A chill seeped in through the window. It crept along the floor to the other side of the room, reaching its fingers up to try and infiltrate the down comforter wrapped in a bundle on the bed. Whenever it breached the cocoon of warmth, the bed's occupant merely wrapped his sheets tighter against the cold. Hiccup Haddock looked at his right arm, held out slightly from its curled position, as he continued to lay swaddled in his bed. Through the dim light of the early wintry morning, he could see the pattern of ink on the inside of his wrist. The printing stood out on the slightly tanned color of his skin, his overabundance of freckles standing to frame or be hidden by the unrelenting black. He knew the pattern on his wrist well. A series of straight, black bars, all lined up in a row, above a string of numbers and letters. His code.

First was his barcode. Twenty bars. Nineteen spaces.

Below it, was printed his serial number.

*805E126J933148A5

He knew his number by heart now. Most people had their serial number memorized. It was like knowing your phone number, or your address. Not knowing your serial number was hardly ever heard of. A person's number was everything about them. Their personality. Their successes and their interests and their fears. Their secrets. It was their entire life, recorded in the space of sixteen digits. Or in his case, seventeen.

Everyone was born with a code. Everyone died with a code.

Hiccup ran the thumb of his other hand over his serial number, as if with the faint hope to wipe it away.

*805E126J933148A5

Still there.

He knew it would be. His code hadn't changed since the appearance of the star, nearly three years ago. There was no reason for it change now.

Someone's code was their life. So, when a code changes, it means something in that person's life has changed. Moving to another sector will change the first number of a code. Graduating school and moving on to university, or a career, will change the first letter of a code. Those were the only ones designated to a single piece of information. Everything else was a collective set of letters and numbers that all added up to someone's profile. Every time someone's interest or habit changes, so does their code.

Hiccup's code had changed when his mother left. It had changed after the first fight he'd ever had with his father about not wanting to join sports. It had changed when he took his first art class. It had changed when he started skipping school just to lay in bed all day. It had last changed that night at the hospital. But that had been something else entirely.

For most people Hiccup's age, a code usually changed close to six or seven times a year. For someone older, like his dad, a code could change three to four times a year. Anyone under the age of eight usually couldn't have their code memorized simply because it changed almost every other week. To have a code that didn't change at all in a few years, Hiccup thought. It was abnormal.

"Hiccup!" a voice erupted, dragging him from his thoughts. "Ya need to get moving!" came the gruff shout of his father from all the way downstairs.

Hiccup buried his face into his pillow as he let out a moan.

Right. He still had school today. Fan-freaking-tastic.

Twenty minutes later, Hiccup was stomping down the stairs, backpack in tow, fully dressed and ready to go. He'd taken the couple of extra seconds to pull a few leather and braided bracelets on over his right wrist, the collection dense enough to cover his code completely. Honestly, he hated wearing the bracelets. They were a stupid fad that went out of style years ago. Despite that, they were really the only way for him to cover up his code without being too obvious about it. He couldn't wear long sleeves in the warmer months and there wasn't a watch in existence with a band wide enough to cover both his barcode and serial number.

He wasn't the only one in the habit of hiding his code. A lot of people tried to hide their code with bandanas or bracelets, like him. A code was a personal thing. Almost intimate in a way. Most liked to keep it that way. To keep it personal so no one but the scanners could see. Hiccup had his own reasons for hiding his code. Because it wasn't his code that he was hiding. It was the star.

Hiccup speed the rest of the way down the stairs and through the kitchen. He managed to grab some toast and was at the front door when a voice stopped him. Surprise, surprise. It was his dad.

"There ya are, boy. I was wondering if I could talk to ya for a moment—"

"Ah, Dad, now's not really the time," Hiccup tossed over his shoulder without really caring to look where his dad was, "I'm late for school." He held his toast in his mouth as he pulled back the braided and leather bracelets on his right arm far enough to shove his wrist under the door's scanner. With a beep and a click, his code was read and the door unlocked. He was almost free, but is father proved insistent.

