Divine Milking System

Chapter 464: 464 | There Will Be Shirts

Vale went to the door. Stopped. Turned around with one hand on the frame, and something in his posture changed enough that even Blair noticed it.

"Leone died because he broke formation and nobody made him stop doing it. Not the faculty, not his squad, not his captain." He looked at Blair when he said the last one. Not accusing. Just placing it. "Eight of you now. Twice as many chances for somebody to break formation. Twice as many people to make them stop."

He left. The door clicked. The room sat in it.

Then Belle exhaled through her teeth and said, "Well. This is going to be a nightmare."

"Understatement," Misato said.

"I’m putting it in the group chat." Belle already had her phone out. "Aurora’s going to lose her mind. Addison’s going to demand we get shirts made."

"There will be no shirts," Blair said.

"There will be shirts."

Blair turned around for the first time since Vale started talking and looked at all of us properly. The burn scar showed at her collar where the uniform didn’t quite cover it, a stripe of raw pink against porcelain, and she’d tried to hide it with a scarf that morning and given up somewhere between then and now. Her ice-blue eyes went down the row. Jordan, face-down. Belle, typing. Naomi, hand still on my arm. Javier, writing something. Hikaru, standing in the aisle like a coat rack with opinions.

Me.

Her eyes stopped on me and stayed there for about a second and a half longer than a person’s eyes should stop on someone they hate, and then color came up her throat and she looked at the wall instead.

Twenty-nine percent. Three question marks.

You know what, System? I don’t need commentary right now. Read the room.

"I want it on record," Blair said to the room, "that this is a mistake."

"Noted." Belle didn’t look up from her phone. "Filed. Timestamped. You want me to read it back to you in five weeks when we’re first?"

"We will not be first."

"See, that’s the attitude that got you second."

Blair’s hand ignited. Not a lot. Just the edge of it, blue-white licking off two knuckles, gone again in half a second when she caught herself. The temperature near the front row jumped ten degrees and dropped.

Belle finally looked up. Amber-brown eyes, absolutely unbothered. "Do that again and I’ll put an incident report in with a photo. My phone was already open."

"Enough." Misato stepped between them without hurrying. "Both of you. Six a.m. If either of you shows up planning to be a problem I’ll run you until you throw up and then run you again."

"You don’t give me orders." Blair’s voice dropped.

"Movement and positioning." Misato’s didn’t. "That’s mine. Vale said it out loud. You want to argue engagement, argue engagement. You want to argue where your feet go, I’ll bury you."

They held it. Nine years of history sitting in six feet of lecture hall air, and I could see it all in Misato’s face, the mother who cleaned the Davenport house, the tuition that wasn’t hers, the bruise from Cassandra that had faded to yellow and then to nothing at all. And I could see the other side of it in Blair, which was worse, because what was in Blair’s face wasn’t contempt.

It was fear. Not of Misato. Of losing her.

Blair looked away first. That was new. That was extremely new, and I filed it somewhere behind my ribs and didn’t examine it.

"Six," Blair said, and walked out.

Javier scrambled after her, notebook bouncing off his hip. "Blair. Blair, hey, about Dante, did his family say anything about." The door swallowed the rest.

Jordan sat up, hair flattened on one side. "So we’re all dying at winter evaluations."

"Probably," Naomi said, and she said it so gently that it took Jordan a full three seconds to register that his own girlfriend-adjacent squadmate had just agreed with his despair.

"Naomi."

"Sorry. Probably not." She patted his shoulder on her way past. "Eat something before six."

Misato stopped at my chair on her way out. Lime green ponytail, one hand on the seatback, close enough that I got citrus and cedar and gym chalk.

"Field lead," she said.

"He didn’t say my name."

"He didn’t have to." Her mouth did something that wasn’t quite a smile. "You know what happens if you take it and you’re wrong?"

"Somebody dies and it’s my fault."

"Yeah." She tapped the seatback twice. "So don’t be wrong."

She left. Hikaru went after her without a word, and as she passed my row her hand came out and set something on the desk in front of me. A protein bar. Peanut butter. Already going.

I picked it up and looked at the door she’d disappeared through and thought about a girl in reading glasses with no binding on, saying my name like it meant something.

"She keeps feeding you," Belle said.

"She’s very traditional."

"Uh huh." Belle stood, stretched, and the uniform blazer rode up in a way that was absolutely on purpose because Belle Fox has never once in her life done anything to her clothing by accident. "Chips. East Tower. You owe me four more days."

"You said the whole week."

"I said the whole week, and it’s Monday, and you’re already trying to negotiate." She grabbed my tie and used it to pull me out of the chair, which shouldn’t have worked and did, because C-rank Strength does nothing for you when a girl has your tie. "Also Naomi and I need to talk to you about something."

Naomi, at the door, went pink at the ears. "Belle."

"What? He should know."

"Not in a lecture hall."

"Then not in a lecture hall." Belle let go of my tie and smoothed it flat against my chest with her palm, taking substantially longer than the task required. "Your room. Nine o’clock. Bring the bottles."

"The bottles."

"You went into a Void Gate with two cups in the vault and came out with a death timer at five days." She flattened the tie again. Her fingers found the top edge of the scar through the shirt and stopped there. "You’re not doing that again."

"Belle."

"Nine o’clock." She walked away with a lot of unnecessary motion in it. At the door she looped her arm through Naomi’s, said something I didn’t catch, and Naomi made a noise like a kettle.

I stood in an empty lecture hall with a protein bar and a squad of eight people who hated each other, a co-command structure engineered by a man who thought suffering was pedagogy, and a field lead slot nobody had officially handed me that everyone in the room had already handed me.

Five weeks to winter evaluations. Blair Davenport on my roster.

The graft pulsed, warm and full and pleased with itself, like a cat that had knocked something expensive off a shelf.

"Yeah," I said out loud, to nobody, in a room built for fifty. "I hate that you’re right."

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