Room 115 smelled like damp paper, moldy velvet, and cheap wax, with a frigid draft that bit sharply into the back of my neck. Pitch-black. Ice-cold. Perfect. Light creates silhouettes, silhouettes create targets, and I don't do targets.
While normal girls unpacked frilly dresses, I laid out my essentials: three combat knives—the cold, oily steel biting into my palms—along with monofilament wire, a synthetic neurotoxin that smelled faintly of bitter almonds, and lockpicks. Comforting habits die hard.
I was strapping a throwing blade to my thigh, feeling the tight leather burn against my skin, when a knock hit the door.
Knock. Knock. Two crisp taps. Controlled.
I melted into the shadows, the metallic tang of polished steel hovering near my tongue.
“Standing behind a door with a blade is rookie hour,” a voice floated through the wood, dripping with smooth, mocking boredom. Low, calm, effortlessly lethal. The original Tiara. “If I wanted you dead, you'd be a corpse.”
I yanked the door open, a rush of dusty hallway air washing over me. She stood there, ruby eyes glittering with cold, calculating disdain. No fear.
“You’re not the real Tiara Carter,” she said, her voice flat with deadpan accusation as she stared down my blade.
“Neither are you,” I spat back, my tone sharp with defensive venom.
A dark smirk touched her lips. She stepped right past my knife into the room, a flicker of genuine, morbid amusement dancing in her eyes. “I was wondering when another ghost would show up.”
I clicked the heavy iron deadbolt with a loud clack. “You remember the plot of this trashy game,” I muttered, a pulse of lingering frustration tightening my throat.
“I remember dying a miserable death in it,” she said with a dry, bitter snarl.
“Same.” I leaned against the mahogany wall, relaxing into a shared, cynical exhaustion. “Transmigrant?”
“Yep.”
“Earth?”
“Assassin.”
I raised an eyebrow, a spark of skeptical intrigue breaking through my glare. “Syndicate cleaner?”
“Same. Different syndicate,” she replied, deadpan, though a hint of wary respect edged her voice.
Silence stretched, heavy enough to choke on. With a flick of her wrist, she pulled a heavy steel needle from her sleeve and drove it into the table. THWACK. The wood splintered, releasing the sharp scent of raw oak.
“Mapping my abilities,” she muttered, her tone laced with mounting annoyance. “Haven't unlocked my combat specialty yet.”
I stepped forward and touched the needle. Silver light surged over my fingers, searing hot for a fraction of a second. The wood hyper-accelerated and swelled instantly, crushing the steel with a sickening groan and snapping the needle in half.
Her eyes narrowed to slits, a sudden, wild flash of dark fascination cutting through her stoicism. “That’s not basic healing.”
“Forced cellular hyper-regeneration,” I grinned, a thrill of sadistic pride swelling in my chest. “I can accelerate a tumor to stage four in ten seconds, burst someone's blood vessels like wet balloons, or fix them just to carve them up again.”
She let out a low, dark chuckle, throaty and brimming with wicked delight. “So between us, we have spatial manipulation, broken physics, and god-tier bio-warfare.”
“Looks like it.” I stepped closer, the air between us humming with static electric heat, my voice dropping into a tense, urgent hiss. “The academy underground knows we're anomalies. They're tracking us through the aptitude tests, planning to hunt us down.”
She smiled—a sharp, feral expression as another needle spun effortlessly between her knuckles with a soft whistle, her voice dripping with hungry, predatory excitement.
“No, sweetheart,” she locked her ruby eyes onto mine. “We don't have a problem. We have a target-rich environment.”