As Isadora approached the curved hallway leading to Lab 4A, her wristband chimed softly. Lyra's voice slipped in like a breeze behind her ear.
"Next class: Neuro-Literature & Mood Mapping, Lab 4A. Instructor: Dr. Iseult Roen. Room located two doors past the Holography Bay. Estimated emotional load: moderate to high."
A pause, then—
"First-time enrollees often experience sensory spike. Would you like to activate a Grounding Breath Cam? There's one by the stairwell, just left of the Archive Room entrance."
Isadora slowed slightly, considering. Her pulse had already started ticking faster.
"I'm fine."
"Noted. Mood support available on-demand."
The hallway curved wider. Pale lights shimmered along the edges. She touched her wristband gently and stepped toward the lab door.
Her second class felt richer—more unnerving.
The Neuro-Lit Tech Lab was located deep within the southwing, where the walls shimmered with motion-responsive light and the ceilings felt far too high. Just outside the entrance, a curved glass panel extended from wall to wall. As students approached, a beam of soft light scanned them silently.
"Energy sync in progress," a voice said warmly.
The biometric sensor logged her vitals—emotional baseline, neural resonance, pulse rhythm. A pale blue halo flickered around Isadora's silhouette on the panel before it granted her entry.
She stepped inside and blinked.
The Sensory Archive Room was unlike anything she had expected. It smelled faintly of cedarwood and old ink, though the surfaces gleamed like something out of a space station. Transparent soft-glass tables formed fluid half-circles. Neural bands hovered slightly above each seat. A low-frequency hum buzzed in the air, like the room itself was thinking.
Students murmured quietly while a TA distributed slim neural headbands from a sterilized rack. Each one blinked green when synced with a station. The holographic interfaces projected in front of each desk glowed to life with each new wearer.
At the center stood the instructor—a tall, spare woman with storm-grey eyes and a long shimmer-coat that caught the light like dust on a bookshelf.
"I'm Dr. Iseult," she said, her voice smooth, clipped, and calm. "Welcome to Neuro-Literature & Mood Mapping. In this course, we don't just read. We feel-read."
A hush passed through the room. Isadora sat, her palms resting lightly on the table.
Dr. Iseult paced slowly, deliberate in her steps.
"Every passage has a frequency. You'll learn to track those frequencies—map shifts in tone, rhythm, and mood as seismic events. We will cover literature that spans centuries—Brontë, Marquez, Aleigh-Lynn from The Scavenger Arc… and of course, experimental AI poets from the Martian synesthetic colonies."
A flick of her wrist brought up a floating hologram of a neural graph—peaks, valleys, waves of color.
"Your headbands track three primary markers: pulse tempo, emotional saturation, and cognitive resonance. These appear as color-coded reactions on your neural graphs."
She tapped the projection.
"Red: intense agitation—rage, obsession, panic.
Blue: calm states—melancholy, detachment, clarity.
Yellow: nervous tension—anticipation, confusion, unresolved desire.
Green: emotional harmony—understanding, acceptance, internal growth."
She turned to face them again. "Literature, as a medium, taps directly into the limbic system. You won't just understand what a character feels. You'll learn how to locate where and how deeply it hits you. That's the essence of this lab."
Isadora tightened the neural headband across her temples. A faint beep confirmed her sync.
Today's text: Wuthering Heights.
Subject: Wuthering Heights Mode: Emotional Pulse Sync Target Sequence: Chapter 9. Emotional Divergence (Heathcliff/Catherine)
The screen in front of her fluttered open like a breath. Words hovered midair, a pale serif font casting faint shadows against her skin. As she read, the rage in Heathcliff's voice punched through her body like a heatwave. Cathy's desperate declarations crawled under her skin like ghosts.
Her neural graph surged red, pulsing, spiking.
Then—
"Why there?" a voice said quietly.
She looked beside her.
Hazel eyes, a relaxed smile—curious, not mocking.
The boy tilted his head toward her graph. "It's strong. Spiked really high."
Isadora touched her screen lightly. "Because it feels like a haunting," she murmured. "Like something that won't leave you, no matter how much time passes."
He nodded, slow and thoughtful. "Jace."
"Dora."
He smiled again, this time softer.
Before the moment could settle, another voice cut in.
"Red usually means loss of control, doesn't it?" The tone was casual—too casual.
Isadora turned.
Sorelle Vane. The girl from the first class with the glossy braids and polished way of speaking. She'd barely spoken then, but now her neural graph was showing cool, elegant gradients of silver and yellow. Precise. Tamed.
She lifted one manicured finger to her cheek as if in thought.
"I mean, when the system reads rage, it's usually because the reader's letting the character's emotion overwhelm their own rhythm. That's not always… desirable."