"Well, maybe we could—"

"Dad," Hiccup said, grabbing the toast out of his mouth to talk, "I can't. I'm already late and I really have to go. I'll see you later."

Before his dad could say anything else, he tore open the door and slammed it shut behind him. Hiccup couldn't help the twinge of guilt he felt as he stood on the front stoop oh his house. His dad had only wanted to talk to him. And true, that meant he was at least trying, but Hiccup knew where the conversation was going to go before the words even left his old man's mouth.

They never talked much. Hiccup and Stoick. They'd never shared much in common. Not enough to talk about, anyways. If they did, maybe the house would've felt a little less empty. With a few more leisurely talks and dinner conversations. As it was, every dinner was mostly spent in silence. Hiccup supposed most people would find it awkward, but he'd grown used to quiet dinners like those and the silence that seemed to have settled over their little family. Whenever they did talk, the conversations were mostly one-sided, with his dad eventually finding the topic of sports and how Hiccup should try out for the basketball team or the soccer team or the baseball team. He'd say it would be good for Hiccup. That it would toughen him up, make him more like a chip off the old block. Those were the conversations that usually ended in screaming matches.

Hiccup sighed before taking a step off the stoop and continuing down the street towards his school. He nibbled away at his toast as he walked, taking his time as he did so. He'd checked the clock before he left the house. There was more than enough time for him to make it to school before the first bell.

"All men are assholes."

"Geez," Hiccup said, sarcasm in full swing, "Thanks, Astrid."

He slammed his locker shut, revealing a sour-faced blonde on the other side. She rolled her sky blue eyes towards the ceiling.

"That's not what I meant," she said in a huff. "You don't count."

"And once again, thanks," Hiccup replied as he hefted his backpack back onto his shoulders. He pealed away from the lockers to make his way towards his first period class.

"You know what I mean," she started in, all exasperation and rolling eyes as she followed him through the halls, "You're all art and poetry and sketching—"

"So that makes me not a man?"

"What it makes you is not an asshole."

Hiccup shook his head at his best friend and her insensitive tendencies, but decided to drop the subject all the same.

"So what makes all men assholes?" he asked, referring to Astrid's first comment.

"Well, for one, all they're looking for is a hot piece of ass."

"I thought that was all you were looking for," Hiccup commented, earning him a slap to the back of the head.

"So I take it the date last night didn't go too well?" he asked through his own laughter.

"No," came the reply with an obvious pout. "Asshole dumped me."

Hiccup let out a sigh. It was like this every time. If his mental math was correct, Hiccup figured that this was the third guy Astrid had been through in a month. First one in a while to have dumped her before she dumped him, though.

"I told you, men with long hair are a bad idea."

"You have long hair," she retorted, reaching up to give a tug on the shaggy auburn hair that just reached past his ear.

"Well then, it looks like I'm a bad idea. And it's not that long," he added as an afterthought, swatting away the fingers entwined in his hair.

"Hey, you hear about the new kid?" Astrid asked as she took her hand back and jumped to a new subject, all thoughts of men and the most recent asshole forgotten for the moment.

"There's a new kid? You serious?" he asked.

"Yeah, he apparently just moved here from one of the outer sectors," she said as they neared their homeroom.

"That's weird," Hiccup muttered.

"I wonder what he's like," Astrid continued, having not heard his comment. "Do you think we'll have any classes with him? I hear people from the outer sectors are a little weird."

Astrid continued to talk, but Hiccup was only half listening.

"New kids" were not a common thing. In fact, Hiccup couldn't ever remember their school receiving a new student before now. Being new to a school means you've moved. And moving wasn't easy. In order for a family to move anywhere, they needed a government sanctioned approval, which were very hard to come by and were usually only granted for reasons concerning government work. Just what was so important that it granted this "new kid" permission to move?

"So to sum up, class, only certain scanners can scan your code for certain information. For instance: a police scanner will only be able to obtain your criminal record. Meanwhile, a doctor's scanner will only be able to receive medical information from a scan of your code."

Someone raised their hand.

"What about someone's personality? How do you get a scan of that?"

