Chapter 38 CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT: Classes Resume
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT: Classes Resume
On the third day, the academy opened its doors again.
Life inside a building under governance oversight was different in ways that were hard to name precisely. The same corridors, the same stone underfoot. But grey coats moved through with documents, certain rooms were closed, and the staff walked differently.
Governance oversight changed its function only at the edges. Students had come here to learn and that purpose continued. Staff who had been cleared could return to teaching. Staff under formal caution could not.
That meant Proctor Aldric was gone from the schedule.
It meant three other Inner Circle staff members were also removed from active duty.
But Proctor Vayne was cleared. Proctor Senn was cleared. Most of the teaching staff had simply been teachers and nothing more, and they came back to their classrooms with the careful expressions of people who were still processing what they had learned about the institution they worked in.
I went to Aether Principles at the standard hour.
Proctor Senn looked at the class the way he always looked at it, with that flat assessing expression, and said: "I understand there have been disruptions. Those are not my concern. Core theory is my concern. Open your notes."
He taught the class exactly as he always had.
I respected that.
The disruptions he was not concerned about had, however, rearranged a number of things.
Sable Voss was no longer eating at the upper table alone. He sat with us at the lower table, which caused a specific kind of silence in the main hall the first morning it happened. Not hostile silence. Adjusting silence. The kind that happens when something that had always seemed fixed turns out not to be.
He carried his tray to our section and sat down and said: "Good morning."
Ren said: "Good morning." And went back to his porridge.
That was the entire event.
But word moved through the academy the way words do in a place where everyone is paying attention, and by the afternoon session, three other upper-rank students had quietly relocated their seating without any announcement.
I noticed. I did not comment.
Lysa Crane joined us for the evening meal.
She was quieter than she had been on the night of the evacuation. Less reactive, more observational. She watched the hall the way someone watches a room when they are recategorizing everything in it.
She sat next to Sera.
Sera did not make any particular effort with her. She simply stayed close and let them decide how close to come on their own terms.
Lysa came close. Slowly. But she came.
After dinner, I went to find Davan.
He was in the east stairwell. Third step from the top. Not sitting with a book this time. Just sitting.
I sat below him.
"The governance team recovered the hollow," I said.
"I know," he said. "They documented it this morning. The main archive is officially in custody." He looked at his hands. "Eighteen months of work."
"It is evidence now," I said. "Not storage. That is a better use of it."
He was quiet for a moment.
"There were more containers in the sub-level," I said. "You heard?"
"Thirteen total," he said. "I knew about nine. The other four were in a separate section behind the main equipment. I had not gotten that far in my mapping." He paused. "Thirteen."
I held that number.
Thirteen students. Thirteen cores removed from living people over twenty years.
Thirteen families who had been told their children died in accidents or from core collapses or from training complications.
"The documentation covers all of them?" I said.
"The records in the main archive cover eleven," he said. "The other two were before Thane developed her current record-keeping method. But the physical containers are evidence on their own." He looked at the wall across from him. "The governing council will have to notify the families. All thirteen of them."
I thought about thirteen families. About my own in Croft. My mother's letter was still in my jacket pocket.
"Davan," I said.
He looked at me.
"You did the right thing staying," I said. "The documentation is the reason this case holds. Without those records, we had testimony. With them, we have proof."
He was quiet for a long moment.
"I stayed because I did not know what else to do," he said. "I did not have anywhere else to go and I did not have enough to act on yet and every time I thought about leaving I thought about the next student who would come through that gate not knowing." He looked at his hands again. "I am not sure that is the same thing as doing the right thing."
"It produced the same result," I said.
He thought about that.
"Yes," he said eventually. "I suppose it did."
I went back to my room.
The midterm assessment was in two weeks. The governance investigation continued. Thane remained in the secured suite on the administrative level.
And rank five hundred was still at the bottom of a board in the main corridor.
I stood in front of the board that evening.
Most of the names had not changed since entry day. The challenge system was still active. One advance per month if you won. Five places lost if you failed.
I ran the mathematics in my head the way I used to calculate campaign supply lines and troop movement timelines.
From rank five hundred to the top fifty was four hundred and fifty places. At one advance per month through individual challenges, that was approximately thirty-seven years.
Obviously I was not going to do it that way. I did not have thirty-seven years in this body and I did not have the patience for it even if I did.
There were other mechanisms. Exceptional performance in formal assessments could move a student multiple ranks at once. A governance-level instructor recommendation could bypass the standard challenge process.
I looked at the board for a long moment.
I thought about Proctor Vayne.
She had noticed concerning patterns for years with no way to act. Now she had context for those patterns. And she had already seen me run the seventh transition correctly after watching it once.
I turned from the board.
Two weeks until the midterm assessment. One month before the first official rank challenge window opened.
I had real, specific, focused work directly ahead. The kind I was good at.