need to review the training notes while the details are fresh,” she said.

No one challenged the excuse.

Evelyn stood. Her chair made almost no sound against the floor.

“Enjoy the break,” she added, the words cool and soft enough to have come from a different conversation altogether. Then she left without another word.

The door closed behind her with a soft noise. For several seconds the table remained careful around the space she had left behind. Van looked down at his plate.

Fiona’s jaw worked once. “She wasn’t wrong. She wasn’t polite about it but she wasn’t wrong.”

“Fiona no,” Claire started.

Fiona looked at her. “She was too sharp. I already said that.”

“Yes you did, but you’re not helping.” Claire’s face was complicated.

Van took that in with a small nod, as though both statements could be filed together and dealt with later.

Cassie pushed her chair back. “Well. That was emotionally nutritious. I’m going to shower before relationship class teaches us all how to weaponize eye or something.”

“It’s harem dynamics,” Lizzy said automatically.

Cassie stared at her.

Lizzy lowered her eyes. “Which is not better.”

“No, it’s not.”

The room began to break apart after that. Not all at once. People didn’t flee they simply found reasons to stop being a full table.

Naomi left with her tea unfinished and her gloves still on. Katherine watched her go, then watched the others, one by one, without appearing to watch anyone at all.

Fiona gave Van one last look. “Don’t sit too long. You’ll stiffen up.”

Van blinked. “Was that concern for me?”

“It was maintenance advice, you ass.” Fiona spoke over her shoulder as she was leaving. “You’re like training equipment now.”

“Good to know.”

She left before he could thank her and make it worse.

Cassie paused near the door, glanced once at the clock, and then very deliberately did not look at Van. “Four o’clock is stupid,” she said to no one in particular, then she was gone too.

Claire waited longer than she meant to.

Mara and Lizzy had left together, moving toward the dorm corridor with the almost familiarity of new room mates. Claire watched them go. Her hand drifted to her hair and caught a strand before it could curl around her wrist.

She needed to talk to someone. She hated needing that more than she hated the questions she had. Almost.

By the time she reached the corridor, Mara had stopped just outside the door to the room she shared with Lizzy. The hallway there bent into a small sitting alcove: two upholstered chairs, a low table, a vase of white flowers, and a narrow window showing the golden light of the facility’s false afternoon.

Lizzy stood with one hand on the door handle, Mara had turned toward her.

“Lizzy,” Mara said gently. “This morning.”

Lizzy’s entire body prepared to declare her innocence and failed before the attempt began.

Mara’s voice softened further. “You were being kind. You were also frightened, or maybe embarrassed. I would like to know what had bothered you.”

Lizzy’s hand tightened on the handle. “You didn’t. I mean, not caused. Not on purpose. Not that there was anything to cause. I just—”

Claire stopped at the edge of the alcove. “Mara?”

Both women turned.

Claire drew herself up and stiffened her shoulders. It was a motion that belonged to Starling, not Claire. The uncertainty in her eyes did not.

“May I speak with you for a moment?”

Mara looked from Claire to Lizzy, then back to Claire. Whatever question she had been about to ask did not vanish. It only stepped aside.

“Of course, Claire.”

Lizzy released the door handle instantly. “I can go.”

Claire looked at her. “You don’t have to. I’m…I need perspective.”

Lizzy hesitated.

Claire seemed to reconsider the sentence only after saying it. “Unless you want to. This may be private. I am not entirely certain. That is part of the problem.”

Mara’s mouth curved, barely.

Lizzy should have left. Lizzy understood that. A sensible person, a dignified person, a person not quietly developing an impossible number of thoughts about Van, would have excused herself and entered the room.

Instead, she remained standing beside the door.

“I can stay,” she said, in the careful tone of someone volunteering for a medical procedure.

Mara gestured toward the alcove. “Sit.”

Claire sat in one chair. Mara took the other. Lizzy perched on the edge of the low table, weight forward like she might change her mind and flee.

For several seconds, Claire looked at her hands. “The date went well,” she said. “I think…I don’t really know.”

Lizzy’s gaze snapped up.

Mara waited.

Claire’s fingers folded together. “I think it went well. That is part of what I am trying to understand.”

“That seems like a good place to start,” Mara said.

Claire nodded once, too quickly. “He was kind. He listened. He didn’t push. He seemed tired, and he was frightened, I think. Not of me, of hurting me. Of doing the wrong thing or of wanting anything. It was difficult to separate.”

Lizzy’s stomach twisted with a feeling she refused to call jealousy because jealousy implied a claim, and she had no claim, and the entire idea was ridiculous anyway.

