Capítulo 4: Chapter 4

I still felt watched. I kept looking over my shoulder and seeing only the people in the line behind us. Not one of them watched me. Not one of them even looked in my direction. I had started to wonder if Kalle and Shiri might have been right to think I was crazy when we got our food from the counter and went to find a table.

"So, that first test section," Kalle began.

"Oh, no you don't," Tristan said. "I don't wanna talk about the test. C'mon, Kalle. We just finished our last hours of Third Level. Let's celebrate it."

"If you insist," Kalle said, rolling her eyes and smiling slightly.

But none of us spoke. Besides Shiri's asking, "Does anyone have plans for the weekend?" no one said anything. Silence dominated the conversation at the table, filled in by the noise of the other thousand people in line or eating around us.

I continued to glance around the room, thinking about that strange shadow just a few minutes ago, and whether its source was still here. After a few minutes, Shiri nudged me. "What are you looking at?" she asked, following my gaze.

"Nothing," I said automatically, but she raised an eyebrow.

Kalle opened her mouth to say something, taking a breath. And in the split second that it took for me to glance over at her, the window several hundred feet behind her exploded.

Glass showered everywhere, descending over people who sat in front of it. Several people screamed and ducked, but I looked toward the source of the explosion. A man wearing all black had jumped through the window and now crouched on the tile floor among a sea of shimmering glass shards.

For just a second, the restaurant fell completely silent. The man in black rose up from the floor and looked at us, drawing a sword from a sheath on his back. His hood threw enough of his face into shadow that I couldn't see it clearly.

He jumped, crushing the nearest table with his sword, which was flat but wide and ebony and utterly deadly. No one had sat at the destroyed table, but he flung the restaurant into an uproar anyway, sending crowds of people abandoning their food and running for the nearest door. I looked for the people about whom we had debated, half wondering if they would join in the fight, but they had vanished. I reached for my own sword, but it wasn't there. Of course, of course, of course. We weren't supposed to bring them into the Academies after Second Level. I was defenseless.

"Miranda! Don't just stand there staring! Come on!" Cas shouted, beckoning me across the room. Reluctantly, I abandoned my seat and followed the rest of them toward the door. I had made it almost halfway there when a hand caught my shoulder and spun me around.

I looked into the deep, forest-green eyes of the man in the hood. At this proximity, his face was sharp and defined, and I could make out the shadows on his mouth and nose. His jaw and cheekbones were angular, like he didn't eat enough. Something about his face elicited a strange sympathy in me, and I couldn't look away.

He shook his head and disappeared into the chaos again.

I stood in the center of the restaurant, paralyzed, arrested by the lingering memory of his eyes. Distantly I became aware that the restaurant had fallen absolutely silent again, but I couldn't even bring myself to fully recognize that fact. I couldn't think about anything except what had just happened.

He had just attacked the restaurant. As far as I knew, that hadn't happened on Incipio . . . ever. And in the chaos of the attack, he had come after me.

I looked up. Still no one moved, and many pairs of eyes remained on me. My gaze drifted, and I saw the destroyed table on the far side of the room. He had disturbed nothing else but the table.

The doors flew open, and I jumped back, startled. White-uniformed System's Officers burst in, wielding their guns, looking around to try and locate their target. But he was long gone.

"Come out!" one of the Officers shouted. "Weapons down, hands up!"

Some of the restaurant's patrons were armed, like the two we'd seen earlier, and began to put down their weapons, but the Officers waved them away.

"Where is he?" the one in front demanded. "Where's he hiding?"

No one answered. The Officers searched the room, pushing back chairs and opening doors and cabinets. I didn't see Kalle and Cas and the others - they must have made it out before the Officers broke in. I wondered if they would wait for me, or if I'd be on my own when they were done.

"Everyone out," the Officer in front finally said.

As I made a break for the door, I heard him say to the servers at the counter, "Except you."

Kalle and Cas and everyone else waited for me outside the door. Cas put his arm around me and I didn't even protest because I still felt like I could shatter at any moment. Shiri looked me up and down before pointing out, "Miranda, you look really pale."

I hesitated.

"He looked right at me."

Five pairs of eyes stared, incredulous, back at me. I pressed my lips together and struggled to explain. "I was following you out the door, and he stopped me and looked me right in the eye."

"Miranda, that's crazy," Shiri said.

"What do you mean, he stopped you? Like he put his blade to your throat?" Kalle asked.

"Did they catch him?" Cas asked.

"He just grabbed my arm," I said. "And no, they didn't catch him. He disappeared. He just destroyed the table and looked at me and . . . disappeared."

"He destroyed a table," Tristan repeated. "What an effing brilliant criminal."

"Criminal! Oh!" Elen said. "When he looked at you, did you recognize him?"

Slowly, I shook my head. "No," I said. Which was true. I hadn't known his name or remembered seeing his face before, but something about him had elicited some sort of . . . recollection. Like I'd remembered him, but only subconsciously. But how was that possible?

"So he wasn't anyone we know," Elen said.

"True. They won't have had time to ID him and erase him yet," Cas said.

"How will they ID him if they didn't catch him?" Kalle asked.

All of us stopped talking. No one had an answer for that question. Except the obvious: they couldn't. Some mystery guy whom no one recognized, with a hood over his head and a sword on his back, had destroyed a table and caused hundreds of citizens to scatter in fear. And he had just escaped undetected.

"Maybe we should go home," Cas said.

Still no one spoke.

No, these things didn't happen.

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