The committee posted the role grid before the fourth delegate had a face.
Soren read it in the same corridor, under the same notice, the guest-of-honor line still sitting in his notebook two floors up with a name he couldn't place under it.
The grid was worse than the notice, because the notice was a stage and the grid was who stood where on it.
◆◆◆◆
Class Z had been slotted into support.
Every last one of them.
Soren read the column and did the reading he'd learned to do this winter, the one where the paper said one thing and meant a second thing standing behind it.
Setup crew. Service at the reception. A booth demonstration billed as community outreach. The charity class, the notice said, giving back.
The charity class made literal, was what it was.
They'd taken the thing Class Z was mocked for being and turned it into a job description. The job description put every member of the pack in a fixed spot for the length of a public evening.