Mara leaned back slightly. “And you are wondering whether his kindness was real.”

Claire looked at her. “Yes.”

“Because the date night or bond assignment or whatever was not.”

Claire’s shoulders lowered by a fraction, as if Mara had caught her doing something foolish. “Yes.”

Mara did not answer at once. She looked toward the false afternoon beyond the window. The Hotel had made the light warm enough to flatter everyone. It was another kind of lie.

“The assignment can be ****,” Mara said at last, “and his kindness can still be real. Those facts do not cancel each other.”

Claire closed her eyes for a moment. Lizzy looked down at her knees.

“That does not make it simple,” Mara continued. “It does not make the system less coercive. It does not require you to trust the structure that put you there. But either of you can still make choices inside a bad structure. They haven’t taken our free will away.”

“Small choices,” Claire said.

“Sometimes those are the only ones available,” Mara agreed.

Claire absorbed that with a serious expression.

Lizzy spoke before she meant to. “Would it be worse if he meant it, or if he didn’t?”

Both women looked at her and her face heated, “Sorry.”

“No,” Claire said. The word came out soft.

Lizzy gripped the edge of the table. She had not meant to expose the shape of her own question. But there it was, sitting between them, wearing Claire’s problem as a disguise.

Claire looked down again. “I don’t know.”

Mara’s expression was gentle.

Claire’s voice became quieter. “If he didn’t mean any of it, then I am foolish. If he did, then I have to decide whether I wanted him to. And if I wanted him to, then I have to decide what that says about me, given why we were there.”

“It doesn’t have to mean anything, Claire,” Mara said. “You’re allowed to just have a feeling without paying for it.”

Claire gave her a look.

Mara’s smile deepened a little. “Yes, I know. Inconvenient.”

Lizzy almost laughed. The sound got caught somewhere behind her teeth.

Claire’s mouth moved as though she might smile, but the expression failed under the weight of the next thought. “There was also this morning,” she said hesitantly.

Lizzy stopped breathing again.

Mara waited a beat before prompting, “Go on, Claire, what happened this morning?”

Claire sat straighter. She looked like someone preparing to deliver testimony.

“I woke up before him. My hair had…” She lifted one hand, then lowered it. “It had wrapped around his hand while we were asleep.”

Mara’s brows rose slightly and her mouth did not twitch at the corners. It didn’t, she was sure of it.

Lizzy looked very hard at the vase of white flowers.

“It wouldn’t let go of his hand,” Claire continued, voice tightening with ed humiliation. “It wasn’t painful, it just resisted. Then he moved, he pulled his hand back and I fell back onto the bed. I was too close, and he woke up, and then there was—”

She stopped.

Mara waited with irable discipline.

Lizzy’s toes curled inside her shoes.

Claire’s face turned pink by slow degrees. “He had an erection. In his pants I mean.” She hurried to clarify, “He was wearing pants! I didn’t see it, but I could see...you know.”

The vase became the most important object in Lizzy’s universe.

Mara’s expression did not change, but some private amusement warmed her eyes. Not mockery. Almost tenderness.

Here they were, in a luxury prison outside ordinary reality, discussing supernatural ****, power mutations, hidden psychological triggers, audience voting, and the probable end of the world.

And Claire Mercer, Starling, heroine, impossibly disciplined young woman with living crimson hair, was worried she had mishandled a boy waking up aroused.

Mara loved her a little for it.

Claire mistook the silence for judgment and pressed on. “Is that normal?”

“Yes,” Mara said.

Claire blinked. “That quickly?”

“I mean, I know they do that. I’m not clueless. But does he…? Is it…?” She couldn’t form the right question.

“No,” Mara said. “It does not necessarily mean what you are afraid it means.”

Claire’s relief was visible and immediately complicated by disappointment, which made her flush harder.

Mara chose mercy and pretended not to notice.

“Morning erections are normal,” Mara said. “They happen all the time and do not need a decision behind them. You should not treat one as a message of some kind.”

Claire exhaled gratefully. “So he may not have been thinking anything.”

“He was asleep?” Mara asked.

“Yes, but after he woke up it was still there.”

“After he woke up, he was probably thinking that he wanted to disappear into the wall.” Mara’s certainty was starting to relieve some of Claire’s tension.

Lizzy made a tiny coughing sound, “I’d be mortified if I was a boy and that happened to me.”

Claire covered her face with one hand. “He took a pillow.”

Mara’s composure cracked. Only a little. Enough that the corner of her mouth betrayed her again.

“A pillow,” Mara repeated.

