LOGINChapter 100He wasn't there.I stood outside room 214 at eight fifty-five on Monday morning and knocked twice and heard nothing. Tried the handle. Locked. I pressed my ear briefly to the door out of instinct and heard the particular quality of an empty room. Not someone sitting quietly inside. Actually empty.I stepped back and looked at the door.Marcus was always here before me. That was the pattern across every Monday since the beginning. He arrived early, made cold tea, opened folders, and was behind his desk with the particular settled quality of someone who had been waiting and was relieved the wait was ending.The door was locked and the room was empty and it was eight fifty-six.I took out my phone and called his number.It rang twice. Then a disconnection tone. Not voicemail. Disconnected. The number no longer active.I stood in the corridor for a moment.Then I walked back to the car and called Matthias.He answered on the second ring."Marcus didn't show," I said. "Office l
Chapter 99I went back to campus on Wednesday.Not because I had to. My coursework was manageable remotely and Matthias had said nothing about staying away and nothing about going back, which was his way of leaving the decision entirely mine. But staying away felt like the wrong shape. Like something that would be read as confirmation of a story I hadn't agreed to be part of.So I went.The bus dropped me at the main gate at eight forty-five.I walked through campus the way I always walked through it. Same pace. Same route. Bag over one shoulder, coffee in hand, eyes forward.I felt the shift within thirty seconds.Not dramatic. Not a crowd parting or anyone saying anything directly. Just the particular quality of attention that a space took on when something was being noticed and discussed and had reached the stage where people didn't bother hiding that they were looking.Two girls near the fountain stopped talking when I passed. Didn't start again until I was ten feet beyond them.A
Chapter 98I found out from Elena.Not from Dante. Not from an alert on my phone. From Elena calling me at six forty-five in the morning with the particular quality of urgency in her voice that meant something had already spread far enough that containing it was no longer the first priority."Don't look at your social media," she said.Which meant I immediately looked at my social media.The photos were better than the first round.That was the thing that hit me before anything else. Not the content. Not the framing. The technical quality of them. Whoever had produced these had invested in the production. The first round had been obvious to anyone looking carefully rough edges around the face composite, lighting that didn't match, metadata that Dante's team had been able to pull apart within hours.These were different.Same principle. My face. Someone else's body. But the compositing was clean. The lighting was consistent. The metadata had been scrubbed or fabricated. And the framin
Chapter 97Dante put the report on the kitchen table at seven in the morning.Not Matthias's desk. The kitchen. Which meant he'd found me first, which meant he'd decided I needed to hear this before the day got moving around it.I looked at the report. Then at him."Sit down," I said.He sat. Which was unusual enough to tell me the contents were significant."Caden made contact with Selene four days ago," he said. "Through a third party. Someone outside the estate with no direct connection to either of them that we'd previously mapped." He paused. "We found it because the third party used a communication method that overlapped with one of the relay signatures from the European operation. It flagged automatically.""Selene is under house arrest," I said."House arrest limits physical movement. It doesn't eliminate every communication channel for someone who spent two years building external networks." He held my gaze. "She had a dormant contact. Someone she'd used before the estate op
Chapter 96I didn't move my things dramatically.That wasn't how either of us operated. There was no announcement, no formal moment, no gathering of staff to explain the change. Matthias told Marta on a Tuesday morning that the upper west guest room was being converted to permanent use and that Ms. Lennox would be relocating from the campus dormitory by the end of the week.Marta looked at him for exactly one second.Then she said, "I'll have the wardrobe cleared by Thursday."That was that.*******I told the university housing office I was moving off campus for personal reasons. Filled out the form. Paid the early release fee from the money I'd saved from my estate shifts. Arranged a car for Friday morning.Elena was in the room when I started packing.She sat on her bed with her knees pulled up and watched me fold clothes into a bag with the expression of someone who had been waiting for a conversation to arrive and was now watching it walk through the door."So," she said."So," I
Chapter 95The ruling came on the sixth day.Not through a courier this time. Through the Council's official digital channel, which meant they'd decided the weight of the envelope wasn't necessary anymore. The decision had been made and they were done performing around it.Dante brought it to Matthias's office at nine in the morning. Set his tablet on the desk with the document already open.Matthias read it standing up.I watched his face. The controlled version of him was fully present, giving nothing away in the surface of it. But I knew how to read the places he didn't show things now. The slight tightening at the corner of his jaw. The one breath that came out slightly slower than the ones before it.He set the tablet down and looked at me."Tell me," I said."The panel finds the relationship inappropriate given the employment context," he said. "Formal reprimand. Entered into the Council record." He paused. "I'm required to acknowledge the reprimand in writing within forty-eight







