Chapter Twelve: Table Talk

The dining hall calibrated the plates to biometric readings nobody at the table wanted to discuss.

Behind a pane of tempered glass, chefs in white jackets assembled food with silent precision. No queues, no clatter of metal carts. You took a seat and a dish arrived shortly after.

Julian pushed open the heavy oak door a minute before the appointed hour, out of habit.

Aisha was already there. She sat crosswise on a bench, one ankle looped around the footrest, absorbed in a slim holo-pad. When he reached the table she lifted her head.

"You're early," she said.

"I didn't feel like waiting."

She offered a rueful smile. "You're not the only one."

The rest of the cohort arrived in a trickle that became a rush. Voices rose and fell as seats were claimed. Theo strode up mid-sentence, already in debate with Ben.

"It wasn't a fair test," Ben said, setting his data pad down like evidence. "They've been integrated longer and practicing more with Catalyst than we have. The gap isn't about ability. It's about time."

"The gap," Theo said, "is information. They know what they are now. We're still finding out."

"I found out plenty," Ben said. "I found out Kara Bloom can vault over a person without touching them. How do you spar with that."

"Maybe Failure Optimization is your superpower," Aisha said, without looking up from her holo-pad. "You're getting a lot of practice."

"See, this is what I mean," Ben said, pointing at her. "You say things like that and I can't tell if you're insulting me or making a thesis statement."

"Could be both."

"Funny," Ethan said, dropping onto the bench, "how the tests always seem to favor exactly what you're good at." He said it to Theo but he was looking at his hands.

Theo looked at him for a moment. He picked up his water glass and took a sip and set it down. He did not respond.

Ethan looked up. He registered the non-response. His jaw moved once. He picked up his own glass.

Tamar slipped in beside Leena, setting her glass of spiced cider down carefully so it wouldn't wobble. She had not said much since the medical team had cleared Kara. She still hadn't.

Leena turned her glass slowly in her hands. She looked at Tamar once, brief and precise.

Mateo was last. He sank into his chair like his joints were filing a complaint, ran a hand through his hair, and stared at the table for a moment.

"Does everything seem louder to anyone else. Like the world's been turned up without asking."

"It's you," Aisha said.

Julian laughed before he could stop himself. It came out a half-second late and Mateo caught it.

"There," Mateo said, pointing. "That. You hesitated."

Julian blinked. "What."

"Before you laughed. You checked the impulse against something first." Mateo leaned back with his arms crossed, studying him the way he studied probability trees. "You used to just react."

Julian opened his mouth and closed it. He hadn't noticed.

Theo leaned forward across the table. "He does do that. His overall response speed is faster, but he's running a secondary check on his own reflexes. Like he's watching himself happen."

"He's calibrating," Aisha said.

Julian looked at her. "Am I."

"Seems like it." She said it as fact, an observation reported, and looked back at her holo-pad.

Ethan shook his head slowly. "I watched you with Soren. You move like you already know where the next thing is coming from."

Julian pressed his hands flat on the table. "It's not knowing. It's more like feeling the next thing before it arrives. But if I try to force it, it goes."

"Must be nice," Mateo said. Dry, and not entirely unkind. "Some of us were calculating a dozen exit vectors and couldn't commit to one before the moment closed."

The food arrived then, plates delivered without announcement by hands that didn't linger. Julian looked at what was in front of him and felt a small, involuntary unease. He had been craving something on the walk over, and the plate was nearly that thing, adjusted in ways he wouldn't have named. He picked up his fork.

Mateo was staring at his plate with an expression that had nothing to do with appetite. "Mine is low-glycemic," he said. "I hate low-glycemic."

"Your stress markers were elevated this morning," Aisha said.

"I know what my stress markers were." Mateo picked up his fork. "I'd just prefer to eat what I choose rather than what the kitchen decided I needed."

"You chose to be here," Theo said. "The monitoring came with it."

"I know that." Mateo took a bite, chewed, set the fork down. "Doesn't mean I enjoy what's technically healthy more than what I want to eat."

Nobody argued with it. Julian thought about the four-minute gap after his mother's message and the building that had noted it. He ate a deliberate bite of food he had not ordered and that was, he had to admit, exactly right. That was worse.

* * *

A hush opened up at the table. Then Leena spoke, her voice lower than before.

"I couldn't hold my precision under pressure."

They settled into it, listening.

"I know what I'm capable of in controlled conditions. Today the conditions kept moving. Every time I locked onto something, it had already changed."

Tamar turned her cider glass slowly. She had not looked up from it since they sat down.

"Tamar," Leena said. Quiet, but direct.

Tamar looked at her.

"What happened out there wasn't something you planned."

The table went still.

Tamar set her glass down. "I know that."

"Does it feel like you know it."

A pause. "No," Tamar said. "Not yet."

"I didn't know I had that," she said. "I didn't know it could do that. And I don't know what happens if I lose control of it again." She picked up her glass. "That's the part I keep coming back to."

Nobody offered a reassurance. Julian noticed that and thought it was right. The easy thing would have been to say it won't happen again, or you just need practice, or Catalyst will help you regulate it. None of those were true enough to say.

"Kara's okay," Aisha said. "And she told the medical team it wasn't your fault."

"She was generous," Tamar said.

"She was accurate," Aisha said.

Tamar looked at her. Something in the tension around her eyes shifted, not releasing, but adjusting. She nodded once and picked up her fork.

