The city stopped.

Luka felt the disruption as it happened, just as he was heading home from patrolling, and turned back towards the affected portion of the city. The sky was starting to light up with the rising sun, and he would like nothing more than to dismiss it, so he could make it to work on time. It was tempting to leave it to the Agents, but he was too close to simply ignore it. He could already hear the honking cars, and as he got closer, the frustrated voices. He could see the edge of the disruption, where the lights of the city turned to darkness, and people stood scattered in between the lines of halted cars with nowhere to go.

It wasn’t a clear line, but the magic would encourage people to leave the area, whether consciously or not. Once he stepped across it, however, all sound seized. It was a pure, complete silence. No distant traffic. No voices. No flutter of wings. Not even wind, or the subtle hum of electricity.

It lay like pressure around his ears, and he ached for anything to pierce through the quiet, but even his steps were swallowed up by the magic.

Next to the silence was darkness. It wasn’t complete, not with the hazy light of the sunrise filtering through the gaps between buildings, but all electricity seemed to have cut out. Street lights, windows and neon signs had all gone dark. Except, when he thought he caught movement, and instead found the lights flickering at an intersection.

They were all stuck on red, blinking above him like a warning.

Luka already knew what this was. He had known as soon as he felt the disruption. Few things could give the city this kind of power, and even fewer would allow it to run wild. The intersection had to be the center, the point of origin.

He looked around for the kid, who would be the cause of it all. He found him, curled up at the lip of an alley, arms around his knees and his head bend towards his chest. Luka placed his hands in his pockets and nudged him, gently, with his foot.

“Hey,” he said, relieved his voice still carried sound.

This shouldn’t be happening. It wasn’t allowed to happen. The Agents should have already been here, doing their job, but they were nowhere to be seen. Young mages were never supposed to go through this alone and afraid, not only because it was cruel, but because the effects could be very, very dangerous. This? A block of the city blacked out and silent? This was nothing. Fortunate, even, given the lack of Agents. It would be a problem to explain it away, since the disruption was so public, but luckily that part wasn’t Luka’s problem.

The important thing was that no one had gotten hurt. Young mages coming into their magic were time bombs. Sometimes, when they went off, the explosion was fatal. The mage was always fine, but being surrounded by dead bodies was hardly an ideal introduction to the world of magic. However, Luka would never describe any Stray left alone like this as lucky. He had to bury his anger, reserve it for the Academy where it belonged. It would do no good for this terrified kid.

The kid stirred, and raised his head. He looked up at Luka with wide, desperate eyes, red and raw from crying.

“Do you understand what is happening?” Luka asked, even though he knew the answer. Legacies were prepared for this, and would never have been allowed to wander into the city to manifest. This kid was far too terrified, too lost. If only one of his parents were a mage, it wasn't uncommon for that parent to hope their child wouldn't manifest or simply forget it was an option. It wasn't an equal chance, since the Legacies claimed the majority of the odds, which explained the oversight, even if it didn’t excuse it. Aside from the panic, he looked like a perfectly normal kid.

His clothes were good quality, and his hair carefully groomed. His face was pale from fear and panic, but underneath it all, his skin held a healthy tan.

The kid shook his head. “I…” he started, quiet and stammering. “I just wanted it to stop.”

“Wanted what to stop?” He forced his voice to remain gentle, even though none of this mattered. He just needed to get him steady enough to go to the Academy.

When mages came into their magic, it could present as sensations, sounds, smells. It was an effect of the body adjusting to the power, but if you didn’t understand why it was happening, it could be overwhelming.

For Luka, it had been like a fever burning him up from the inside, but the build-up had been brief.

It wasn’t always.

“The buzzing,” he answered, quiet and questioning, like he was no longer sure.

Luka tugged at his pants and crouched down in front of him. Frightened eyes flickered to his face.

“It’s okay.” Luka wasn’t naturally inclined towards comfort, and it wasn’t easy for him to give these kids what they needed. Sure, manifesting had already broken apart their world, but they didn’t understand it. It was up to Luka to explain, but he wasn’t trained for it and reactions were unpredictable. “Do you believe in magic?”

He didn’t answer immediately, but glanced around at the dark, empty piece of city, and the flickering red lights. “What?”

