Noah Two weeks into occupation, and the Kesslers already own half the neighborhood.The big ships never actually land, I've learned by now, just hang there in high orbit where they look like a new, permanent kind of star if you don't know better. What comes down are smaller transports and personnel craft, ferrying Korrathi officials and soldiers to towers they've either built fast with tech no human contractor understands or simply claimed outright from whatever government building used to stand there. Word around the neighborhood is the ranking Korrathi don't even bother with human housing, they've got their own structures going up in the better parts of every major city, something between a barracks and a palace, gated off, humans not permitted past the checkpoint without a reason somebody higher up approves first. The soldiers posted at street level, the ones checking papers and running curfew sweeps, apparently rotate back up to orbit every so often too, like even they don't want

Noah Zenith Integration Academy doesn't look like a school. It looks like something built to be photographed, all glass and pale stone rising up out of what used to be three city blocks of ordinary buildings, bulldozed flat and rebuilt in under two months with technology no human contractor on Earth has access to.Deacon whistles low beside me as we walk up the front steps together, both of us in the required new uniform, stiff gray fabric that feels wrong on my shoulders, nothing like the worn t-shirts I actually own."They really wanted to make sure we knew who's in charge," he mutters, eyeing the massive Dominion crest carved into the archway above the entrance, all sweeping lines and sharp angles that somehow manage to look both beautiful and threatening at the same time.Inside, the lobby's even more overwhelming, ceilings three stories high, some kind of shifting light display overhead that pulses slow and hypnotic like it's breath

NoahThe F-Class classroom smells like fresh paint over old mildew, like they built it fast and didn't bother fixing what was underneath.Thirty of us crammed into a space made for less. Mismatched desks. One narrow window near the ceiling. No Korrathi students anywhere in the room. Nobody looks surprised about that.A Korrathi administrator walks in right on the hour. Gray robes, same kind from the surrender broadcast. Her English is careful, every word placed like she practiced it in a mirror."All incoming students will complete a placement exam today," she says. "To verify appropriate academic calibration."The bruised-arm girl leans toward me. "Verify what? We already got told where we stand.""Guess they want it official twice."She doesn't laugh, nobody does.The exam runs three hours. Harder than the Latimer by a lot. Math I know, mixed in with stuff I've never seen, applied physics that reads like it's describing tech decades past anything humans have built yet.Halfway throu

NoahThe F-Class study hall has exactly enough desks and not enough light, and by the second week I already know which chair squeaks and which one doesn't.I take the quiet one. Doesn't help.Miles finds me twenty minutes into the period, three assignment sheets in his hand, Grant leaning in the doorway like he's supervising instead of participating."You're good at this stuff," Miles says, dropping the sheets on my desk. "Do these.""Do your own homework.""I'm not asking." He says it easy, like it's obvious, like the whole room already agrees with him and I'm the only one slow to catch up. "Three assignments. Mine, Grant's, and Tyler's. You've got till the bell."I look around the room. Twelve other F-Class kids, every single one of them suddenly very interested in their own desks."No.""No?" Miles laughs, short, surprised, like the word doesn't fit in his mouth right. "You're gonna say no. In here. With everybody watching.""That's the general idea, yeah."He leans down close, voi

LyraIn the first week of the new semester, my father summons me before I have even properly unpacked my own quarters."Cultural Integration Liaison," he says across the breakfast table, not looking up from his data pad. "You will be assigned to a cohort of F-Class humans. You will observe their integration and file weekly reports."My mother sits at the far end of the table, silent, the way she is silent through most of my father's pronouncements, though her eyes flick toward me for one brief second before returning to her own plate."Why me.""Because you are disciplined, and because House Valeth's scholarly reputation makes the assignment plausible." He finally looks at me, pale eyes matching my own except for the coldness behind them I have never quite managed to inherit. "There is a second component. One that does not appear on any official record."I wait."One of the humans in your cohort has been flagged by the Resonance Directorate. An anomaly. His exam performance exceeds eve