Somewhere in the stone corridors, pipes groaned like old men, and lanterns hissed low with their faint, steady burn.
Grant woke to it slowly, the stiffness in his limbs making him feel smaller than he was. His cot had been moved—or maybe he had been carried—to a wider chamber. The walls here were lined with shelves that strained beneath the weight of books. Stacks of paper leaned against boxes, and maps with faded ink clung to the stone by nails.
It smelled of dust, old leather, and something sharper—tea steeping in a clay cup.
A single candle burned on the table at the room's center. Behind it sat the woman called Aldus. Her robe hung loose around her frame, silver hair pulled back from her face. She was not writing, though an inkpot sat open beside her hand. She only watched him with the kind of patience that made silence heavier.
Grant sat up slowly, his shirt still torn, the black scars of bullet holes like shadows on fabric. His throat felt raw when he spoke. "Where's Rook?"
"Gone to rest," Aldus said. "He has been watching over you."
Grant shifted, uneasy beneath her gaze. "Why am I here?"
She folded her hands over the table, the candlelight painting her knuckles gold. "Because you cannot be out there."
His fists tightened against the blanket. "I should be with my dad."
The words cracked, but Aldus did not flinch. She lifted the teacup, took one small sip, and set it back in its place before speaking again.
"Do you know what they call us out there?"
Grant's breath caught. He shook his head.
Her eyes lingered on him, searching—not for knowledge, but for the weight of his not-knowing.
"Weeds," she said at last. The word left her lips with no bitterness, only an old tiredness, like she had repeated it too many times. "Wild growths. Unwanted. Pulled out before they can take root."
She let the word hang between them, then leaned forward slightly, candlelight flickering against the lines beneath her eyes.
"That is what the world believes you are."
Grant sat stiff on the cot, jaw tight. His hands knotted the blanket in his lap until his knuckles blanched.
Aldus rose from her chair, lifting the candle. Its glow shifted across the walls, spilling over shelves crowded with tomes whose spines had long since lost their color. She moved, pausing before a hanging map. Pins and lines marked territories across a continent, some slashed through in black ink, others circled in red.
"Gifteds," she said, turning the flame toward the map, "are not chosen. They are born. No different from a child born with green eyes or a crooked tooth. Yet… the world does not see it so."
She touched the map with the edge of her sleeve. "Fear has a way of spreading faster than truth. One Gifted harms a man—whether by accident or cruelty—and a dozen stories sprout. Towns panic. Leaders promise safety. And safety, Grant…" Her gaze flicked to him, sharp now. "Safety always requires an enemy."
Grant's breath hitched. "But we didn't do anything." His voice cracked.
Aldus tilted her head, almost kind. "You think truth matters to fear?"
The candlelight painted her silver hair in fire. She turned, stepping toward a shelf stacked with scrolls. "The Taskforce was made to cut us down. They are gardeners, in their own words. Trained to hunt, to burn, to salt the earth so nothing unwanted grows again. And so we—" she gestured to the stone walls, the heavy doors, the faint smell of dust and secrecy "—we became the opposite. Not an army yet. We are a refuge. A place to shield the hunted, to keep the roots alive."
Grant surged to his feet, fists trembling. "That's not fair! My dad didn't do anything—I didn't do anything!"
Aldus watched him, the flickering candle steady in her hand. Her silence was heavier than his shouting, as though she had heard these words a thousand times from a thousand mouths.
When she spoke, her voice was quieter, but it cut deeper. "It does not matter what you have done. It matters what you are."
The words hit him harder than the raid, harder than the bullets that should have killed him. He staggered back a step, chest heaving, as if air itself had turned against him.
"They hate you," Aldus said, not cruelly, not kindly, but with the sorrow of inevitability. "And they will hunt you until you decide what to do with that hate."
Aldus set her teacup aside and pressed her palm against a glass panel embedded in the stone wall. Hidden seams glowed, and the surface folded back with a hydraulic hiss, revealing a sleek console alive with faint blue light.
Grant staggered closer, eyes wide. "You have… computers? Down here?"
"Knowledge demands more than candles," Aldus said simply.
She tapped a sequence across the surface—no buttons, only shifting symbols that rippled like water. A circular screen bloomed to life above the console, projecting crisp images into the dim air.
The feed snapped into focus: a news studio, sharp suits beneath a glowing banner. GIFTED CRISIS DEEPENS.
"—and let's be clear," one anchor thundered, voice sharp through concealed speakers. "These so-called Gifteds are not people with problems. They are the problem. A plague, unchecked. Taskforce V is the only reason our streets remain safe."
Another anchor leaned forward. "If you see something—someone acting strange, unnatural—you report it. That's your duty. Because for every one we catch, five more sprout up like weeds."
Grant flinched. The word echoed with the same bite Aldus had given it earlier.
The feed cut to footage: Taskforce V squads deploying from black VTOL aircraft, their armor smooth and angular, visors glowing faint red. Rifles gleamed with modular tech, but what chilled Grant most were the heavy exo-packs strapped to their backs, each pulsing with blue coils.
"Null-tech," Aldus said quietly. She adjusted the feed, slowing it down, freezing on the coils. "Power suppressors. Portable prisons. They choke a Gifted's strength until nothing remains but silence."
Grant's chest tightened. "They… they can erase it?"
"Suppress," Aldus corrected. "Not erase. And only so long as the machine holds. Break free, and the fire burns brighter."
The broadcast rolled on: aerial shots of a burning neighborhood, drones circling above. Neighbors claim the family concealed a Gifted child…
Grant's hands shook at the images. He wanted to look away, but the projections surrounded him, floating like accusations in the air. The word plague scrolled across the ticker again and again.
His throat closed. "They hate us."
"They fear you," Aldus murmured. But in her eyes, the weight of something older lingered. Fear and hate were the same beast with two faces.
Grant pressed his palms against his ears, but the screens kept talking, kept damning, kept naming him.
"I don't care," he snapped suddenly, the words cracking in his throat. "I don't care about Taskforce V, or… or why people hate us, or what they call us." His voice rose, sharp enough to scrape against the walls. "If they took him from me, then I'll make sure they can't take anyone else."
The holographic map still glowed faintly at his side, red markers pulsing like a heartbeat. Grant struck at the light, his hand passing uselessly through it, scattering fragments of projection. His breath shuddered out of him, leaving him smaller, shaking.
Aldus moved slowly, robes whispering against the stone floor. She didn't lecture or argue. She only knelt beside him until her eyes were level with his. One hand, steady and warm, settled on his shoulder.
Her voice dropped to something close to a prayer.
"That is why you must live, boy. To carry him with you. To outlast the weeds who call us weeds."
Grant's jaw trembled, but he had no answer. He only stared at the fractured glow spilling across the floor.