Chapter 60 The Enemy of My Enemy

Chapter 60 The Enemy of My Enemy
The waiting room of Dr Aris's clinic smells like ozone and impending catastrophe. I am huddled in a chair, the adrenaline from the surgery starting to recede, leaving behind a cold, hollow space in my chest where my foot used to be. The resin is in there now, a synthetic, illegal cage holding my bones together. I cannot feel the pain, which is the most terrifying sensation of all. I cannot feel the injury, so I cannot tell if I am healing or if I am grinding my own future into dust.

Caspian is leaning against the peeling wallpaper, his hands empty. The signet ring, the last anchor to his name, is gone. He looks lighter, but also haunted, like he has shed his skin and is not sure who he is underneath.

The door to the clinic swings open, but it is not Dr Aris who walks in.

It is Soren.

Caspian is across the room in a blur, his hand grabbing Soren by the lapel and slamming him into the wall. "How did you find us? If you followed us, I swear—"

"Save it, Thorne," Soren hisses, his face pale and eyes wide with a frantic, uncharacteristic desperation. He does not fight back. He does not even use his hands to defend himself. "I did not follow you. I tracked the movement of the Thorne credit line through the local pawn circuit. I knew you would do something stupid."

"Why are you here?" I demand, my voice sounding shaky.

Soren looks at me, his gaze lingering on the bandages wrapped around my ankle. For once, the mockery is gone. "The Board met an hour ago. Halloway did not just decide to keep you under review. She has been offered a deal. A massive expansion of the Vanguard facilities, funded entirely by your father."

Caspian lets go of him, but his posture remains a coil of wire. "My father does not expand schools. He buys them to strip the assets."

"Exactly," Soren says, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper. "He is not interested in the Showcase. He is going to announce the Vanguard's merger with his global foundation mid-performance. He wants to turn this place into a finishing school for the elite, not a training ground for dancers. Halloway is going to get a seat on the corporate board, and the rest of us, the students, we are being liquidated. The traditional piece they are forcing you to dance is a smoke screen. They want you to look clumsy, traditional, and obsolete before they announce the change."

Caspian looks at me, then back at Soren. "And why would you tell us this? You are the golden boy. You are the one who is supposed to be getting the promotion."

Soren lets out a jagged, bitter laugh. "You think I want to be a corporate mascot? I am a dancer, Caspian. If this merger goes through, there will not be a stage left in this building. I have spent my life clawing my way to the top of a ladder that your father is about to kick over."

He reaches into his jacket and pulls out a thin, encrypted tablet. He places it on the table between us. "This is the Board's private server access. It contains the draft of the press release, the legal contracts, and the list of students they are planning to drop. If you release this to the press before the Showcase, you do not just win the audience. You start a scandal so big the board will have to scramble to save their own skins. They will have to keep the school running as is to prove they are not corrupt."

"You want us to take down the Vanguard to save it?" I ask, sceptical.

"I want you to be the distraction," Soren says, his blue eyes turning sharp. "You are the Thorne rebellion. You are the drama the world is watching. If you perform that Riot piece, the real one, not the ballet, and you play this data during your set, the media will tear the board apart. You will be the heroes. And I will be the one left standing when the dust settles."

"You are playing a dangerous game, Soren," Caspian says, his voice cold. "If they find out you gave us this, they will ruin you."

"They are already going to ruin me when they replace the artistic programme with a business curriculum," Soren says, turning to leave. He stops at the door, his silhouette framed by the harsh, flickering neon of the laundromat sign. "I do not care about the Vanguard, and I certainly do not care about you. But I hate your father more than I hate losing. Do what you want with the file."

He exits, the door rattling in its frame.

I look at the tablet. It is a bomb. We can use it to destroy the people who have been trying to destroy us, but it requires us to walk into that Showcase not as students, but as insurgents.

"We were planning to dance for a spot in the company," I say, my breath catching in my throat. "Now we are planning a coup."

Caspian picks up the tablet, his fingers ghosting over the screen. He looks at me, and for the first time in days, the distance between us vanishes. The betrayal of my lie is still there, but it is dwarfed by the common enemy standing at the gates.

"The Showcase is in ten days," Caspian says. "We need to train, we need to prepare the leak, and we need to make sure your foot can handle the force of the Riot piece with that resin in it."

"And if we get caught?"

He smiles, a dark, dangerous, Thorne smile that belongs in a boardroom not a practice hall. "Then we make sure the whole world is watching when we go down."

I reach out and take his hand. The resin in my foot feels heavy, a strange, artificial weight. But as I look at the tablet, I realise I am not just a dancer anymore. I am part of the storm.

"Let us go," I say. "We have a school to save, and a stage worth burning for."