Maybe a piece fell into place, but this wasn’t magic as normal children were taught it. Luka held up his hand, and after a moment, it started glowing. Tendrils of bright, red light swirled across his skin, tracing echoes behind in the air, when he moved his fingers.

“You’re a mage,” he said.

It was unlikely to make sense to the kid, but even though this wasn’t his first Stray, he had never developed the vocabulary for this.

The kid stared at his hand with wide eyes, and pushed himself into the bricks at his back. Despite what this kid had done, despite the evidence surrounding him, the demonstration did nothing to ease his fear. Luka closed his hand and the light faded. There was no right approach with these kids, but Luka always seemed to get it wrong. He put his hands in the pockets of his jacket, fumbling around in the depths of the fabric. He pulled out a small piece of paper resembling a business card and held it out.

"You need to go to this place. Do you know where it is?"

The kid scanned the card, then looked up at Luka and nodded.

"They'll train you. Make the buzzing go away."

Luka straightened, and turned to walk away.

"Wait," that quiet, uncertain voice said. "Don't leave."

"Sorry," Luka said. "I don't get paid to deliver."

As much as Luka knew he couldn't just leave him, he really didn't want to stay with him. Agents could show up any minute, and even if they didn't, everything in him tensed up at the thought of walking with him to the Academy, of getting that close after all these years. He gave the kid a moment to respond, all the while he urged himself to walk away before it was too late.

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"Please," the kid said, and the quiver in his voice was enough to make Luka's compassion win over his anxiety.

He turned back to face the kid.

"Fine. Let's go." He waited for him to scramble off the ground, before he started walking in the direction of the Academy. The kid was a little shaky, but it didn't take him long to keep up with Luka.

"What about… this?" he asked. He barely looked at the city around him, but the meaning was clear. Luka should have already handled it, but he wanted to leave it to the Agents, to allow them to clean up their own mess. He considered the kid next to him, the strength he possessed. He didn't want to push him, because he honestly didn't know if he could handle it.

On the other hand, giving him a chance to undo it himself, might help him deal with his new powers.

"You can reverse it," Luka said.

"What? No." The panic returned to his eyes. "I don't even know how I did it. I..."

"Relax," Luka interjected, before he managed to freak himself out again. "I'll walk you through it."

The kid nodded, although his fears and doubts were still plain on his face.

"You want to try this?"

He nodded again.

"Close your eyes."

The thing about these young mages, the ticking time bombs — Strays, who were left to explode in uncontrolled environments — was that their magic was incredibly hard to contain, especially at this stage, because the untethered magic of the city was amplifying it. Once the city got involved, the magic was well and truly out of control, and mages trying to stop it would have to battle the very city to regain that control. This kid didn't have that kind of power, or that kind of finesse, but he was the mage responsible, which would help. Either way, he wouldn't be able to do it alone, but there was no harm in letting him believe he could.

"Do you feel it?" Luka asked.

"I… don't know what I'm supposed to feel," the kid said.

"You did this. It's part of you. You need to feel that connection in order to break it."

He shook his head. "I can't feel anything."

"Look for something familiar," Luka prompted, careful to keep his voice calm.

He felt hopeless at explaining things that were second nature to himself, and had a hard time relating to these young mages. If he kept stumbling upon them, if the Agents kept neglecting their duties, he was going to need to find a better system than handing them a card with an address, which had so far proved to be inefficient every single time.

While waiting for the kid to make some sort of connection with his magic, Luka started reining it in himself. If the kid could sever the connection, the city would no longer be able to feed on him, and the effects would eventually die out on their own, returning the city to normal. For now he tried to overwrite it, allow the natural pulse and rhythm of the city to grow stronger than the silence. It was slow, careful work, in order to not lose control over the magic.

"The buzzing you're hearing, it's likely the magic around you. Focus on that," Luka offered, once too much time had passed without any noticeable change.

"I don't understand what I'm supposed to be feeling," the kid said again, the frustration quivering in his voice.

Luka suppressed a sigh. He wasn't a teacher for a reason, and had neither the patience or inclination for it.

"Power. Strength. Warmth."

He watched the kid's eyebrows jump, and at the faint gasp, Luka trusted that something was happening. Hopefully he was finally familiarizing himself with his magic.

"Sever the connection," Luka said.

"No, I… I've never felt anything like this before."

An edge sneaked into Luka's voice, serving as a warning. "You'll learn to access your magic soon enough. What you're feeling now doesn't even come close to the real thing. Now, do it."

