"Is she? - is she an enclaver, or did she somehow - ?"

"Well, that's just what I heard – "

Malak thinks back to what Annisa was saying earlier.

"Well she doesn't have much of a chance on her own, and she's American..."

Annisa looks around for the girl formerly wearing pajamas. It's not an easy task in a room this big. Maybe sitting with some American enclavers, that narrows it down to ten tables, and the enclavers themselves have power-sharers so she only needs to check the indies -

...New York?

"Is that her?"

"Yeah. ....Good for her. At least she'll have a fighting chance." 

"Yeah. I'm just impressed, honestly. And I guess that means the situation is on New York's radar."

"Not much they can do about it if he hasn't actually murdered anyone yet."  

"...so we think New York definitely knows and we should not tell them that someone might be trying to murder one of their girlfriends, just in case they don't know?" She does not know how this talking to enclavers thing works at all.

"I am pretty sure New York knows, but we can let it slip to Marcy too, just in case they don't."

"Sorry, who's Marcy?"

"Boston enclaver we were with at breakfast, Boston really seems to have their act together unlike half the other enclaves."

"I wouldn't normally try to interact with her again this early, she's really great and she'll have dozens of followers, but I think Boston would want to have a heads-up about this."

"I think the idea of gossiping about it in shop where she can overhear is a good one, that way she will know without it looking like we're being pushy for her attention."

"I can also tell Daria and Shannon this evening - Daria's Kiev but it's just her, they do cohorts and she missed hers, and Shannon's the girl Raleigh's been after, not that I expect Sacramento to be doing much policing."

"Do we - want to try to talk to the girl herself before Tuesday, if we think she might be dead by Tuesday?"

"If I were a maleficer I'd wait until, like, week 3 to kill someone, the shop shouldn't be that deadly yet, and I wouldn't kill New York's girlfriend until he dumps her, which he might not."

The only enclave Julian's interacted with is Shanghai, but if he had to pick an adjective for them "together" wouldn't be it. 

"I don't know about telling Boston, specifically. If half the enclaves look like disasters, it seems more likely to me that it's some kind of calculated strategy, or they have even more resources to throw around than it looks like on the outside, or something else we're not thinking of. At the end of the day, enclavers live." Which has that inevitable nasty corollary. "My best guess is either the Americans know already and plan to do something about it, or they won't because he's not going to go picking off their freshmen." 

She chews her fork. "I guess so. I just don't like the thought of losing access to evidence."

"I mean - we haven't actually seen that many enclaves looking like disasters, we were exaggerating a bit. There's rumors going around about shanghai, you might know more about that than we do, Toronto brought in a freshman who killed herself last night, if that's a ploy it's a really expensive one, and it sounds like Sacramento is - risking a lot and spending a lot of resources to protect one sophomore who's in danger."

And Julian thought the sino drama was bad. 

"On the first night? Really? There are a thousand kids who'd kill for that spot, and she just – " 

"And her enclavemates - I don't know if they knew but I hear they weren't surprised. I'm not saying every enclave is a trashfire but we've heard of two hard-to-fake major mistakes by enclaves and we haven't even been here a full day yet."

"And whatever happened in Chicago, I don't think it was a ploy. Shanghai's deal might be? Reportedly they lost a freshman and have two other useless ones but that's from Seoul, secondhand..."

"Maybe mana sharing and healing and shield holders and real storage are so useful that most of the enclaves don't have to be competent," she says, and then stabs her food with somewhat more force than strictly necessary. 

Well this situation calls for tact, circumspection, and careful choice of words, among other skills Julian absolutely does not have. 

Okay, giving it his best shot. "I know the Shanghai freshmen a bit, one of them lives below me and his sister drafted me for provisional bodyguard duty. He seems – quiet. I don't know if I'd say he's totally useless. Less survival-focused than we are, for sure, but they're so powerful and maybe that's normal for them."