Alex couldn't stop fidgeting. It was well after midnight, the whole of campus was asleep, and there he was, compulsively reading through the same few passages of textbook, over and over again.
It is in the Pairing that an Angel is completed. The rib of Adam was taken to produce a reflection cut from the same cloth – an equal, through which he can observe himself, and she can observe herself. It is through that mechanism that the members of a Pair can truly, honestly, perceive their own flaws, their own sins, and only then can they approach that which is holy.
God grants us a purpose, and it is our duty to live up to it. Take comfort in the knowledge that you have a role, a place in this world and the next. Together with your Pair, your Guardian, and the guidance of the church, you will discover with clarity what that role is over the next few years of your life. When you feel lost, return your mind to it. You will gain only suffering and confusion if you reject your purpose, but in accepting it, you will find spiritual fulfillment.
Something about that rubbed him the wrong way. He couldn't figure out just what it was – every statement was objectively and morally correct, not just in accordance with doctrine, but with common sense. Earlier on in the night, shortly after his roommate had fallen asleep, he had focused on “the rib of Adam” – Genesis was full of opportunities for theological analysis, and if it had an exact literal meaning, it hadn't yet been taught to him, and so maybe the ambiguities there were nagging at him.
But no matter how much he dug at it, it didn't yield.
All he knew for certain was that he couldn't sleep. So he sat at his desk, flipping the page back and forth under a dim incandescent light. His leg bounced up and down of its own accord, just barely stopping before the heel of his boot would hit the hardwood floor. It wouldn't do anyone any good to hear him. Compulsively, he reached into the desk, and grabbed his journal, flipping to a blank page, and placed the tip of a pencil right at the beginning of the top line. They were taught that if they were to run into something they couldn't process, working it out through journal-writing could resolve the impasse.
It did not. No words came to him. Instead, he just started tapping at the page with the blunt end of the pencil. This shouldn't matter, but he found, as it went on, he couldn't stop.
His desk, as was Maxwell's, as was every other 13th year's in their own rooms, was tucked under his bunk, and now of all times, he was suddenly, terribly aware of how close that bunk was to the top of his head, how close the walls were to him, how small it all was -
Alex stood suddenly, and despite his racing heart pounding in his ears, slowly, courteously, tucked in his chair, making sure to not bump any of the perfectly-finished surfaces against the equally perfect, glossy finish of the desk, and stumbled backwards. The room hadn't been this small before, had it? The white walls bathed in moonlight pressed up against him, and he rushed to the window. Outside, the campus was blanketed in snow, and he could see the dining commons, classrooms, training areas, chapels, all of it asleep, but the vista wasn't enough. He was suffocating.
He threw open the window, and let the winter air in.
The windows reached nearly to the ceiling, and opened like a pair of double doors, and with them flung open, it finally felt like he had enough space. Alex leaned out, and just breathed.
His heart slowed.
His racing thoughts began to settle.
His trembling hands calmed.
…
And then it all spiked.
Instinctively, he kicked himself backwards and called up his magic, landing silently in a defensive stance two meters away, ready to fight. His fingertips hummed with raw potential, intent without purpose leaking into an unnatural purple glow that could, at a word, burn down the whole room, or peel the boards off the walls, or…
As he stood there, bracing himself, it hit him just how silly he was being. This was Arcadia. This was, barring maybe Constantinople or Rome, the safest place in the world. He called back his soul, and relaxed his pose. Maybe he should just use one of those stupid sleep aid spells Percy had told him about, and-
Through the open window, a boot flew in at head level. Behind it, in a perfect arc, followed a calf-length pleated dark red skirt, and behind that, an entire girl, long hair tracing the line she cut through the air before landing in a crouch, hand pressed to the ground with splayed fingers. She drew herself up, an inscrutable look on her face, and started speaking before she even met Alex's gaze. “Where have you been? Anyway, I need-”
At which point they locked eyes.
The girl's eyes widened. Both she and Alex glanced to Maxwell's sleeping body in one of the bunks, and locked again. Her bared teeth gleamed in the dull light.
Her hair was mostly drawn back into a cascading waterfall of crimson that fell entirely behind her ears, with the remainder forming messy bangs that fell near, but not on, her eyes. Those were pine green, ringed with brown flecks, almost like some of those pine needles had just died. She wore a slate-colored blazer, over the matching dark red vest and skirt of Arcadia's girls uniforms, and the high-laced gray boots that had nearly imprinted themselves on Alex's face. She looked a little too thin for her clothes, and her angular face only served to accentuate her expression, best described as a silent growl that made up for the lack of sound with even more anger.
Her eyelashes were thick enough that Alex, for a moment, thought she may have been wearing mascara, and her eyebrows were dark and pointed, adding to the collection of sharp lines that formed this porcupine of a figure. She bristled with magical and physical potential energy, bracing her back heel against the wall and keeping her balled fists at face level.
Alex kept a half-dozen counterattacks on the edge of his mind, but he struggled to keep them in working memory. There was his distress earlier, but also…
She was beautiful. Not just her figure, but her stance, her improvised defenses, her-
Alex clamped that thought off.
