Chapter 23 CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: What We Took
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: What We Took
Sable took the folder.
No hesitation. He pulled it from the case, tucked it inside his jacket, and moved. We all moved. Davan pulled the shelf section closed from the inside. Sera was already at the academic archive door listening.
I felt the seal reset behind us as the passage closed.
Sera held up one hand. We stopped.
Footsteps in the corridor outside. Close. Then passing. Then moving away.
Silence.
She turned the handle and looked through the gap. She looked for several seconds. Then she opened the door fully and we all went out.
Ren was pressed against the wall ten feet down the corridor. His face was the face of someone who had just spent a very uncomfortable ninety seconds not being able to do anything except listen to footsteps get closer and then leave.
He looked at us. Counted. All five.
He let out a breath through his nose and did not say anything.
We split up. One at a time, different directions, two minutes between each departure. Sable went last, the most visible of all of us, taking the route through the upper dormitory wing where a first-ranked student being in the east corridor at a late hour would raise no questions.
I went to my room and sat on the cot and waited.
Twenty minutes later there was a soft knock.
I opened the door.
Sable came in. He looked at the small room, sat down on the floor because there was still no chair, and held the folder on his knees.
I sat on the cot.
He opened it.
The first page was a summary document. Standard academy format but filled in with information that was not standard at all. At the top, a name.
Voss, Aldric. His grandfather.
Below that, a core assessment with annotations in small handwriting along the margins.
Core output: elevated beyond natural ceiling. Intervention applied: second cycle.
Sable read it without saying anything.
I watched his face.
He was controlling it. I could see the control happening, the way a person holds something steady when it is trying to shake.
He turned to the second page.
His father.
Same format. Same notation.
Core output elevated. Third cycle intervention applied. Results optimal.
He turned to the third page.
His own name.
Voss, Sable. Date of birth. Core color at activation.
White and gold. And then, in the same small handwriting:
Generational sequence complete. Subject ready for extraction at peak. Estimated timeline from activation: fourteen to sixteen months.
He stopped.
He looked at the page for a long time.
Fourteen to sixteen months from activation. He had activated his core at age seven.
That meant the extraction window had opened two months ago.
"Sable," I said.
He did not respond immediately.
I let him sit with it. There was nothing I could say that would make it smaller, and trying would have been wrong.
He had just read that three generations of his family had been shaped to produce him. That everything the Voss name stood for had been built by someone else. And that he had been marked for death before he was born.
He turned to the fourth page.
It was a list of names. Ten of them. Dates next to each one. Notes next to the dates.
I leaned forward and read.
Seven of the ten had a single word next to their date.
Extracted.
Two had a different word.
Failed.
One name had nothing next to it at all.
That name was Sera.
Sable looked at the list. Then at me.
"Seven," he said.
"At least," I said. "There may be other files."
He closed the folder.
He sat with it on his knees. The candle on my shelf was burning low.
"The timeline," he said. "Fourteen to sixteen months from activation. I activated at seven. I am nine now."
"Yes," I said.
"She has been waiting," he said. "Since I arrived. She has been watching me and waiting for the right moment and I have been sitting at her table eating her food and walking into her building every morning."
I said nothing.
He pressed his hand flat on the folder.
"What do we do with this," he said.
"We take it to someone outside the academy," I said. "Someone above the Inner Circle's reach. The regional authority that oversees all academies in Valdris."
He looked at me. "Students cannot leave during the first semester without written authorization from the Director."
"There are other ways out of a building," I said.
He looked at me for a very long time.
Then he said: "You mean we leave without permission."
"I mean we leave before she moves," I said. "Which might be tomorrow. Which might be tonight."
He stood up. He put the folder inside his jacket again.
"I need one hour," he said.
"For what?" I said.
"I need to write a letter to my father. Everything in that file and everything we know. If something goes wrong before we reach the regional authority, someone outside these walls needs to know."
That was the right thinking.
"One hour," I said. "Then we move."
He walked to the door and stopped with his hand on the frame.
"Ardell," he said.
"Yes," I said.
"If we get out," he said. "If we make it to the authority and they believe us and this ends. What do you do after."
I had not thought about after.
I thought about it now.
"I come back," I said. "And I finish the year. Same as everyone else."
He looked at me.
"Rank five hundred," he said.
"For now," I said.
Something moved in his face. Very small. The closest thing to a smile I had seen from him.
He walked out.
I sat in the dark and thought about the list.
Three names we still did not know.
Two had already been extracted.
The third was still somewhere in this academy. Still alive and still having no idea.