Chapter 25: Watching Eyes
The tension after the agent's visit didn't dissolve—it hung in the academy air like smoke that refused to clear.
By the next day, everything felt colder. The halls were quieter. Students glanced over their shoulders. Even the instructors—those who had once carried themselves like pillars of steel—now moved with measured steps.
Classroom K4 had been swept for bugs. We found three.
I destroyed them without ceremony. A flick of the wrist, a slow crush under my palm. Tamir offered to create signal distorters. I didn't say no.
Cyrus didn't confront me, but I could feel his presence tighten over the academy like a cautious net. He trusted me—but even trust has limits when shadows grow teeth.
---
In our next session, the students sat with an edge they hadn't had before. No one played with their pens. No one whispered jokes.
They waited.
"You've all now seen the world peek through the door," I said. "It didn't like what it saw. And it wants to slam that door shut."
Eva's voice was steady. "Why?"
"Because minds like yours unsettle power. You don't follow rules. You understand them—and that makes you dangerous."
Juno asked, "Are we being watched right now?"
I nodded. "Almost certainly."
Tamir activated the distortion field he'd rigged in the wall. The lights flickered. Then returned to normal.
"Now?" he asked.
I smiled. "Now we speak freely."
---
The lesson today wasn't written. There were no scenarios on the board. No games. Just truth.
"You'll be approached," I said. "In the future. Some of you sooner than others. Governments. Corporations. People with good intentions wrapped around rotten cores. They'll want your minds. They'll say it's for peace, for progress. Some might even mean it."
Haruto's jaw tightened. "How do we know who to trust?"
"You don't," I said. "You learn who you're willing to betray if they prove false."
They absorbed that. Like water into stone.
"You taught us ethics," Juno said. "But now you're preparing us for war."
"Because war often begins with an ethical choice. And ends with someone rewriting the story."
---
After class, several students stayed behind. Not out of fear—but out of resolve.
Emel asked, "What happens if they shut the academy down?"
"They won't," I said.
"But if they try?"
I looked out the window at the fog-covered mountains. The silence held a thousand years of answers.
"Then we remind them," I said, "why some places were never meant to be found."
---
That night, I wandered the lower levels of the academy. The older wings. The ones Cyrus had built with me in mind.
Rooms lined with lead. Shadowed corridors with fail-safes. No cameras. No sound. Just memory.
I stood alone for a while. Then I spoke aloud—not to anyone, but to the darkness.
"They're getting bold again. Maybe it's time they remembered why I stopped playing nice."
And for the first time in decades, I spun the Wheel.
Not for a client.
But for myself.
Just to see what fate dared try.
The needle clicked.
Then stopped.
Segment 0: Blank.
I exhaled.
The universe remembered.
To be continued in Chapter 26.