Chapter 9 - Manufactured Consent

Briarcrest announced the Summit at dawn.

Not through the usual channels. Not buried in schedules or slipped into quiet notices. The declaration blazed across every screen on campus, impossible to ignore.

EMERGENCY MERIDIAN SUMMIT

MANDATORY ATTENDANCE

PURPOSE: RESTORATION OF ACADEMIC STABILITY

Nyx read it once, then again.

“Restoration,” she murmured. “They’re framing the ending before it happens.”

By breakfast, the academy hummed with a nervous energy that felt different from panic. This was choreography. Students were directed to seating by track and rank, faculty clustered according to department, council heirs elevated, and literally, on a raised dais beneath the great glass dome.

Order made visible.

Nyx took her seat among the Dominant Track students, her presence a quiet disruption. Conversations faltered near her, then resumed in forced whispers. No one wanted to be seen choosing her.

Across the hall, Alaric stood with the suspended prefects, no insignia, no authority, yet unmistakably central. The Council had placed him where he could be seen but not heard.

A warning in human form.

Headmistress Vire stepped forward as the hall dimmed.

“Briarcrest has always been a place of merit,” she began, voice smooth, practiced. “But merit cannot survive without trust. And trust requires stability.”

Nyx felt it then, and the shift beneath the words. This wasn’t a reckoning.

It was a referendum.

“Recent events,” Vire continued, “have tested that stability. Divergent behavior. Unauthorized dissemination of materials. Challenges to the established process.”

Her gaze flicked, briefly, to Nyx.

“We will address these concerns today. Transparently.”

A ripple of relief passed through the hall.

Nyx didn’t share it.

The Summit unfolded in phases.

First, data was carefully selected metrics showing increased stress indicators, declining predictive accuracy, minor dips in performance. Not lies. Curated truths.

Then testimony.

Faculty members spoke about disruption, about confusion in classrooms, about students questioning frameworks they were not yet equipped to understand.

A student from the lower years tearfully described feeling “lost” without clear guidance.

Nyx clenched her jaw.

This was consent engineered through fear.

Finally, the proposal.

“A reaffirmation of protocol,” Vire said. “Including reinforced compliance standards and oversight for students exhibiting persistent deviation.”

The words landed like a blade.

Nyx’s name was never spoken.

It didn’t need to be.

A voting interface lit across every terminal.

MOTION: REINFORCE ACADEMIC STABILITY MEASURES

Approve or Reject.

Nyx rose before the vote could begin.

Gasps rippled through the hall.

“This is not transparency,” she said, voice carrying without amplification. “It's a theater. You’re asking people to choose comfort over truth, and calling it responsibility.”

Guards shifted. The faculty murmured.

Vire raised a hand, and not to stop Nyx, but to let her speak.

Nyx took a breath.

“You showed them outcomes without causes. Fear without context. You blamed instability on individuals instead of acknowledging a system that punishes honesty and rewards silence.”

A murmur of agreement, but small, but real.

“This vote,” Nyx continued, “is not about order. It’s about permission. Permission to ignore what’s broken because fixing it is inconvenient.”

Celeste Whitmore stood abruptly. “You’ve had your say,” she snapped. “This academy does not belong to you.”

Nyx turned to her.

“No,” she agreed. “It belongs to the truth you’re trying to bury.”

Celeste flushed. “You’re asking students to risk everything for your ideology.”

“I’m asking them to notice they’re already paying the cost.”

The interface chimed.

Voting had begun.

Green approvals bloomed across the hall, faster than Nyx expected. Fear was persuasive. Stability is seductive.

Her chest tightened, and not with doubt, but with clarity.

This was the moment Briarcrest wanted.

Alaric moved.

He stepped forward into the open space between sections, voice cutting through the noise.

“You’re being asked to vote on a lie,” he said calmly.

The hall froze.

“You’re told this is about discipline. It’s about control. I enforced these rules. I benefited from them. And I’m telling you, that they are not neutral.”

Celeste whirled. “You’re under inquiry! You have no standing…”

“I have responsibility,” Alaric replied. “And I’m done pretending that obedience absolves me.”

Nyx watched him, something fierce and steady igniting in her chest.

The green slowed.

Red rejections began to appear.

Not enough.

Not yet.

Nyx acted without hesitation.

She triggered the failsafe.

Old code, buried deep, activated only when a Meridian process faced systemic contradiction. It wasn’t sabotage.

It was a disclosure.

Screens flickered.

Then data poured across them, and unfiltered trial histories, outcome adjustments, flagged dissenters, predictive models quietly rewritten to favor compliance. Names. Dates. Patterns undeniable.

The hall erupted.

The faculty shouted. Council members demanded a shutdown. The system lagged, struggling to contain what had been released legally, irrevocably.

“This is treason!” Celeste screamed.

“No,” Nyx said steadily. “This is accountability.”

The voting interface dissolved.

So did the illusion.

Headmistress Vire stared at the data, something breaking behind her eyes.

“You’ve destroyed the framework,” she said softly.

Nyx met her gaze. “You did. I just showed them.”

Security surged at last.

Alaric stepped in front of Nyx without thinking.

“I authorized it,” he said.

Nyx grabbed his wrist. “No.”

Their eyes met, and an entire conversation in a second.

She stepped past him.

“I did.”

The guards hesitated.

Arresting Nyx now, publicly, after that revelation, would confirm everything.

Vire raised a hand.

“Stand down,” she ordered.

The hall buzzed with chaos, and arguments, fear, exhilaration.

Nyx stood in the center of it, heart hammering, mind clear.

The Summit adjourned without resolution.

Which meant Briarcrest had lost control of the narrative.

That night, the academy fractured openly.

Students gathered in unsanctioned assemblies. The faculty resigned quietly. Council factions turned on one another, alliances collapsing under the weight of exposure.

Nyx sat on the steps of the old wing, exhaustion finally claiming her.

Alaric joined her, silent for a long moment.

“They’ll come for you privately now,” he said.

“I know.”

“They’ll offer deals. Threats. Exile.”

“I know.”

He studied her. “Would you leave?”

Nyx thought of her mother’s letter. Of every quiet compromise Briarcrest demanded.

“No,” she said. “But I’ll choose how I stay.”

Alaric nodded. “Then I stay too.”

She leaned back against the stone, eyes closing briefly.

Above them, Briarcrest’s lights burned late into the night, systems straining, certainty gone.

Manufactured consent had failed.

What came next would be worse.

And honest.