Page 9 of Legacy Elite

"Are you going to tell me what’s going on," I say, "or is that still above your pay grade?"

"The Chancellor's assembled the people who can give you the most accurate answer."

"So that's a committee."

"It's four people."

"It's a committee meeting about my body." I hitch the borrowed sweatshirt sleeve up my good arm. "Every woman's dream."

The administration building is old stone and quiet, and Falken's office is up one flight and down a hall where the carpet swallows every sound. Jon opens the door for me.

Chancellor Falken stands when I come in. Professor Voss is next to him with his forearms on the table, looking like a man who has already been in this room too long.

And on the end, spine straight, hands folded, not a hair out of place at eight in the morning, is Professor Faris.

Of course.

Of course the woman who spent a year removing Merit Marks from me in front of the entire class is here for whatever this is.

"Miss Miller." Falken gestures. "Please. Sit."

I sit. Jon takes the chair beside me rather than the one across, and I notice that.

"Before anything else," Falken says. "How do you feel?"

"Sore."

"Anything beyond soreness? Pain that doesn't fit the injuries. Disorientation. Gaps in memory."

"No."

"Any sense of the shift wanting to happen again?"

And that’s what he really wants to know.

"You're asking if I can control it."

"I'm asking whether yesterday felt like a normal first shift. Whether you chose it, or whether something else triggered it."

I think about the bear. The blood. That instant when everything changed.

"The bear triggered it."

"But once you shifted?"

"I think I was in control, but give me a break. It was my first shift."

Falken nods. "Good, yes. It was."

"That's it?"

"For that question, yes."

Voss speaks for the first time. "She was in control on the mountain."

Falken looks at him.

"She stood over a dead animal with six shifted wolves coming out of the trees at her and she didn't growl." Voss shrugs one enormous shoulder. "She took a step toward us, and half the faculty flinched, and she stopped. That's not an unstable wolf. That's a frightened student."