Hiccup rolled his eyes and let out a sigh at the question. Really? It amazed him how ignorant some of the people his age could be.

"Well, the only entity allowed access to a full profile of a person is the government," his teacher replied. "However, personal scanners are available for public use, if anyone ever found a need for one. Those are for private ownership and use. Personal scanners will only give a person access to personality traits and things such as likes and dislikes from a scan of someone's code."

It was around this time that Hiccup tuned out. Everyone knew what a PS was. Half the kids his age owned a personal scanner already. The concept of reviewing the material for the hundredth time made Hiccup feel a strong urge to bang his head against the desk.

It was second period. A good forty minutes into his advanced biology class. (You'd think you'd have a few more competent students in an advanced class, and yet here was the human race, proving him wrong again.) Astrid was in her European history class, so he was left on his own to suffer through his teacher's lecture. It wasn't that his teacher was bad at her job or anything. Quite the contrary. Miss Toothiana Fae was on the younger side for a teacher. She was lacking a little in height, with a short hair cut, violet eyes, and a bubbly personality that could prove annoying on occasion at eight in the morning. She was a favorite for most of her students and was known to be very friendly, always giving advise or lending an ear if someone needed it. She was a very well versed educator, but she did have a tendency to become a bit too over animated about certain topics, such as teeth or codes. Their class was taking a whole section to review codes at the moment. The past couple of days had been all about codes, their function, their characteristics, and their operations. Hiccup already knew most of the material they were covering. Still, some of it was new and had managed to snag his curiosity.

It was the sound of knuckles on wood that snapped Hiccup out of his hypnosis of staring at the clock on the wall. His teacher stopped talking mid-sentence, apparently surprised by the intrusion, and moved to open the door. Hiccup stared with the rest of the class as their instructor talked in hushed tones with whoever was on the other side. After a few minutes of mildly suspenseful waiting, she stood back to let someone in.

Hiccup's first thought was that this must be the new kid everyone's been talking about. His second thought was that the kid was white. Not just a standard ethnic white, either. Oh no. This kid was white. The kid was pale as winter, his skin close to matching the pages of Hiccup's sketch pad. It didn't help that the kid's unruly hair was such a pale blonde, it was practically alabaster. The thing that caught Hiccup's attention, though, was the kid's eyes. Ice blue. Bright enough to be picked out in a crowd. They reminded Hiccup of a glacier or frozen waterfall. Hiccup looked the kid over as he came to the front of the room. Blue hoodie. No obvious tattoos or piercings. He looked like any other high school senior, with that slightly bored look that screamed he couldn't wait to get out of here. As Hiccup looked at the new kid, he couldn't help a queasy feeling in his stomach. He wasn't sure what it was, but something about this kid threw Hiccup off. The new student stood with a slouched posture and his hands in his pockets as Miss Tooth introduced him.

"Everybody, this is our new student: Jackson Overland Frost—"

"Jack."

Miss Tooth's words stumbled to a stop, "Sorry?"

The white-hared boy glanced at her from the corners of his eyes. "I go by Jack," he clarified.

It didn't take Miss Tooth long to catch up. She gave a small smile as she placed a friendly hand on the younger student's arm.

"Of course. Jack. Now class, Jack has just recently moved here from one of the outer laying sectors. He's new to our school, and it looks like you still need someone to show you around. That right?" she asked, turning her attention towards the new student.

He gave a small nod.

"Alright, then," she continued. "Hiccup."

Hiccup looked to his teacher at the sound of his name. "Yeah?"

"How about you show Jack around? Take a look at his schedule and show him where his classes are."

Hiccup glanced at the new kid again. He seemed normal enough. "Yeah, sure."

"Great. Just make sure you two are back before the bell," Miss Tooth warned. "That should give you a good forty minutes."

It took the pair fifteen minutes to cover the top floor. The floor wasn't all that expansive, so the two breezed through it easily enough. They were on their way downstairs, when Hiccup's curiosity got the better of him.

"So, Jack, was it?"

"Yeah. You're Hiccup, right?"

"Yeah. So, you're from an outer sector, right?"