A few students nearby looked up, watching.
Isadora blinked. "I wasn't overwhelmed. I was just... responsive. It hit hard. And the headband picked that up."
Sorelle smiled lightly. "Of course. That's one approach." Her voice was dipped in subtle superiority. "I just think managing the response is part of the technique. You know, staying aware of the line between immersion and disorientation."
Jace raised an eyebrow, not even trying to hide his amusement. "Sounds like someone's been studying the manuals already."
Sorelle didn't rise to the bait. She turned her screen slightly, revealing a near-perfect graph. "We're on scholarships," she said softly, like it was a secret only they shared. "People like us can't afford messy."
Isadora's jaw tensed—but before she could respond, Dr. Iseult's voice sliced cleanly through the rising tension.
"Sorelle. Isadora."
Both girls sat straighter.
Dr. Iseult studied the room for a moment, then tilted her head toward their projections.
"Both responses are valid," she said coolly. "Red isn't a failure. Nor is blue a mark of superiority. Variation is what we're looking for. Consistency without range suggests detachment, not control. Let's not confuse stillness with mastery."
A few students exchanged looks.
Sorelle's smile dimmed slightly.
Dr. Iseult let her gaze linger, then turned back to the holographic text.
"This is not a test of composure. It is a study of truth. Of emotional literacy."
She pressed her palm to the center control and dimmed the lights.
"Now," she said. "Let's map how Cathy's language changes when she speaks about love versus when she speaks in love. Watch the tone shift. Don't just read—let your mind tune in to the modulation."
Isadora stared at the screen again, but her mind wasn't just on Cathy anymore.
She felt something new stirring—like her place in this class, this school, this strange new world—was being drawn into sharper shape.
And she wasn't about to be flattened into anyone else's gradient.
Dr. Iseult moved with the kind of deliberate stillness that made people pay attention even before she spoke. Her presence alone carried gravity.
When she lifted her hand, the air responded—screens shifting, text rearranging into neat holographic lines above every desk.
"I am Heathcliff—he's always, always in my mind…"
Her voice was low, deliberate.
"Pause there," she said.
The room obeyed. The lights dimmed to a dusky hue, like dusk had settled just for that sentence.
"Let's track the shift," she continued. "Notice how Brontë begins with a clear thought, then loses syntactic control as Cathy dissolves into obsession. Her identity starts to blur. In Neuro-Mapping, we call this a fusion frequency."
She pinched the air again.
A neural wave graph bloomed midair—its line sharp, then chaotic. Red streaks burst into violet.
"When a subject loses boundary between self and other," she said, "fusion frequencies appear—dense, jagged, unstable."
She paced slowly across the room, eyes flicking between the graphs glowing above each student's table.
"Now, feel-read it. Don't just process the text. Let it move through you. Then observe what it does to your rhythm."
A beat of silence.
"Breathe as you re-read. If you feel the spike, don't fight it. That's what the Grounding Breath Cam is for."
Heads turned toward the side wall where a curved unit glowed softly—pulses of warm light syncing to slow inhalations.
Dr. Iseult gestured to it.
"If your emotional wave crosses threshold—typically red with violet or black—step outside, use the Cam, engage the breath sequence. It recalibrates your rhythm and restores baseline. Literature is a doorway," she added quietly, "but you must learn how to step back out when it pulls too hard."
Something in her tone hinted at experience—personal, maybe—but she didn't explain.
"Grounding doesn't mean weakness," she said. "It means reorientation."
Her fingers twitched again. The text dissolved.
A new title flickered to life across their screens—white text, flickering, nonlinear.
The Scavenger Arc
"i dream in downloads / soft rage on static / joy, recompiled—
is it wrong to miss the glitch?"
She gave them a moment to take it in before speaking.
"Now, contrast this with Brontë's voice," she said. "Where Cathy fragmented herself through language, this generation does it through code. Both dissolve identity—but one through emotion, the other through circuitry."
The holographic graphs pulsed to life again, mapping each student's neural rhythm.
One glowed green and even. Another blinked amber. Isadora's flickered between red and gold—restless, alive.
"This text maps unpredictably," Dr. Iseult murmured. "Let it."
She moved around the room.
"Notice the compression—syntax collapsing under emotion. The rhythm of self-reconstruction. Cathy said 'I am Heathcliff.' Here, the speaker says, 'joy, recompiled.' Different centuries. Same ache."
Jace leaned toward Isadora, voice soft.
"You okay?"
She exhaled slowly. "I think so."
"I liked that line," he said. "'Joy, recompiled.' Kinda sticks."
She glanced at him—and for the first time, didn't feel entirely alone in this place.
