The next day, the school smelled of chalk and routine, but for me everything had changed. I felt as if I carried a crack inside me, something through which the light that had been hidden for years was now leaking. I waited for class to end with my heart in my throat.
Darnell left the classroom with his usual calm, but his eyes carried a different weight: not the weight of exhaustion, but of someone preparing. He gave me a subtle signal with his head, just a small gesture, and I understood I had to follow him.
We moved through the hallways, people all around us like an indifferent wall. He didn't speak until we reached the door of the old music room, a place nobody used because the acoustics were ruined and the official curriculum said the space was "non-essential." Darnell closed the door carefully, dimmed the lights, and looked at me.
"We can't take risks," he said softly. "If you get arrested for curiosity, I'll erase you from my memory."
His joke sounded bitter, but there was truth in it.
He pulled an old tablet from his coat, the kind that no longer connected to the official network. On the screen appeared fragments of videos, photos, and texts fitting together like pieces of a puzzle. Protests, demonstrations, faces I once thought anonymous. And among them, Darnell, young, speaking with others, leading people, setting minds on fire.
"I was there," he murmured. "Before 'X' fully took power, we were many. We believed truth could save us."
He told me things they never said in class: how surveillance grew gradually, how leaders were discredited, how recordings began disappearing at crucial moments. He spoke of painful choices: friends who went into exile, others who collaborated with the System to save their families, even betrayals that hurt most because they came from our own.
"I won't explain everything now," he said. "You'll learn step by step. First: how to watch without being seen. Second: how to read an old file without leaving a trace. Third: how to tell a useful truth from a trap."
He handed me a sheet covered in small writing, a list of symbols and a partial city map with routes missing from official plans. There were codes I didn't yet understand, but the number 3.5.17 no longer felt like coincidence; it was part of a network of points connected together.
"I'm trusting you with this," Darnell said. "But I trust you because I believe you haven't been tamed yet. That trust will make you vulnerable—and dangerous."
For the next hour, he taught me to hide and to search: how to slip a sheet into a library book without triggering sensors, which words in a public conversation hinted someone was part of the resistance, how the voices of the forgetful differed from the voices of those who still remembered. It wasn't just theory; he pushed me to act in small exercises that seemed like games but were tests.
When we said goodbye, before leaving, he gripped my wrist firmly."There's something you must know," he said. "I'm not a hero. I was a mistake in the past. I did things to survive that still weigh on me. If you ever doubt me, remember this: those who fight aren't perfect. Sometimes they sell out to gain something good later. Sometimes they stay silent so others don't die. Sometimes they betray to save a life."
His voice cracked for a second, and I saw in his face an old guilt.
I left the music room feeling as if I'd gone several steps deeper into the truth. Darnell wasn't just a teacher or an impenetrable figure: he was a man full of contradictions, with scars he never showed in class. That made him believable, and at the same time, unsettling.
That night, while reviewing the sheet he'd given me, I found a note I hadn't seen during the lesson: a margin scribble with my name and a past date, written in the same hand as the recording.
Barely legible at the edge:"Don't trust anyone who hasn't lost at least one thing they loved."
The phrase clung to my chest. If Darnell had lost something—or someone—because of his choices, then I had to learn to restrain hope and measure truth. Because in a city that erases and rewrites, the truth that saves some can condemn others.
The next morning the automated voice announced a "protocol verification" in Zone 3. Patrols moved in, and the loudspeakers echoed a neutral hymn about order and gratitude. I knew that, meanwhile, in places like the old music room and Level 17, something greater was brewing: a network of memories trying to piece back together what someone had torn away.
Before class, I found a small metal plate in my locker with an inscription that wasn't official. Just three letters: DAR. Nothing more.
I didn't know if it was a warning, a signature, or a promise. But seeing it, I understood something else: the network was bigger than we thought, and Darnell wasn't just someone who remembered—he had left behind signals. Signals that could guide or deceive. And as I learned to read them, my world grew more dangerous—and more real—than ever.
End of Chapter 6