Six in the morning at Onyx House smelled like scorched coffee, Jaime's protein powder, and the specific desperation of seventeen teenagers who had been told to be somewhere on time.
I got there first. Natalia got there before first, which shouldn't be mathematically possible, and she had the holographic map already projected over the coffee table with two formations drafted in her handwriting. Purple combat suit. Hair braided so tight it looked like a weapon on its own. She'd slept maybe two hours and she looked better than every person in the room who'd slept eight.
"You're late," she said.
"I'm four minutes early."
"You're late by my clock."
"Your clock is a personality disorder."
She didn't dignify that. She adjusted the map, and the intersection at Sector 12 rotated slow above the pizza boxes nobody had thrown out.
