Saffron sat still as stone in the Academy’s courtyard garden, surrounded by obsidian lilies and glitching fireflies. Meditation came easily to her, calm was her superpower. She inhaled deeply, holding the breath at the peak, then released it slowly through her nose, grounding herself.

She always started the day with stillness, it was the only thing that ever felt like hers.

The garden, suspended on a floating terrace in the upper tiers of Indovian Academy, overlooked the crystalline sky-rails and interwoven towers of Indovia. The city pulsed beneath her like a living circuit board, neon rivers of light cutting through a skyline threaded with ancient towers and ultra-modern satellites.

Nearby, a group of students were practicing rhythmic breathing with a floating instructor drone that chimed in gentle tones.

"Breathe in the moment," the drone intoned. "Let your thoughts settle."

A small boy with bronze skin and luminous prosthetic legs raised his hand. "What if my thoughts don't want to settle?"

The drone blinked kindly. "Then listen to your breath. It will teach your thoughts to follow."

Behind him, another student, a lanky trickster named Pip, leaned far back in his self-balancing wheelchair, trying to hold a wheely.

"I am the balance," he said dramatically, arms outstretched like wings.

"You are going to be the ER visit," someone muttered.

Pip grinned, lost control, and toppled gently backward into a patch of neon moss.

"And I stuck the landing!" he shouted from the moss. "In my heart."

Laughter rippled through the garden. Even the drone beeped in amusement. "Balance is also knowing when to sit still."

Just beyond the group, a quiet girl with winged ears and amber fur clutched a sigil that was hanging around her neck and whispered affirmations beneath her breath. She offered Pip a hand up without a word.

Saffron liked to come here before class to listen, to watch, to feel the pulse of Indovia. She wasn’t the type to rush toward chaos. She preferred to let chaos come to her. And it usually did.

Last week, it was an exploded lunch drone. The week before that, the teleportation practice had gone wrong.

Today, it arrived in the form of Ben crashing through the hedges.

“Saffron!” he panted, headset flashing, tablet clutched tight like it might bite him. His jacket was half-zipped, and one of his cyber-shoes blinked red, out of sync with the other.

Of course, it was Ben. Trouble had a way of finding him and dragging her along for the ride.

She opened one eye. “What now?”

Ben skidded to a stop, nearly bowling over a meditating student with vivid quetzal feathers woven into their braids.

“Someone’s jamming the network. It’s bad. Vault-breach-level bad.”

Saffron stood, brushing petals from her pants. The meditation drone dimmed its lights to signal the end of the session.

She took the tablet, fingers gliding across the screen.  “Encrypted fragments. Rewritten IP traces. Someone knows our patterns."

The quiet girl with the winged ears stepped closer, her amber eyes steady. Another student, a girl in a floating wheelchair with glowing tattoos across her arms, nodded grimly. "Time Thieves?"

Saffron didn’t answer. Her jaw tightened.

Ben glanced around. "Should we report it to the administration?"

Saffron shook her head. “No time. We go straight to Ladybird. If this is what I think it is, there won’t be a protocol left to follow."

As they turned to leave, Saffron cast one last glance at the courtyard. The wind shifted. The meditation drone hovered silently. The garden suddenly felt... watched.

"Come on," she whispered. "We have a timeline to protect."

They ran.