Claire lowered her hand enough to glare without conviction. “He was trying to be decent. He apologized.”

“I am sure he did.”

Claire continued under her breath, “He said he was sorry for being alive.”

Lizzy’s laugh escaped before she could stop it.

Claire looked at her.

Lizzy clapped both hands over her mouth. “Sorry.”

Claire held the glare for one more second before it broke into something smaller and younger. “It was not funny at the time.”

“I believe you,” Lizzy said through her fingers.

“It is a little funny now,” Mara said.

Claire sighed as though surrendering to something ridiculous. “A little.”

The laughter did not last. It could not. Claire’s expression became serious again. “Did I handle it badly?”

“How did you handle it?”

Claire’s voice lowered again, “I pointed.”

Mara stared at her. Lizzy’s hands tightened over her mouth again.

Claire’s blush deepened into catastrophe. “Not like that. I pointed in the general direction because he didn’t realize what was happening, and I could not say—what was I supposed to say?”

Mara took a slow breath. “Perhaps don’t point next time.”

“There will not be a next time.” Claire went from pink to pale as she realized, “Oh God, next week! I have another date night.”

Claire leaned back in the chair, mortified and relieved in equal measure. “He’s going to think I was disgusted.”

Mara’s response was calming, “Were you?”

“No,” Claire said too fast. The alcove went quiet. Claire looked away.

Mara let the silence do its work.

“No,” Claire repeated, softer. “I was startled. Embarrassed. I didn’t know where to look. I didn’t want him to think I was looking. I didn’t want him to think I was not looking because I was horrified. I didn’t want him to think anything.”

“That is a lot to ask of a single pillow,” Mara said.

Lizzy lost another laugh and immediately covered her mouth again. “Claire, I think you may be over-thinking this. It’s awful and everything, but he doesn’t seem like the type to hold you hostage over something you said or didn’t say.”

Claire pressed her lips together, but the humor helped this time instead of humiliating her.

Then, in a smaller voice, she said, “It seemed large.”

Lizzy made a sound that was almost a cough and almost a prayer. “I'm just going to go. I need to get ready.” She stood but did not leave. It seemed childish now to just walk away.

Mara closed her eyes for one second. When she opened them, she was entirely composed. “Claire.”

“I know,” her shoulders were slumped. “I know it’s awful.”

“Do you?”

“Yes. No,” she was frustrated now “I don’t know, Mara. Does it matter? Is it normal? How do I process this?”

Mara folded her hands in her lap. “You were startled, inexperienced, already embarrassed, and standing very close to someone you are trying not to have complicated feelings about. Your sense of scale may not have been exactly reliable.”

Claire considered that. “So it may have been normal.”

“It may have been normal.” Mara agreed evenly.

“Or not.”

Mara’s voice rose, “Claire!”

“I am only asking.”

“I know,” Mara looked around like someone else would arrive to help her explain it, “but that’s something we can’t possibly answer.”

Lizzy stared at the floor so hard she expected it to offer advice.

Mara leaned forward a little. Her voice lost its amusement and became gentler. “What matters is not whether his body did something ordinary. What matters is whether he treated you with care when both of you were embarrassed.”

Claire’s eyes lifted.

“Did he?”

“Yes.”

“Then start there. Not at the assignment. Not at the system. Not at the part where both of your bodies were apparently trying to make the morning more difficult. Start with what he chose when he was awake enough to choose.”

Claire’s hair shifted over her shoulder. This time, when one strand curled around her wrist, she did not immediately pull it away.

Somewhere down the corridor, a door opened and closed. Voices ed, indistinct. The break was ending whether they were ready or not.

Mara looked toward the hallway. “We need to clean up before Celia’s class.”

Lizzy moved towards her door too quickly, grateful to have a way to escape the conversation.

Claire rose more slowly. “Thank you,” she said.

Mara smiled. “You are welcome.”

Claire hesitated. “Please do not tell anyone I asked about—”

“I will take your concern about morning anatomy to my grave.”

Lizzy nodded with solemn intensity. “Same.”

Claire looked at her. “You are enjoying this.”

“No,” Lizzy said. “I am sharing your embarrassment. At least you haven’t lost any of your clothes in front of him.”

That made Claire laugh. A real laugh, small and startled.

It faded quickly, but not completely.

They stepped back into the corridor together. The afternoon waited for them: showers, clean clothes, Celia Hart’s bright smile, Cassie’s four o’clock assignment creeping closer with every minute.

Claire touched her hair once as they walked. It stayed wrapped loosely around her wrist for three more steps before letting go.