Something was wrong with the sunrise.
Kasper's combat instincts screamed it before his conscious mind caught up. Six months of peace hadn't dulled the way his enhanced senses cataloged threats – the quantum shimmer in the air too strong for dawn, the streets below too quiet for a port city usually alive with street vendors' calls and freestyle quantum artists.
Sarah's fingers found his neural port, her touch carrying memories of battlefield med-bays and quieter moments. The familiar citrus-and-antiseptic scent of her made his shoulders ease, even as his systems registered the slight tremor in her hands.
"You're thinking too loud again," she teased, but something in her tone made him think of target acquisition. The sea breeze carried traces of empanada stands opening below, mixed with the ozone tang of quantum shields cycling. "Still having trouble adjusting to boring civilian life?"
He meant to answer, but the explosion cut him off.
The blast wave hit his enhanced senses first – Lucas's workshop again, third time this week. Sarah's hands were already moving across her med-scanner before the sound reached them. Too fast. Too sure.
"¡La madre que te parió!" Lucas's voice carried up through the shattered quiet, accent thicker with excitement. "The graduation project's resonance patterns are finally—" Another blast drowned him out.
"Containment fields exist for a reason, idiota!" Maria's voice cracked like a whip. Kasper caught the flash of her healer's aura – standard issue, nothing like the complexity hiding beneath Sarah's supposedly basic gear.
Sarah's laugh sounded forced. "Good thing the academy's shields can handle student experiments." Her fingers traced patterns on his neural port that felt like old combat codes. "Though I wish they'd waited until after breakfast. That new café on the cerro's serving the best pastel de choclo..."
The morning sun painted the city's funiculars in gold, their quantum-enhanced cables humming faintly as they carried early risers up the steep hills. Street art shifted and flowed across building walls, product of the city's infamous quantum artists who'd turned the port into a canvas of living color.
Below them, Nailah's morning kata painted the air with familiar Caribbean rhythms. "Team meeting in ten, yeah?" Her lilt carried traces of her Trinidad roots. "Sean's bouncing off the walls about graduation posts."
They walked past walls where quantum graffiti bloomed like digital flowers, past vendors setting up morning empanada stands, their enhanced cooking units filling the air with spices and promise. Sarah's hand found his, grip tight enough to bruise.
Sean burst into their usual spot – a converted shipping container overlooking the Pacific, walls vibrating with the constant hum of quantum shields. "You won't believe this!" His tactical enthusiasm bubbled over. "Every major org wants us! Even the Syndicate's offering legit contracts!"
"Corporate ventures only," Valerian cut in, aristocratic polish slipping into excitement. "Father says they're going clean now that—"
A quantum alarm cut through the morning calm – piercing, urgent, wrong. Sarah's body tensed against his, combat-ready in a way academy medical staff shouldn't know.
Three shadows scaled the academy's quantum-shielded walls.
Sarah's hands moved in patterns that matched old case files about missing children.
And Kasper realized he wasn't the only one who'd been watching for threats.