He felt it happen, the loss of that connection, as a weight on the magic he had been weaving. It grew unstable, and he struggled to contain it, to bind it all together and normalize the magic around them. His heartbeats felt loud in his ears, until he let go, and an intense wave of sound crashed down around them, like water breaking through a dam. It washed out the sound of his heart, and replaced it with sirens, engines, people shouting, cars honking. Impossibly loud now, after the silence. The noise was both welcome and jarring. Luka took a moment to close his eyes and take a deep breath, while he resettled himself in the world.

"Okay," he said, opening his eyes, "You did it. Now we go."

He picked up the pace, leaving the kid to either follow or fall behind. He was still concerned about Agents appearing, now more than ever. At least if he had left the city for them to deal with, they would be preoccupied. The only thing they would be preoccupied with now, was finding the cause of the disruption and stopping whoever had done it. It had been too big for anyone to be able to do any real damage control, and they would be too late anyway, so they could only nudge the narrative. It would be half-way believable to blame an EMP, and if the news stations didn’t arrive at that conclusion themselves, he was sure the Agents would force it, but that kind of thing would barely slow them down, and they might still manage to arrest Luka.

The Academy was too far to walk to, so Luka ducked into the nearest metro station. He found a quiet place, and pulled a marker from his pocket.

"Sorry about this," he said. "I don't have time to do this gently."

He wrote West Medford on the wall, grabbed the kid's arm, and pushed magic into the words. The world warped around them, and reappeared as whitish walls and a couple of benches. They had unceremoniously been dropped off at a little waiting nook by the station. It was still slightly before the morning rush, and with time enough between departures that there weren't many people around. The light was dim enough to shield them further from scrutiny. Luka didn't particularly like the West Medford station, since it was outside in the open. He much preferred underground stations, not because exposure was less likely in an underground station, but he was more comfortable with the anonymity afforded by a dim and crowded platform. He did realize that he probably lived in the wrong city for that, but that was also why he mostly jumped at night, when there were fewer people around, and hardly any that were sober.

The kid was busy vomiting from the unfamiliar vertigo of the jump, and they still had about a mile to walk before arriving at the Academy.

"Sit down," Luka instructed. "Head between your knees. Let me know when you stop feeling dizzy."

He sat down himself, on the bench next to him, and checked his phone. He had half a mind to drop the kid off in a cab, once he realized that walking to the Academy and back would make him irrevocably late for work, but of course he couldn't do that.

"What," the kid croaked, "the fuck."

"If you've regained your ability to speak, you're fine. Let's go."

They finally came upon the Academy half an hour later. It was known as the Collingwood Academy to those who weren't part of the magical community. Academies were generally named after arbitrary mages for the sake of pretense (although the mages, of course, thought it to be a great honor), so they might fit in with other teaching institutions.

To mages, the Academies were instead divided into districts, as no one were particularly interested in memorizing pointless names in order to distinguish them from one another. They functioned as part high school, part college, though the only college degree they offered, was one in magic. Which, suffice to say, wasn't for everyone.

The first two years were compulsory, in order to learn control, after which you would be left with a high school diploma and a choice to make. The only freedom the students had once their powers manifested was which of the Academies they wanted to attend, though most remained in their assigned district. Luka had transferred to this place from The Kovalevsky Academy in Russia, but that was before his training truly started, so he never considered himself a transfer, even when others did.

The Academy itself was a collection of dark, gothic buildings, sitting on the edge of a nature reservation. It was enclosed by heavy walls tipped with spikes, and the only peek inside was afforded from the two gates serving as entrances. They were large, ornate wrought iron, one leading in from the street and one from the nature reservation. Luka had lived inside those walls for two years, and he could still picture it, even though he preferred not to.

"This is it." He stared at the gate for another second, trying to ignore the grounds that lay behind. "Have a nice life," he said and turned away.

"Wait. How do I get in?"

"Someone will come get you," Luka said, and he was sure that eventually someone would. There was a lock on the gate, which could be accessed with the right magical signature. Luka could have let him in, if his signature was still active. Which it probably wasn’t. Even if it was, the information was logged, and it would be better if no one knew he had been there.

"Thanks," the kid called as Luka walked off, "for everything."

Luka didn't stop. He didn't turn back. He was done, and now he just wanted to get to work before he was fired.