04:00 AM.
Silence. Stillness.
Nox's eyes opened to the dark ceiling of the dorm room. No alarm clock needed. No dreams disturbed him. His body moved with a precision honed in blood and silence, built in places where failure was followed by a bullet, not correction.
He rose without sound, black compression gear already folded beside the mattress. Not that it mattered. He never truly slept—just waited in the shell of stillness.
Within two minutes, he was out of the dorm. His hoodie zipped high, face hidden beneath its heavy shadow. The hall was empty. The stairs welcomed him like an old friend. Elevators were for people who didn't mind being trapped.
The rooftop door opened with a flick of the tool he'd inserted into the lock the day he arrived. It clicked open with a breath, and he slipped through into the cold morning air.
Sky still swallowed by night. Concrete beneath his boots. This was the only place that didn't lie. There were no questions in the wind. No judgment in the chill.
He dropped the matte-black duffel bag. A precise, silent unzip. Inside: his fortress.
Weighted resistance bands.
Steel-core rods.
A collapsible gravity trainer customized to simulate high-resistance combat exertion without generating noise.
He assembled everything in seconds. His hands had done it blindfolded a hundred times.
Then he began.
Stretching first—deliberate, calculated. Every muscle group. Spine to ankles. Arms extended to test reach flexibility. Cold breath curled from his mouth like fog off a silencer.
Then the reps: shadow combat in controlled silence. Muscles pumped under controlled stress. Each move calibrated. Efficient. Dangerous.
No grunts. No heavy breathing. No useless bulk-building. This was the kind of training that let you kill quietly, escape quickly, survive longer.
By 5:15 AM, sweat clung to his shirt, but his heartbeat stayed slow. He collapsed the equipment just as carefully, repacked it, cleaned all traces, and hid it in a broken HVAC compartment he'd hollowed out days ago. Sealed airtight. Untraceable.
Then coffee. Thermos unscrewed. Instant black. No sugar. No milk. Just bitterness and heat. He sipped it from his seat on the edge of the rooftop, legs bent, eyes scanning the distant horizon of a world that didn't belong to him.
One cigarette.
Not for pleasure.
For precision.
One drag. One exhale. One whisper of a ghost he left behind each morning.
He returned before 6:00 AM. Silent. Dorm room dim.
Leo hadn't stirred. Still under his sheets, one arm over his face. Ash, on the opposite side, snoring faintly, tangled in a mess of data cables and half-folded clothes.
Nox entered like a shadow through a crack. No sound. No breath. He moved to his side of the room—blacked-out wardrobe, blackout laptop, compartments built behind false paneling.
He changed into dry black gear. Neutral streetwear. Something that passed as forgettable.
He sat. Watched the sky from the corner window.
Time passed.
At 7:30, campus woke.
At 8:00, they all walked to class.
Three shadows, side by side. Two of them didn't notice the third was already calculating every step of the path.
Every camera they passed.
Every window they walked under.
Every reflection.
Nox didn't speak.
Leo remained tense, guarded, unreadable. His steps held weight like he expected the pavement to betray him.
Ash tried once—some nervous joke about orientation—but Nox didn't respond. Just kept walking.
In class, Nox sat in the back left corner again. Same routine. Eyes never lifting. Mask always up.
He tracked the professor's speech patterns. The class layout. He built profiles in his mind: who asked too many questions, who checked their phone too often, who watched others more than the board.
At noon, he disappeared.
Not back to the dorm.
Instead, the rooftop again.
Coffee. Silence.
Then the basement of the old electrical building. Forgotten server closet. Old wires. Leaky bandwidth.
He used a portable keyboard, low-profile. VPN rerouted through three dead educational portals overseas.
Job list came in.
He picked three easy ones. Enough to earn another few hundred dollars. Time: under 40 minutes.
Cash routed through cleaned crypto wallets. Untraceable.
He left no trace behind but a dead USB in a trash chute.
By nightfall, he was back.
Dinner wasn't in the cafeteria.
He cooked ramen from a collapsible cooker on the rooftop, sat under the dark sky, and let the campus chatter buzz far beneath him.
Tomorrow would be more of the same.
But tension was rising.
And he could feel the story starting to shift.
End of Chapter Six