Jack nodded.

"What's it like there?"

Jack shrugged. "Same as here, really. Curfew at midnight, scanners everywhere. Even the schools seem similar."

"What?" Hiccup asked with a smirk. "An asylum to house the depressed, angry, violent, gangbanging youth during the hours of 9am to 3pm?"

"Yeah," Jack said through a chuckle. "Pretty much."

Hiccup puled them up to a stop at the start of another hallway. "So, down that way is the history hall," he explained, nodding his head towards the end of the hall. "You'll have your colonial studies class in on of those classrooms—"

"What about that?"

"What about what?" Hiccup asked. He spun around to find Jack looking in the opposite direction.

"That door," the lighter boy clarified, pointing towards a faceless door off to their right and further up the main hall. "Where's it go?"

Hiccup was surprised by the question. He hadn't even realized there'd been a door there. It was the kind of thing you walked by everyday without noticing, its presence forgotten until the knowledge of its existence was dredged up and slammed in your face once more.

"It…doesn't go anywhere," Hiccup said, still a little perplexed. "It's just kind of there."

"Yeah, but it must be something important, right?" Jack asked as he took a step towards the door for a better look. "It's the only one that's not labeled."

He was right. Every other door in the school had a name plate. Whether it was a room number, an office, or a supplies closet, every room had a label or name. Except for this one.

"Uh, yeah, I guess," Hiccup said. He ran a hand through his hair, a nervous habit he had yet to get rid of. "But, I mean, no one's allowed in. It's only for the principle, I think."

"So you don't know what's behind that door?"

"No," Hiccup shook his head. "No one does."

"You wanna find out?" Jack turned back to face Hiccup, a mischievous smile now plastered across his face.

The question hit Hiccup like a blow to the head. His mind blanked. "Wh-What?"

"Come on, let's check it out." Jack nodded towards the door.

"But…we can't," Hiccup said, still dumbfounded. "The door has a scanner."

"Not a big deal. Come on."

"Jack, what're you—Jack!"

Hiccup bolted after the other boy, who was already making his way towards the door. He couldn't just leave Jack to break into a private room. The kid obviously had no quarrel with sticking his nose in places it didn't belong. As the two neared the door, Hiccup came up from behind as Jack zoned in on the scanner situated in the wall to the right of the door.

"Look," Hiccup started, glancing around as he begged the heavens that no one was around to see them. "I really don't think we should—"

He stopped short as he saw the other boy take out a piece of paper.

"What the hell is that?"

They white-haired boy simply smiled. "The principle's barcode."

Hiccup could only stare, completely floored. Counterfeit codes were illegal. Not to mention, copying and using someone else's code was a serious federal offense. How the hell did Jack even get it in the first place?

"I have a photogenic memory," Jack explained, as if he'd read Hiccup's mind. "Got a look at it when I first came into his office and copied it down."

"Jack, if we get caught with that, we're—"

"What? We could get in trouble?" the other boy teased as he smoothed out the piece of paper and held it under the scanner.

"We could get arrested." Hiccup wasn't joking. They could get into some serious trouble with a copied code.

The scanner came to life, its little red light flashing over the fake barcode. Hiccup held his breath, hoping against hope that the scanner was one of the more advanced ones that could determine the difference between skin and paper. If it rejected the scan, then they could just leave with the illegal code stored away before they were caught. The scanner beeped and there was a click as the door unlocked. Hiccup let out a sigh as Jack hissed out a "Yessss." So much for that.

"Come on, Hic," Jack coaxed as he opened the door. "It'll be fun. Just, you know, treat it like an adventure."

Wait a minute. Did he just call me "Hic"? No one but Astrid had ever called Hiccup that. The gesture made him slightly angry. This kid knew nothing about Hiccup. Certainly not enough to start giving him nicknames. That, coupled with how eager Jack seemed to be when it came to braking a federal law, was starting to make Hiccup think twice about this kid.

"Jack, I'm not—Hey!" Hiccup let out an indignant yelp was he was suddenly pulled through the open door. Hiccup stopped struggling as soon as he passed through the door and realized what was behind it.