“You shouldn't be here,” he said, sounding far less authoritative than he intended. “What-”
Before he could finish asking the question, she turned, her hair whipping around, and planted a foot on the windowsill. With a grunt, she levered herself up to launch out the window. Alex lunged forward, and grabbed her by the wrist, - he shouldn't be touching a female student – and leaned back, pulling her with all his weight. But she was leaning just as hard forward trying to pivot out the window, and so they came to a stability that'd fall apart as soon as one of them let go.
She looked back over her shoulder. “Let me go!” she hissed.
Alex couldn't ignore such flagrant breaking of the rules. “What are you doing here?” This time, he kept his voice firm.
The girl looked away from him, and tugged again, struggling to break free. “None of your business!”
Alex scoffed. “You're in my room!”
“I wouldn't be if you just let go!”
Three feet to their right, Maxwell snored loudly, and rolled over in bed.
Under Alex's fingertips, pressing into her soft skin – were all girls this soft? - he felt a slight tingle, and all the tiny hairs on his arm stood up. She was building up an electrical charge, he'd have to – shoot, they hadn't been taught how to defend against an electrical attack yet, at least not in a way that didn't involve destroying the source and that was not an option here -
“I'm going,” she said, and Alex knew that if she fired that spell off, there was nothing he could do to stop her. He could just report her, she'd have to do a bit of repentance, and everything would work out as it should, but… He couldn't shake this feeling of dread. This girl, whoever she was, was out not just well after curfew, but well after even the latest stragglers should be asleep, and she was high-strung enough that she was ready to fight another student.
Whatever she was doing, it had to be important.
If he let go, could he honestly say he was sure she'd come back?
“Wait,” he pleaded.
The tension in their grasp lessened. The girl looked back at him again, and with her head halfway out the window, bathed in moonlight, he could see that her cheeks were streaked with tears.
He had to do something.
“Do… Do you need help?”
They stared each other down – His eyes cold and suspicious, hers quivering, barely holding eye contact. - for what felt like minutes, before she replied.
She grabbed him by the wrist, and used him to pull herself back into the room, now standing in front of him, eyes firmly fixed on the floor. “Yes”, she whispered.
“Okay,” Alex replied, and put his hand on her shoulder in what should have been a comforting gesture. She shrugged away from it, and turned away from him. The girl slumped a little against the wall by his bed. She didn't look in pain so much as exhausted. He wasn't sure if it was his training or his nature that made him want to take charge of the situation, but whatever this was, he had to fix it. “Tell me,” he asked, “What do you need?”
She took a deep breath. “Can you heal people?”
Alex's eyes widened. That was a bad sign. “Yeah, but if someone's hurt, we should get an Angel, or one of the teachers, they'd-”
“No.”
The finality of her tone sapped him of any faith that he could change her mind.
The choice had been reduced to a simple binary, any escapes quickly eroding away. Either he helps her, or she goes it alone. His decision was inevitable, and he hated that. “Okay. Let's go.”
She turned around, and looked at him incredulously. Alex's serious face failed to change, and she nodded with a frown. Then, suddenly, she reached out and grabbed him by the left wrist, lifting it up and examining his Interface - a solid glass-like bracelet, about a centimeter thick and three across, that all students wore, that functioned as a digital assistant, communications device, security tracker, all in one – and with a trickle of magic, popped it open and off his wrist. “What-” he objected, but she cut him off.
“Do you want to help or not?”
Alex nodded, and she tossed the Interface up and onto his bed. He noticed, with growing suspicion, that she wasn't wearing hers, either.
“Then, follow my lead.” She took a deep breath, and her eyes seemed to glaze over, as she focused on something that only the mind could see, in a telltale sign of preparing Irinaen spellcasting. “Stay hidden, away from prying eyes.” The words imprinted themselves onto reality, as her mind meshed with the gears that drove the world. The air seemed to warp around her edges, drawing the eye constantly away from her. Alex felt his mind jitter as he tried to look at her. That wasn’t normal.
“What is that?” he asked, feeling like he was talking to an empty room. It felt like he was going mad.
She dropped the spell, just in time for Alex to catch the end of an exasperated eye-roll. “Right, you wouldn’t know that one,” she said.
“Of course I wouldn’t!” he said, bringing his whisper as close to a yell as he could. “That was messing with my soul!” He was incensed. Magic that manipulated the souls and minds of others was far past what they were authorized to do, and drastically unsafe. A student shouldn’t be messing around with that kind of thing until, well, until someone with authority said they could. “What concepts were you even using?” He was also more than a little curious how she did it.
Instead of answering, she let her eyes glass over again. “Keep us hidden, away from prying eyes.” That time, Alex was paying more attention, and he could tell that she only changed one Irinaen concept, but that didn’t tell him much of what lay behind the English words. This time, he could still see her perfectly fine, but instead, the world around them wobbled slightly. He scanned the room, trying to figure out exactly what was going on, and found that when he looked at his vintage recruitment poster for the third Ivory Coast Expeditionary Force, he couldn’t read any of the text on it. He cocked his head, and tried again.
The girl noticed. “Ah,” she said. He could feel something changing in her mind, and the text came into focus. “Keep close to me, and you’ll be fine. Come on, let’s go.”
Then, in a sudden burst of motion, she leapt out the window.
Alex very nearly swore. But he was involved now. He had to see this through.
He calmed his nerves, and leapt out the fifth floor window of his room.
With a push of magic, the windows closed, and Maxwell snored on unimpeded.