Harem Apocalypse: Every Moan Levels Us Up!

Sophia Vale’s office was oval, which was either an architectural choice or a statement. The kind of room that said: nothing here has corners because corners are for people who need walls to lean on.

She sat opposite Lord Bala with the composed attention of someone who had received unexpected visitors before and had a system for managing them.

"You’re not any usual visitor," she said.

"Valid assumption," Bala replied, "if my daughter wasn’t your student."

"Of course." She accepted the correction smoothly. Then: "Are you here because of the Hogsby incident?"

His eyes didn’t move but something behind them did. The specific stillness of a man filing information he hadn’t previously had.

"What happened at Hogsby?" he asked.

Sophia read his face and understood immediately that she had just revealed something she hadn’t intended to. She course corrected without pause.

"Nothing significant. I assumed you’d come because I employed their dean." A small smile. "She’s a good administrator, as it turns out."

Bala looked around the office slowly, the unhurried scan of someone cataloguing a room.

"Cameras?" he asked.

"Sophia doesn’t keep records," she said. "We both know that."

"Beautiful." He stood, picked up his chair, and moved it to her side of the table. The gesture of a man who had decided the conversation was about to change category.

They sat separated by the width of the desk. Close enough that the room couldn’t hear what came next even if it tried.

"This stays between us," he said. "As things always have."

She waited.

"The life layer is failing."

The office was quiet.

"Define failing," Sophia said carefully.

"Literally. Today we recorded the first breach. An infected reached the walls." He said it without drama, which made it worse. Dramatic information delivered flatly meant the speaker had already processed the horror of it and moved on to logistics. "It was contained. But it happened."

Sophia held his gaze. "And you’re telling me this because?"

"Because ninety percent of ability users are below threshold. The extraction cycle has been running for decades and we have almost nothing left to run it on. The life layer cannot survive on what we currently have."

Something moved in Sophia’s eyes. Recognition. The specific look of someone seeing the shape of an argument before it arrives and already forming their response to it.

"Don’t tell me you’re thinking of breaking our agreement," she said.

"I’m not." He cut her off before she could build momentum. "I won’t pretend the thought didn’t cross my mind. But no. That’s not why I’m here."

"Bala." Her voice dropped slightly. "You’re carrying the weight of an entire civilization for people who will forget your name in two generations."

"I haven’t told you my plan yet," he said. "You’re arguing against something I haven’t said."

"What you’re considering would be your downfall. Extracting my students doesn’t just break our pact. It makes enemies of every wealthy family in this city who trusted me with their children specifically because they knew I would never allow it."

"Sophia." His voice sharpened. "Listen to me. My own daughter is a burn out. If you think that doesn’t affect my calculations you don’t know me as well as you think you do."

She looked at him. For a moment the information sat on the tip of her tongue. Your daughter leveled up last week. Level eight. Overnight. At Hogsby. She could give him that. She could watch the relief move across his face and use it.

She kept it. That credit belonged to Miss Brown and she was not going to hand it to Bala across a desk in her oval office.

"Tell me what actually brought you here," she said instead. "If it doesn’t involve my students."

He settled back slightly. The posture of a man who had been waiting for this question.

"Doctor Reed has been working on an alternative," he said. "The life layer doesn’t have to run on ability users. That was never the only option. It’s just the option we built because it was available." He paused. "Reed found that high level infected carry a biological fuel. A compound. Extracted correctly, it can sustain the life layer indefinitely. No more extraction cycle. No more burn outs. No more Strays being created by a system that uses people until they’re empty."

Sophia was very still.

"You need a live specimen," she said.

"A high level one. Alive and intact for testing." He met her eyes. "I have my outsiders. They’ve already shown capability beyond what we expected. But I need six high level ability users to supplement them. The infected we’re targeting isn’t something six people from the plain can bring in alone."

"And you want them from Central."

"I want the best you have," he said. "Six students. One mission. If Reed’s testing confirms the compound works, the life layer stabilizes and everything changes."

"What you’re describing," Sophia said slowly, "is sending my students outside the walls to capture a live high level infected."

"With experienced backup. With full CGI support. With every resource we have."

"And if something goes wrong."

He had no answer for that. Which was its own kind of answer.

"I want to speak to Abram and Sherry first," he said. "Before anything else."

Sophia looked at him for a long moment. The man who had maintained the extraction cycle, watched the life layer run toward empty, and had now arrived at her office with a plan that required her students and her cooperation.

"Talk to your outsiders," she said finally. "I’ll consider the rest."

He stood. Straightened his coat. The specific movement of a man who had gotten what he came for, or enough of it.

"One more thing," she said, before he reached the door.

He stopped.

"Whatever happened at Hogsby," she said, "you should look into it. Before someone else does."

He turned. Looked at her. Said nothing. Then he left.

Sophia sat in her oval office and looked at the door and thought about a girl who had jumped from level four to level eleven overnight, and a life layer that had just let its first infected through.

Interesting timing, she thought.

Very interesting timing.

Because if the life layer failed—

it wouldn’t matter what promises she had made.

She would give them the students anyway.