The table exhaled.

"Does yours feel like a loop," Leena said, after a moment, "or more like a recursion. Not repeating, but going deeper each time."

Tamar blinked. Julian caught it: she had not expected the question, and the fact that there was an answer to it surprised her.

"Deeper," Tamar said. "I kept thinking it was just repetition. But it's not the same each time."

"No. It isn't." Leena turned her glass slowly. "I keep thinking I've finished understanding something and then I find another layer underneath it."

Tamar's shoulders tensed then released. "I didn't know you did that. I thought your version was more like numbers."

"Numbers are the language. The experience underneath is the same."

A short silence, just between them.

"I love it," Theo said.

Everyone looked at him.

He seemed surprised by the attention. "Today. I love today. Even losing. Soren's architecture is the most interesting thing I've encountered since integration. Systems inside systems, running at depth." He paused. "I want to understand how he built that."

"You're treating it like a puzzle," Aisha said. Her voice was neutral.

"Isn't it."

Aisha looked at her plate. She did not answer.

"Of course you love it," Mateo said. "You'd optimize a funeral if they let you."

Theo considered it for a moment, longer than was comfortable.

"Open casket is emotionally expensive and low on informational density," he said. "I'd cut it. The receiving line could be parallelized. Most of the eulogies are restating the same data three different ways."

Ben stared at him.

"Theo."

"You asked."

"He didn't ask. He was making a joke."

"Oh."

Theo picked up his fork.

Mateo looked at him with something between amusement and concern. He shook his head once and turned to the table.

"The part I don't love," Mateo said, "is that I could see every possible move my opponent was setting up. Every branch. I just couldn't pick one before the window closed." He paused. "I've never lost because I knew too much before."

Theo opened his mouth. He closed it. He looked at his plate.

Ethan unfolded his arms. "I hate how careful I have to be now. Not in sparring. Sparring is the one place I feel free to go full force, especially against Rafe." He searched for the word. "Everywhere else. The margin for error shrank and I'm the only one who didn't get the memo."

Julian nodded slowly. "Because it did shrink."

Ethan looked at him.

"Catalyst makes errors more apparent. Something you'd have gotten away with before, the system catches now." He heard how it sounded and added: "That's not about you. It's about the environment."

Mateo's expression said he wasn't sure the distinction mattered. "Easy to say when your gift isn't breaking things."

"That's not what I meant."

"I know what you meant." Mateo waved a hand. Not angry. Just tired of precision in service of a point that still stung.

"He's right about the margin," Aisha said. "The system doesn't forgive the same things anymore."

Mateo looked at her sidelong. "Whose side are you on."

"I'm not on a side. I'm telling you what I see."

Mateo held her eye for a beat. Then he nodded, small, and went back to his food.

Ben leaned forward when it settled. He had been quiet through most of it, accumulating rather than responding.

"For what it's worth," he said, "I've lost every match in sparring and was even worse against Cohort 1." He picked up his fork. "So. In terms of relative suffering."

"You got a great view of their footwork from the floor," Aisha said.

"Sure. Reconnaissance on the down low. Glad you picked that up."

The laughter was easier this time.

* * *

"What were you like before Catalyst," Ben asked, when it settled. "Before Neurovia, even."

Theo did not hesitate. "Bored."

Leena tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "Overstimulated. By things that didn't deserve it."

Tamar tapped her glass twice. "Invisible," she said, without elaborating.

Ethan's jaw held for a moment. "Angry." He said it flatly. He picked up his water glass. "At things that mostly weren't the actual problem."

They looked at Mateo.

He frowned at the table, and for a moment Julian thought he was going to deflect. "Measured," he said finally. "Everything at arm's length so I could see it." He paused. "Turns out that's its own kind of problem."

Julian felt the question arrive before Ben had turned his way. He thought of the apartment. The sirens. The way he had learned to read a room from the doorway before stepping into it, every time, as a child.

"Alert," he said.

Aisha was watching him from across the table. "That fits."

"What's that supposed to mean."

The corner of her mouth moved. "You don't miss much." She said it as fact and looked back at her plate.

The question found its way around to Ben, who seemed briefly surprised, as though he had been so focused on gathering everyone else's answers that he had forgotten it applied to him.

"Careful," he said. "Not the same as cautious. I just never said anything I hadn't already checked twice." He looked at his plate. "My family's the kind where what you say in public lands on everyone. I got good at the edit." He picked up his fork. "I'm still not sure if Catalyst made that better or just faster."

"Faster isn't better," Aisha said. Not harshly.

"No," Ben agreed. "I know."

A moment passed. Then Leena, across the table, spoke.

"You've been watching us."

Julian looked at her.

"Since we sat down." Her tone was curious. "Not the conversation. The people in it."

Julian hesitated. "I don't always know I'm doing it."

Leena held his gaze for a moment. "That's the part worth knowing," she said.

Nobody pushed further. The observation settled into the room and stayed. Julian felt the small shift in the air between him and the table that had not been there a minute ago. Not hostility. The feeling of being seen precisely, and not on his own terms.

He looked at the table. He had information about each of them now that he had not had three weeks ago. Some of it Catalyst had given him. Some of it the cohort had given him by being in the room with him long enough. He could no longer separate which was which.

When they stood to leave, Aisha came alongside him for a moment, close enough that the warmth of her arm reached him before she stepped away.

"This is where it gets messy," she said, not quite to him.

He watched her walk toward the exit.