The rain didn't stop, but the wind shifted, slamming the damp smell of the courtyard straight through the gaps in the window frames.
James sat back against the stone wall. His head felt thick, stuffed with cotton, the kind of heavy pressure that makes you want to press your knuckles into your temples until you see spots. Across the room, Drake was sitting on the floor with his back against his bedpost, his chin tucked into his chest. His breathing was loud and uneven, a wet, rattling sound that meant his lungs were still fighting the cold air from the lower corridors.
"You think they're with Kara right now?" Drake asked. His voice was rough, cracked at the edges like he'd been shouting into a pillow.
"Yes," James said. He kept his vocabulary short, using the simple words his brain could find without effort. "She's behind the forge."
"If they put her in the grid, James... if they hook her up to those iron pipes..." Drake didn't finish. He just pulled his good leg up against his chest, his forehead resting against his knee. "I should've pulled her out of the room before the gate came down. I was right there. I could've grabbed her jacket."
"You couldn't," James said. "You were carrying the logistics crate."
"I could've dropped the damn crate," Drake spat, his hand tightening into a fist against his shin. "It was just paper. Old manifests. Who cares about the paper?"
Before James could answer, the key rattled in the lock again.
This time, the door didn't just swing open; it was pushed back by a guard who stayed in the hallway, his iron pike held sideways to keep anyone else from crowding the threshold.
Dr. Aris stepped into the room, but he looked small now. He was walking half a step behind a man who wore the dark, heavy silks of the high capital—the kind of fabric that didn't hold dust or grease. The man was short, with soft, white hands and a fringe of gray hair that had been carefully oiled to hide his bald spot. He didn't have a walking stick. He had a small silver box in his palm, about the size of a deck of cards, that hummed with a low, continuous pitch that sounded like a wet finger rubbing the rim of a glass.
He didn't look at Drake. He didn't look at the tin spoons or the cold soup. He stopped right in front of James, his silk sleeves rustling like dry leaves.
"This is the one who spoke to Finch?" the man asked. His voice was thin, nasal, and perfectly polite. He sounded like a merchant explaining why the winter flour was more expensive this year.
"Yes, Representative Mirell," Aris said, his hand twitching toward his vest. "This is James. The primary node."
Representative Mirell didn't look into James's eyes. He held the silver box up, letting the humming sound pass within an inch of James's nose. James felt his stomach tilt—a sudden, greasy wave of nausea that made him swallow hard to keep from spitting up on the man's polished leather shoes. The box wasn't measuring data; it was just a weight, an invisible, cold brick pressing against his forehead.
"The static is high," Mirell said, his small eyes blinking behind thin wire frames. "It's leaking into the eastern corridor. When I passed the library turnstiles, my clerks couldn't even keep their ink from running on the ledger sheets. The girl's resonance is vibrating through the whole tier."
"Luna is doing her best to maintain her baseline," Aris said, his voice dropping into that quiet, defensive tone he used when his funding was threatened. "She's a third-year. Her capacity isn't—"
"Her capacity is exactly what her mother's was," Mirell snapped, his politeness vanishing for a fraction of a second, revealing something sharp and ugly underneath. "And her mother didn't break the library grid because she had a headache. The Mirell line does not provide empathic assets to the state so they can turn into public liabilities. If she cannot clean the static from her signature by Friday, the family will withdraw her allocation."
Drake stood up, his arm brace giving a loud, metallic clink as he forced his shoulder back against the wall. "She isn't a liability. She came down here to check on us. She was freezing, and she still came."
Mirell turned his head by an inch. He didn't look angry; he looked bored.
"The unweighted one is still here," he told Aris. "Why hasn't he been cleared to the lower barracks? His metrics are completely dead. He's holding a spot on the roster that belongs to a functional line."
"His recovery log isn't finished," Aris muttered, his face turning a dark, mottled red under the white lights. "The Board hasn't signed the variance."
"Then sign it yourself, Doctor," Mirell said, turning his back on them. He slipped the silver box back into his silk pocket, and the greasy feeling in James's stomach faded slightly, leaving only a dull, throbbing ache behind his eyes. "The family is not paying the secondary tax for a team that doesn't exist anymore. If the boy cannot carry his weight, he goes to the timber yards with the rest of the contract failures. And the girl... if she cannot clear her head, we will have her core extracted before the tribunal opens."
"Extracted?" Drake's voice cracked. He took a step toward the silk coat, his good hand reaching out like he wanted to rip the fabric off the man's shoulders. "You're going to take her core? She won't even be able to walk up the stairs without help if you do that."
Mirell stopped at the door. He didn't look back at Drake. He looked at the guard with the pike.
"Tell the proctors to double the dampener load for this ward," Mirell said plainly. "The noise in here is unacceptable. They're still talking like they're part of the school."
The door closed.
The lock didn't click; it bit into the frame with that heavy, final thud that meant the world outside was shrinking again.
Drake didn't shout this time. He just dropped back onto his cot, his head between his knees, his shoulders shaking so hard that the metal pins in his brace gave off a tiny, continuous rattle against the wood.
James looked at his own boots. The jute twine had come undone again, the frayed ends laying in the dust near his heel. His grey eye didn't see the math in the stone. It just saw the dirt—the grey, everyday dirt that came off their boots when they were still allowed to walk outside in the sun.
"James," Drake whispered into his lap. "What do we do if they take her?"
James reached down, his discolored knuckles stiff and cold as he pulled the cheap twine tight and tied a clumsy, double knot that wouldn't hold until morning.
"They won't," James said.
His voice didn't sound like a machine. It just sounded tired. Like a boy who had run out of things to say but still had to stay awake.