Don't Look at Me, I'm Forging - Silent Rivalries
Shoving her frayed spiral notebook into40 Silent
Shoving her frayed spiral notebook into her canvas shoulder bag,
Kae kept her head down, her chin buried so deep in her fleece collar that her breath fogged the inside of her heavy glasses.Beside her,
Holt was still shaking his head, jabbering away about bio-sleeves and cold-sap extraction, but
Kae barely heard a word.
All she wanted was to reach the rear exit before
Kincaid decided to give her another ten merit points or, worse, before her classmates tried to ask her how her father’s field-repair unit worked.Down in the second row, nobody was packing up.Gideon
Drake sat motionless in his brushed-steel desk chair, his long, aristocratic fingers resting flat against the polished console.
Underneath his crisp, silver-trimmed sleeves, faint bands of flesh-toned medical tape were still wrapped around both wrists—a lingering reminder of the neuro-toxin feedback that had paralyzed his grip four days ago on the
Ridge.His dark eyes were fixed on the top corner of the room.
He didn’t look at
He looked right past the concrete structural pillar at the small, slouched girl in the oversized gray hoodie.Her,
Gideon thought, a cold, bitter knot tightening in his chest.
It was her the whole time.He had assumed
Squad 7’s sudden dominance in
Sector 7 was a tactical fluke orchestrated by
Mercer, or perhaps some illegal, military-grade salvage bought off an
He had never even considered the second-ranked entrant—the quiet girl who dressed like a garage mechanic.
But watching her casually dismantle an eighty-year-old
Command metallurgy protocol in front of thirty-six cadets, the pieces clicked together with brutal clarity.The mass-shifting broadsword.
The toxin-coated sabers.
The skyboard repulsor plates.She hadn’t just forged
Squad 7’s gear; she was the sole reason
Drake’s scion had ended up frozen in an emergency stasis bubble on regional holo-feeds.”She’s an odd one, isn’t she?”A soft, overly sweet voice broke
Gideon’s train of thought.
Cross slid into the empty seat to his right, her immaculate blonde hair falling over the shoulder of a tailored white engineering tunic.
She carried a sleek, rose-gold diagnostic slate, though her eyes weren’t on the screen—they were following
Kae’s retreating back as the introverted girl practically sprinted out the rear doors behind
Bear.Gideon didn’t turn his head. “What do you want,
Cross?””Just making an observation,” Evie said smoothly, resting her chin on her hand.
She leaned closer, lowering her voice so the surrounding cadets wouldn’t overhear. “You’re looking at her the same way
She’s a problem,
The instructors are already whispering about her practical exam scores.
If she keeps handing out custom-tuned weapons to
Mercer’s squad,
Squad 7 is going to sweep the
Inter-System
Qualifiers next month.”Gideon’s jaw tightened, his knuckles turning white against the desk. “House
Drake doesn’t need advice from a freshman from a
Rim colony.””I’m not offering advice,” Evie replied, her eyes flashing with a sharp, calculating glint behind her pleasant, photogenic smile. “I’m offering an alliance.
My research team has access to advanced structural blueprints—blueprints your family’s foundry could easily mass-produce.
You have the noble influence and the raw capital.
I have the meta-data.”She paused, letting the silence hang between them as the last few cadets filed out into the hallway.”Together,” Evie whispered, “we can choke her out of the academy marketplace before she ever sets up a proper workshop.
No patrons, no material allocations, no glory.
Rim outcast back where she belongs.” Gideon stared at the empty seat at the top of the amphitheater where
Kae had been sitting thirty seconds ago.
His wrists still throbbed with a faint, phantom numbness under his bandages.”Talk,” Gideon grunted.