Up front, Dr. Iseult lifted her hand again. Two waveforms appeared side by side—one green, one red.
"This—" she pointed to the green, "is comprehension."
"And this—" her finger traced the red, "is intensity. Not less valid. Just less stable. Sometimes, rawness tells the truer story."
Her gaze swept the class, pausing on Sorelle, then on Isadora.
"Now," she said, "watch what happens when Edgar enters the room in Wuthering Heights. Cathy's tone fractures—notice the yellow peaks. That's restraint overlaying obsession."
The screens shifted again. The lights dimmed further, like breath holding itself.
"If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be..."
The room's pulse followed the text.
Some graphs glowed pale green. One spiked violet. Isadora's steadied into a dull red, like a bruise humming under her skin.
Then, softly, Dr. Iseult spoke again:
"Love, in Brontë's world, isn't gentle. It's possessive. Elemental. The language cracks like ice under pressure."
A few students exhaled audibly.
Dr. Iseult tapped her wristband, logging the data. "Neural feedback recorded. Baselines updated. You'll find analytics in your course portal."
One boy rubbed at his eyes, startled to find them wet.
"If your emotional saturation peaked high," she added, "Grounding.cam already prompted you. Don't skip it."
Isadora glanced at her own screen
Lyra : Grounding.cam: stabilize now or save for later?
She tapped Save. Not yet. She wasn't ready to let the feeling fade.
"This lab," Dr. Iseult said, her tone final now, "is not about control or catharsis. It's about recognition. Without that, eloquence means nothing."
The hum beneath their desks powered down.
"Class dismissed."
Chairs whispered. Screens dimmed.
Sorelle brushed past with a faint, unreadable smile.
Jace leaned over as he docked his neural band.
"Welcome to your second brain," he said lightly.
Isadora let out a quiet laugh—half breath, half release.
Isadora let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding. She was halfway through ,almost at the Holographic Bay when Jace called after her.
"Hey—wait up."
She turned. He jogged a few steps to catch up, already unlocking something on his wristband.
"Here," he said, tilting the sleek blue surface toward her. "You seem cool. Mind if we sync?"
Her own wristband buzzed with proximity. A soft ripple moved across the Skystream card interface.
Lyra : Sync Request: Jace V. | Share ID, Status, Academic Profile?
Isadora smiled slightly and accepted. "Sure."
The light between their cards blinked once—shared.
"You'll need people you trust here," Jace said. "Even if it's just one."
Before she could reply, a sharp stare slid across her skin.
Sorelle paused in the hallway, her eyes meeting Isadora's for a moment before she looked away.
Isadora blinked, unsure what that was about. Maybe it was because of what happened in class—or maybe nothing at all.
She didn't dwell on it. There were already enough people to figure out without adding Sorelle to the list.
Raising a mental brow at the scene, she said,
"True," agreeing with what Jace had said. "But still—nice to meet you," she added with a small smile.
Jace's ears tinted faintly pink, an obvious grin spreading across his face.
"Okay, see you later—in the next class, I mean."
He gave a quick wave before turning away. She waved back, watching him until he disappeared down the corridor. Then she looked down and pulled up Nell's contact.
Where are you? Just finished NLMM. Still can't believe we're in this place.
No reply.
Almost without thinking, her mind drifted elsewhere. Elian.
She hadn't seen him in a while — not properly, anyway. Everyone had been caught up in their own schedules, their own chaos. Still… saying hi never hurt nobody
Feeling guilty for not reaching out she hesitated, thumb hovering over the screen, then typed anyway:
Isadora: "Hey, you done with class? Wanna grab lunch?"
The message sent with a soft ping.
No reply.
She packed up slowly, trying not to look at the screen again. But as she reached the dining hall doors, her wristband buzzed faintly.
Elian: "Something came up. Maybe another day."
She sighed. Hungry. Tired. Emotionally tapped out.
****
The school's dining hall as always gleamed like the rest of Creisleigh—glass, chrome, and light bending through the air like it had manners. Isadora was about to scan her card when she saw him.
Malakai.
And the girl beside him—the same one from earlier. Lutris
Their eyes met for the briefest second. His expression softened. Hers—steady, unreadable.
"Hey, Dora."
His voice still had that warmth that disarmed her, that made her forget how their morning had ended—in silence sharp enough to leave a mark.
She hesitated.
Part of her wanted to ignore him. The other part didn't want to seem petty in a place where every move was being observed.
So when he said, "Join us?" she forced a small, polite smile.
"Sure."
₳8.00 Cred flickered off her Skystream card. She picked up her tray and followed them to a corner table.
Lutris, elegant, poised—looked up briefly.
