Chapter 5 KLAUS

“I should have chosen the Moscow campus,” I flop facedown on my bed. “Would have saved me all the trouble that girl has given me so far.”

My pillow doesn't respond.

The thing about Navy Hayes is that she is a problem I cannot categorise. I have tried. I've been trying since she landed on me last night and introduced herself like we had time for that. Like the deputy principal wasn't standing right there with a torch and a clipboard and the specific expression of someone who has stopped being surprised by people.

“Hi, I'm Navy.”

Like, what is her problem? Why do I even care?

I still don't know why I care that the magic aptitude device screamed for her this morning and the entire hall decided in thirty seconds that she cheated, which she didn't, because I was standing close enough to feel what actually happened and it was not a booster.

It was something else entirely. Something I don't have a category for yet.

My phone rings. I groan into the bed, knowing who's calling. There are only three people who have this number and two of them would text first.

I answer. "Mr. George."

"Klaus." His voice is exactly what it always is — measured, and precise, the voice of a man who decided somewhere in his twenties that showing warmth was a strategic disadvantage. "I trust you arrived without incident."

"I did."

"Good. Your results from the aptitude assessments—"

"Were logged this morning and are not yet available to external contacts." I sit up. "Is there something specific you needed, Mr. George, or is this a general check-in?"

A pause. He doesn't like being interrupted. I know he doesn't like it. That's why I do it.

"Roman is enrolled in the same year," he says.

"I'm aware."

"I'd like you to keep an eye on—"

"No."

"Klaus—"

"That wasn't part of our agreement." I stand up, move to the window, look out at the academy grounds in the evening light. It's a beautiful place. I'll give it that. "The agreement was that I graduate with honours. I don't claim your title, I don't announce myself as your son to anyone inside or outside this building. I don't even want to. In exchange you don't interfere with my life, my choices, or my time here. And when I graduate—" I pause. "You return my mother's research. Every page. In the condition it was in when you took it."

"Your mother's research," he says, with the careful neutrality of someone choosing their words like weapons, "is being kept safely—"

"Every page," I say. "That's the deal, Mr. George. I didn't add a Roman clause and neither did you.”

"He's your brother."

I watch a group of first years crossing the courtyard below — laughing at something, easy and loud, the way people are when they don't have anything to carry. "I'm not aware of having a brother. As far as this academy is concerned, I'm Klaus Delacroix. My mother's son. Nothing else."

"Klaus." And there it is — the shift in his voice, the one that used to mean something when I was younger, when I still thought it was the beginning of something real. "I'm asking you to watch out for him."

"I know you are." I pull the phone from my ear.

"Klaus, don't you dare—"

I hang up.

I stand at the window for a moment with the phone in my hand and my jaw so tight it aches. Then I put it face down on the desk and change into my swim gear before I say or do something I actually regret.

---

The academy pool is on the east side of the building, underground, lit from beneath the water so the whole room glows a deep chlorine blue. It's empty at this hour. That's why I chose this hour.

I drop my towel and hoodie on the bench, pull my goggles down, and dive.

The cold hits immediately and I let it. Let it close over my head, let the sound disappear, let everything above the surface — George, the device screaming, her — compress into the simple physical fact of water and distance.

I do six lengths without stopping and I'm not thinking about the device screaming or Mr. George's voice or the way Navy Hayes introduced herself last night. Nobody does that.

I don't know what to do with someone who does that. Why is this Navy girl bothering me so much?

Two more lengths later, I surface at the far end and push the goggles up and just breathe for a moment, arms hooked over the pool's edge, face tipped back.

The ceiling is high and white and doesn't look like anything.

I stay like that for a while.

Then I hear footsteps.

I know those footsteps. I have known those footsteps since I was four years old and following them down corridors that should have been mine to walk too.

I pull myself out of the pool.

I don't look toward the entrance. I reach for my towel. Shake the water from my hair then reach for my hoodie.

"Klaus."

I pull the hoodie on.

"Klaus, I just want to—"

I pick up my towel, my goggles, my phone from the bench, and I walk toward the exit. Past the lane ropes. Past the equipment lockers. Past Roman, who is standing in the entrance in a perfectly pressed jacket at eight in the evening like that's a normal thing, like he planned to be here, which he absolutely did.

I keep walking.

"I saw what happened at orientation," Roman says behind me. "The girl in your project pairing. The device."

I keep walking.

"I was there when she came in last night," he continues. His voice is easy, conversational, the voice of someone who has never needed to raise it to be heard. "At the gate, I mean. She's interesting."

I keep walking.

My hand hits the door.

"There's something about her," Roman says, and his voice does something I can't name — something that is almost genuine. Almost. "Don't you think? Something that doesn't add up. I've been trying to figure out what it is."

I turn around slowly.

Roman is standing right behind me with his hands in his jacket pockets and his sea glass eyes very steady on my face. I know that look. I've seen it my entire life. It's the look Roman gets when he's decided he wants something — not when he feels something, not when he needs something. When he has simply decided that a thing should be his and has begun the process of acquiring it.

The question is what he's decided about Navy Hayes.

The question is why that makes something in my chest go very, very still.

"Navy Hayes," he smiles, the same one I have seen disarm every room he's ever walked into. "What do you make of her?"

I look at my brother for a long moment.

I don't know why I stopped. I don't know why that name, in his mouth, in this room, makes something move in my chest that I don't have a category for either.

I just know that it does.

"What about her?" I say.