I couldn't take my eyes off him.
Teacher Darnell spoke as always, with that dull voice, reading from the same texts we've all heard a thousand times. But I no longer saw a tired bureaucrat. I saw someone who once shouted against the Silence.
The recording couldn't be a lie. That passion, that fire in his voice… it wasn't something that could be invented.
All through class, I searched for a crack in his mask. A gesture. A word. Something that would confirm the man before me was the same one on the screen.Nothing.
But just before the bell rang, it happened.
Darnell lifted his eyes from the projector and looked at me for a few seconds longer than usual. It wasn't a look of reproach. It was as if… he was measuring whether he could trust me.
When I left the classroom, I found something strange on my desk: a broken piece of chalk, with a number written in dust across my notebook.17.4
A code. A meeting.
That night, I slipped out of my house. My heart pounded like a hammer. The number led me to Level 17, Corridor 4, where I had been with Kael, Lira, and Sol. But now, everything was silent. Only a faint echo… and the shadow of a figure waiting for me.
It was him.Teacher Darnell.
"I knew you'd come," he said, without raising his voice.
"Do you… remember?" I asked, barely breathing.
His face showed no emotion. But his eyes… his eyes had the same flame I saw in the recording.
"Remembering is not a gift, Eran. It's a curse." He paused, staring at me intensely. "What you saw in that file, you weren't meant to see. And now there's no turning back."
I took a step closer, my throat dry."Are you with us… or with them?"
Darnell didn't answer immediately.Instead, he pulled a yellow sheet from his coat, identical to mine, and held it up to the flashlight.The same word."Remember."
"I've been waiting a long time for someone brave enough to ask," he finally said. "The city is about to break. And when it does… you'll have to decide whose side you're on."
A metallic noise cut through his words.A drone buzzed in the distance, searching for movement.
The teacher shut off my flashlight with a swift motion and whispered:"Tomorrow, after class. Don't miss it."
When I looked up, he was gone. Only the echo of his footsteps fading into the darkness remained.
And for the first time, I understood that my teacher was not just a man trapped in the system.He was someone who had been fighting in silence.Someone who had been waiting for me.
End of Chapter 5