Harem Apocalypse: Every Moan Levels Us Up!

"This job goes against the government."

Miss Brown said it plainly, without softening it. "Which means if we’re seen, we’re not students anymore. We’re something else entirely." She looked at each of us. "Anyone who wants to leave, leave now."

Mute shifted in his seat. The movement of someone calculating. He didn’t stand.

Mr Kim pressed himself up from the chair with the effort of a man who had not been designed for getting up quickly and had made peace with that. He straightened his coat, which appreciated the gesture without fully cooperating.

"Brown has introduced me," he said. "Let me give you the details."

We leaned in.

"Each of you will receive a gold card." He said it like it was the first item on a list, matter of fact, moving on. But I caught it landing differently on the others. Annabelle, Mute, Wells, all of them reading something into it that I didn’t have the context for yet. Sherry, beside me, was in the same position I was. Still learning what things meant here.

I had seen Daphne leave a bronze card at the restaurant table. Bronze meant something. Gold was presumably above that. I filed it and kept listening.

"There’s a package," Mr Kim continued. "Stuck in a building in the city. Tracked by CGI agents. Your job is simple. Move the package to safety by tomorrow morning."

"What’s the package?" I asked.

He looked at me. Not annoyed. Slightly surprised, the way people are when they expect questions and get them earlier than expected.

"A girl. Nineteen. She’s in a specific building in the city. You get her out and move her to her destination by morning. Your job ends there."

That did sound simple. It also sounded like the kind of simple that had a specific number of complications hiding inside it, which was why five ability users were sitting in this office instead of one.

"Is she gifted?" Mute asked.

"She is not." Mr Kim said. "But the people looking for might be."

"Dead or alive?" Wells asked.

I looked at him. That was the question I had been building toward and he had gotten there in under four seconds. Good instincts.

"CGI wants her detained," Mr Kim said. "But there are individuals within the government who want her dead." He sat back down with the relief of a man who had been standing long enough. "Your role is to make sure neither of those things happens tonight."

Miss Brown stepped back into the center of the room.

"Anna and Wells, you’re on escort. Get her out of the building and into open space where Mute can work. His teleportation needs clear air." She looked at Mute. "Once she’s in the open, you move her to the destination. Fast and direct."

She moved through it like she’d been planning it since the call last night.

"Sherry and Abram are medical cover. If anyone takes damage, you keep them functional." She said it with the certainty of someone who hadn’t questioned my ability. She thought I was a healer. That remained useful.

That’s why I’m here, I thought. Healer on a combat mission. Keep the fighters standing. Fine. I could work with that.

"If the situation changes," Mr Kim asked from his chair, "is there a contingency?"

"The healers clear the building, get every door open, give Mute a direct path inside," Miss Brown said. "But it won’t come to that. The army doesn’t move fast enough for us to need the contingency."

Mr Kim nodded with the trust of a man who had put his problem in capable hands and was choosing to believe they were as capable as advertised.

"This stays in this room," Miss Brown said. "Nobody else at Hogsby knows. That’s not negotiable."

[Alert: Telepathy active. Directed at you.]

"If you’re doubting," Miss Brown said, and her voice arrived inside my head rather than through the air, clear and precise and completely private, "you’re free to back down now."

I kept my face still.

She had used it on all of us. I was certain of that. The same message, delivered privately to each person in the room, simultaneously, without anyone else hearing. Level seven direct telepathy.

Miss Brown was considerably more interesting than she looked.

I looked at the room. Mute sitting with his arms crossed, whatever he was feeling about last night tucked away behind his face.

Wells quiet and ready, the posture of someone who had been waiting for a problem worth his ability.

Annabelle with her hands in her lap, level eleven pyrokinesis that nobody in this building fully understood yet.

Sherry beside me, wanting to push back at a government she had distrusted since before the walls.

Five different reasons for being in this room. Five different things at stake.

Mine was simple. I liked busy nights. And a gold card wasn’t nothing.

"Alright," Miss Brown said, out loud, to all of us. "Get some rest today. We move tonight."

"Stay for a moment, Abram."

Miss Brown’s voice slipped into my head as the others filed out. She followed them through the door without looking back.

I remained where I was, alone in the room, unsure if I had imagined it. The office was still warm, but it felt smaller now.

One thing was clear—Miss Brown wasn’t doing this because Hogsby was under threat. The funding cuts were real, but this felt older than that. Deliberate. Something she’d been building toward quietly, piece by piece. Plans like this didn’t appear overnight. And plans that involved specific people weren’t accidents.

Mr. Kim was still seated when the others left. As I passed, he lifted a hand slightly, not a wave. A signal.

I stopped. He waited until the last footsteps faded.

"Boy," he said, his voice low. "Whatever Brown told you your role is tonight—" He paused, smoothing his coat once. "—that’s not why I asked for you."

I held his gaze.

"You’re the only one on that team who can finish this job."

A pause.

"And that’s a problem."