Transmigrated Into A Women Dominated World

Chapter 280

The senior atrium opened up ahead of him, and the sound of it reached him before the room did.It was the easy, overlapping noise of people comfortable where they sat, conversation layered over the low hum of service drones threading between the tables with their trays.

Holographic broadcasts hung in the open air above the floor, cycling through news feeds and Citadel notices that no one was bothering to watch.

On one of the holographic feeds, something caught his eye anyway.

It was a recruitment ad. He’d seen it before, the kind the Queendom ran to push more women toward the Warlady path. Enlist, serve, stand beside legends.

And there was Kayla Noctis, front and center.

They’d built the whole thing around her. Train hard enough, the ad promised, and one day you might stand beside the legendary Kayla Noctis herself. They painted her warm. Noble. The kind of woman worth following into a fight.

Zaeryn knew better.

The ad was lying. Not about her strength, that part was real, but about the woman. He let it go before it could sour his mood and pulled his attention back to the room.

The tables were full, officers and clerks and councilors all eating or talking or both, light spilling down from somewhere high overhead. Kira had called it an open-air cafe, and now that he was standing in it, he understood why.

He had not taken more than a few steps inside before the chatter nearest the entrance began to dip. It spread outward from there, conversation thinning table by table as heads turned, until he could feel eyes on him from every part of the floor.

"Oh, would you look at that," someone murmured to his left.

"Who let the anomaly in here?"

A woman seated nearby answered without troubling to lower her voice. "He walks in and out of the High Commander’s office. I’d worry less about who let him in and more about who’s going to be the one to tell him to leave."

Zaeryn kept his expression even and his shoulders loose, and started looking for Annalise. Standing out in the open with that many eyes settling on him made him want to be anywhere less central, and the quickest way out of it was to find her and sit down. A familiar voice reached him before he managed it.

"Hey. Here."

The relief came quietly, and he kept it off his face, but he turned toward the sound. She was at a square table near the back with two other women, a deck of cards spread across the dark surface between them. The game had reached the stage where everyone was studying their own hand and no one was saying anything.

Annalise lifted her head as he came over, and a smile crossed her face. "Hey. You found me."

"Yeah," Zaeryn said. "I did."

She set her cards face-down on the table. "That’s me out. I’ve lost enough for one afternoon." One of the other women said something dry about quitting while she was behind, and Annalise only smiled and rose to her feet.

She fell into step beside him, and they left the noise of the atrium behind them, the sound thinning out as the corridor took them in.

"So, you saw the high commander," she said. "How did it go?"

"She gave me access to the training halls. The deep-ground ones." He kept it simple. "And a set of instructors to go with them."

Annalise took that in as they walked. "That’s good," she said, and there was something pleased underneath it. "Considering your condition it makes a lot of sense." She glanced at him. "Use it."

"I intend to."

They went a few steps in a quiet that didn’t need filling. Then she spoke again, lighter.

"And if any of it gives you trouble. The clearance, the instructors, anyone who decides they don’t like the look of you in these halls. You come to me." She let that sit, then ducked her head slightly, a small smile tugging at her mouth. "I’m a councilor here. It’s not nothing."

She slowed, and looked at him properly.

"Anyways. I’m glad you were the one who came to find me." She glanced away for a second, like she hadn’t quite meant to say that part out loud, before looking back at him, a little color in her cheeks. "Why’d you do my job for me?"

He could have made something up. He didn’t.

"I figured I figured you wanted to hang out." Zaeryn said. "I guess I should be the one asking why?"

Annalise didn’t answer at once. Something moved across her face, brief and unhurried, and then she let it pass and started walking again.

"You want the truth," she said, "you’ve been on my mind for a while. Before today." She caught his glance. "Daphne. She doesn’t talk about people, it isn’t in her. She’ll go a full decad and the only names out of her mouth are the ones attached to a sample." Her mouth curved again. "And then there’s you. She brings you up. Not often. But more than nothing, which from Daphne is close to a confession. I got curious about the man who could get our chief scientist to mention something other than her own work."

The idea of Daphne mentioning him to other people, in the gaps between whatever else filled her days, was not one that had occurred to him.

"Really," Zaeryn said. "What does she say?"

Annalise let out a small breath, like she hadn’t quite expected him to ask.

"Officially? You’re a research interest."

"...Officially."

"Her word, not mine." She walked a few steps before going on. "First time you came up, it was basically a report. Your core does things her models say it shouldn’t. Your readings won’t hold still. Every time she thinks she’s got you mapped, you walk into her lab and break the whole thing." She glanced sideways at him. "She made it sound like a complaint."

"Was it?"

"That’s the part that got me." Her tone stayed easy. "She said, and I’m quoting her, that you were the single most inconvenient subject she’d ever logged. That you refuse to behave like a variable." A small laugh. "From anyone else that’s an insult. From Daphne, sitting there looking irritated about it for the better part of an evening, it’s something else."

Zaeryn said nothing.

"She doesn’t get annoyed by things she doesn’t care about," Annalise said. "She files them and forgets them. You, she keeps coming back to. Days later. Unprompted." She walked a few steps. "And it started as annoyance, the way she’d talk about you. A problem she couldn’t solve. But it stopped being that a while ago. She talks about you like you’re something special now." Annalise didn’t shrug this time. "So I started wondering. What it is about you. That does that to a woman like her."

Zaeryn filed that away.

"Anyway," he said. "What are we doing?"

"Have you been to the training halls yet?"

"No. I’m planning to head down later for a spar with Mireille."

"Then let’s go." Annalise smiled. "I’ll be the first one to show you."

He liked that idea, and nodded.

His wrist buzzed before they reached the lift.

Daphne. Her voice came through clipped and even, asking where he was. Her schedule had cleared.

"Annalise is about to show me the training halls," Zaeryn said.

"Then I’ll see you there," she answered, and the line went quiet.

The lift took them down, the floors peeling away beneath the Citadel proper until it opened on the training levels.

Daphne was already waiting when they arrived.