Noah didn’t know where to go. He had gotten off at a random stop and was walking the street, his bag slung over his shoulder. The streets were growing narrower. He had wandered from the wide avenues of scholarly pursuits and realized he was now in the district occupied…

The mood in the room was so tense Sol could feel it, like summer sweat tacky on his skin. He hated everything about his father’s office — the towering window boasting one of the best views in the city, the austere, tech-packed desks, the buzzing incandescent lights that he…

Talia was in heaven. The towering planters of the hydroponic garden rose above her in pillars of green and white. She strode between them, flicking through screens on her datapad. So many problems to resolve, just the way she liked. Always something new to work on. Some of the…

Noah glanced around the party, sipping his drink. His family’s common room was crowded with people, the mirrored walls creating the illusion that Noah was infinitely more popular than he actually was. Servo-bots hummed here and there, delivering drinks and snacks, their dull colors contrasting with the bright clothes…

Sol learned two things in rapid succession: he had severely underestimated the intensity of his family’s reaction to his absence, and, much to his relief, Dex and many of the others who had worked with him had been long since arrested. No more names, it appeared, had come forward…

Talia carefully clipped away an errant branch on the bonsai, sitting back with a satisfied sigh as she pulled the remains away. The tree had really come into its own over the last few weeks, and she was going to miss it when she left. Her bag sat on…

They didn’t see their main teacher for over a week. In the interim, every day when they woke up, there was a new person there, taking them on some sort of excursion or activity. The first day was spent almost entirely in meditation in a temple-like structure in the…

Talia found the two young men already halfway through breakfast when she came down a few mornings after their hike. She had spent some time with her bonsai that morning, trimming it up and helping coax it along towards a fuller, greener look. It was a good, hearty one…

When Talia, Noah, and Sol went to meet with their teacher, after two days that felt to the three of them like they had managed to cover every subject under the sun, and a few besides that, he was waiting, ready for them. …