Chapter 44 CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR: Lysa
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR: Lysa
She was awake when I knocked.
I knew because there was no delay between the knock and her response. People who have been sleeping take a moment. People who have been lying awake in a quiet room waiting for morning are already at the surface when you reach them.
"Come in," she said.
I opened the door.
The room was larger than mine. Not by much, but enough to notice. A proper desk. A window that looked out at actual sky rather than a stone wall. She was sitting at the desk with a book open in front of her that she had clearly not been reading.
She looked at me.
I looked at her.
"Rank forty-seven," she said.
"Yes," I said.
"You were five hundred four days ago," she said.
"Yes," I said.
She looked at the book in front of her. "Sable said you were someone I should trust. I have been thinking about that since yesterday evening." She looked up. "I do not trust easily."
"I know," I said. "Neither does he. Which is why him saying it carries weight."
She held my gaze.
"Sit down," she said. "If you are going to be in my room you should sit."
I sat on the edge of her cot.
She turned her chair to face me properly.
"My core," she said. "What exactly did the file say about mine."
I told her. Not everything from memory, but the specific parts that applied to her. The silver with white edge reading. The acceleration timeline. The notation about her entry as part of a current cycle.
She listened without interrupting.
When I finished she was quiet for a moment.
"I knew something was wrong," she said. "I have known since the third week. My core does not feel the same as it did at entry assessment. It feels faster. Louder, almost. Like something running when it should be walking." She looked at her hands. "I told myself it was the altitude. The new environment. The different training intensity."
"That is what most people tell themselves," I said. "Because the alternative is harder to sit with."
She looked at me.
"Were you ever afraid," she said. "When you were figuring all of this out. When you were in the middle of it."
I thought about that honestly.
"No," I said. "But I came into this with information that most people do not have. And a core that does not behave the way hers did. What Thane was doing to you was not happening to me."
"But you knew it was happening to Sable," she said.
"Yes," I said.
"And you worked to stop it anyway," she said. "Even though it was not your problem."
I thought about the best way to say what was true.
"It was my problem," I said. "Everything wrong in a place I am standing in is my problem. That is not a rule I follow because someone told me to. It is just how I am built."
She studied me for a long moment.
"Sable said you were not actually nine," she said. "He did not explain. He just said it in a way that meant he was not going to explain further."
"He was right," I said. "Not in the way that matters right now."
She accepted that without pushing.
That told me something about her. She could hold unresolved information without needing to fill it in immediately. That was a specific kind of patience that not many nine-year-olds had. Not many adults had it either.
"What happens to my core," she said. "Long term. After all of this."
That was the question I had been thinking about since Sera first described the acceleration process.
"The acceleration will stop now that the substance is no longer in your food," I said. "Your core will stabilize at whatever state it has reached. It will not continue growing at the rate it was." I paused. "The state it has reached is still significantly ahead of where it would naturally be at your age. That is not nothing. That is actually considerable."
She looked at me.
"You mean I am stronger than I should be," she said.
"Earlier than you should be," I said. "There is a difference. What happened to you was forced and it carries risks. But the core that exists right now, stabilized and supported correctly, is capable of more than a standard third-rank entry-level core."
She sat with that.
"Capable of more," she said quietly. "That is an interesting way to describe something that was done to me without my knowledge or consent."
"Yes," I said. "It is. I am not trying to make it sound like a gift. It is not. But it is also not only damage."
She looked at the window.
"The board of inquiry," she said. "Thirty days. You think it will hold?"
"I think Calloway is very good at her job," I said. "I think Davan's documentation is comprehensive and covers eleven of the thirteen cases in detail. I think the physical containers are evidence that cannot be argued away." I looked at her. "I think it holds."
"And Thane," she said.
"Will challenge everything procedurally," I said. "It will be slow and uncomfortable and there will be periods where it looks like the challenge might succeed. That is how she is built." I paused. "But the case is solid. Solid cases hold."
She was quiet for a long moment.
Then she said: "I want to help."
I looked at her.
"With the case," she said. "With whatever comes next. I am not going to sit in this room and wait for a board of inquiry to decide whether I am safe." She held my gaze. "I am rank forty-six. I have full tier access. I have a core that is running ahead of schedule." She paused. "Use me."
I thought about what a person who had just found out they were targeted for death looked like when they decided not to collapse inward but to turn outward instead.
I thought about Sable in that corridor with four containers in his arms.
I thought about Ren counting footsteps for twelve days with no explanation.
I thought about Sera coming back to a building that had marked her because someone had to.
Lysa Crane was the same kind of person as all of them.
She had just not had the chance to show it yet.
"All right," I said.
She held my gaze.
"Tell me what you need," she said.
I told her.