"Woah."

"This is so cool," Jack said, a awed smile spread across his face.

It was a database. The room was filled with row after row of data storage banks, stacked all the way to the ceiling. The light was dim, causing the maze of computers to disappear into shadows as they continued further into the room. Hiccup couldn't help but be awed. He took a wandering step into the overwhelming collection of whirring machines and blinking lights that no doubt held every single scrap of information of every student in the school. Hiccup was snapped out of his daze as he heard Jack calling him from somewhere off to the right. Damn, that kid could move fast.

"Hey, Hic, come look at this."

"Jack, we really should leave," Hiccup insisted as he came to find Jack situated below a screen that took up the entirety of the wall.

"Look," he said as he tapped away at a keyboard. "We can look up anyone's scholastic profile. See? Here's mine."

Hiccup came up behind Jack to look up at the screen. And sure enough, there it was. Jack's entire academic history was spread out before them. Grades, classes, GPA, lists of old teachers. It had everything.

"Now, let's see if we can find you."

Hiccup's heart stopped. No. They couldn't pull up his profile. His profile would have his code, and his code would have the star plastered across it like a damned beacon.

"Jack, no. Come on, let's just go."

Jack waved him off. "It won't take long. Just a peak, then we can leave."

"Someone could come by at any—What was that?" Hiccup asked suddenly, his head jerking to look off to his right down one of the rows of computers.

Jack froze, the tapping of keys falling into an instant silence. "What was what?"

"Didn't you hear that?"

"No."

"I think someone's in here," Hiccup hissed. "Jack, we have to go. Now."

The other boy glanced around, obviously unnerved at not having heard anything.

Eventually there came the reluctant, "Yeah, alright. Just let me shut this down."

Hiccup let out a sigh of relief, leaving Jack to punch a few more keys before yanking him out of the chair and hauling both of them out of the room. The two made a mad dash across the school, up the stairs and through the halls, coming to a stop outside of the biology classroom.

The boys took a moment to stand outside the classroom, hands on knees as they tried to catch their breath. Between all the huffing and puffing, Jack glanced at the other boy.

"You're such a little shit, you know that?"

Hiccup looked up, his brow furrowed. "What?" he asked between gasps for air.

"You didn't hear anything, did you?"

Hiccup could only stare in disbelief, leaving heavy breathing as the only sound between the two. It was true. Hiccup had faked hearing someone else in the room. He would've done anything to get them the hell out of there before his profile came up on screen. But how the hell had Jack known he was faking? The lighter boy took Hiccup's stunned silence as an answer.

"I knew it," he said, straightening up as his breathing slowed.

Hiccup up at the other boy as he continued to wheeze for breath while doubled over. He wasn't sure what he was expecting at that moment. Maybe a threat, a punch to the gut, or a slap to the head. Astrid certainly would've done any one of those things had he tricked her like that. Hiccup expected Jack to be pissed, at least. What he didn't expect was for him to laugh. A ricocheting, all consuming laugh that had the other boy gasping for air again in seconds.

"Gotta admit," Jace said as he clutched his side, "you had me going. That was a good one." After a few moments, he managed to catch his breath, his laughter fading to just a smile. "I'll tell you one thing, though," he said finally, giving Hiccup a pointed look. "You just pranked a prank master, my friend. You'll have yours coming soon enough." Jack gave the other boy a broad grin and a wink before disappearing into the classroom without another word.

Hiccup could only stare at the now closed door, too stunned to move from his crouched position. He's crazy. That was the only explanation. This new kid was absolutely fucking insane. How else could he have so casually broken into a protected database storage bank, only to be joking about being made a fool of minutes later, as if it were all completely normal. As if the two hadn't just committed a federal offense.

That feeling from before rolled in Hiccup's stomach. Whatever was wrong with this kid, it was some serious bad news. Hiccup knew that if he wanted to stay away from the crazy, he'd have to keep as far away from Jack Frost as humanly possible.

A/N: Screw introducing new characters and screw dialogue. *pouts in a corner*