"There's more space over there," she said, her tone perfectly courteous but edged with ownership.
Malakai sighed softly, then followed.
Isadora trailed after them, her appetite fading with every step.
The table was full—of sound, of chatter, of everything she didn't belong to. Conversations folded around her like invisible walls. She could hear laughter, codes, class banter—none of it reaching her.
They talked about the TechTrack Symposium coming up next week, about prototype drones, about mentor assignments—a world that belonged to them, not her.
Malakai tried.
He leaned toward her once. "You'd actually like the symposium. There's an art-tech crossover—they're designing visual archives that respond to emotional cues."
She smiled faintly. "Sounds… ambitious."
Lutris laughed lightly, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. "Ambitious is the point. The arts division doesn't usually get to see things like that up close, right?"
A few students chuckled—soft, polite. Not cruel, just closed.
Malakai glanced at Dora, guilt flickering behind his eyes.
Dora lifted her fork. "Right," she said. "We don't."
The silence that followed was polite enough to sting.
She focused on her food—on chewing, swallowing, pretending not to notice how the conversation folded in on itself again.
When Isadora finally spoke, it was just to answer a casual question about their course sequence.
Lutris blinked. Tilted her head. Smiled like Dora had said something adorable and wrong.
Silence again.
She could have stood up. She almost did.
But something in her held back—not pride, exactly. Maybe stubbornness. Maybe the quiet need not to look like the girl who ran from discomfort.
So she stayed. Ate. Listened. Smiled once or twice at the wrong times.
When lunch ended, she stood.
Malakai looked up immediately. "You heading out? I'll walk you to the dormitory"
Lutris's brow lifted, voice smooth as cream. "Oh, can I come too, Mal? I mean—surely she can find her way on her own, can't she?"
Malakai, still gentle but firm, replies,
"I said I'll walk her.
Dora hesitated, then nodded—if only to end the tension pressing against her spine.
Lutris's smile didn't reach her eyes as they left.
They walked for a while in silence, the path humming faintly beneath the SkyRail lines.
"You didn't have to follow me," she said finally.
"I wanted to," he replied. "You looked—"
"Don't," she cut in. "Don't do that thing where you act like everything's fine after pretending I don't exist for half a day."
"I wasn't pretending," he said, quieter now. "You know how it is here. Everyone's—watching."
"So you can smile at her, but you can't talk to me?"
"It's not like that."
"Then what is it like?"
He stopped walking. "Complicated."
She gave a short, humorless laugh. "It always is with you."
And before he could say more, she turned toward the waiting scooters, scanning her wristband to unlock one.
"See you around, Malakai," she said, without looking back.
****
Back in her dorm, Isadora kicked off her shoes and collapsed onto her bed. She stared at the ceiling until a familiar voice cut in:
"You look like you just got through nine levels of meta-hell."
Nell.
Her roommate stepped in, dropped onto the chair near Dora's desk, and sighed.
"Mythic Ethics was a whole performance," she said. "They made us map out the morality of dragons in interwar allegory. I think my soul actually left my body."
Dora laughed. A real one.
And just like that, the weight lifted.
As they chatted, Dora opened her Skystream card.
Grounding.cam – Reserve Slot?
She tapped Book.
The fatigue dulled, but didn't vanish. And just when the room felt warm again, their third roommate entered.
Lady Rosier. Silent as usual. Regal in the most inconvenient way. She gave them both the same non-look she always did and moved to her corner.
Then—a knock.
Another girl. Equally polished. She raised a single brow at Dora and Nell, then turned to Rosier.
"Want to come out?"
Rosier didn't hesitate. She rose and followed.
The door shut behind them.
Isadora looked at Nell, who just grinned.
"Creisleigh Hall," she said, dryly. "Where hierarchy walks on heels."
Dora let her head fall back with a dramatic sigh.
"Good Lord. What a day."
By dinner time, she was exhausted. she was too tired to care where she sat. The dining hall buzzed with laughter and table pings, but it all washed over her like static. She ate quickly, barely noticing the taste, and made her way back to her room The girl deserved the rest she needed.
****
A boy entered quietly, the soft hum of the tech pad in his hands lighting his way. He paused before a sleek desk.
Mr. Thorne sat behind it, shirt slightly open, jacket thrown to one side, hair tousled in a way that looked accidental but never was.
Beside him sat her—the girl with the perfect posture, perfect dress, perfect silence. His unofficial fiancée. The air around them shimmered with too much beauty, too much threat.
The boy cleared his throat and placed the pad down.
"These are the responses of the first years' artificial assistants," he said. "You were asked to go through them."
Thorne didn't move at first. Then, slowly, he raised his head.
His voice was low. Hoarse.
"Uhuh. Got it."