Chapter 30: The Ground Was Optional

Dante took the map to Professor Vale’s Thursday check-in and asked why his phone thought he had slept in a field. Anika came with him and pointed out that she had seen his room, so livestock remained a possibility even if the field was wrong.

Dante showed Professor Vale Senn’s message and explained the failed search. She told him ordinary maps hid Tenswa, the university’s service town, then offered to finish the tour before Rhea’s planned pub outing.

He checked whether the theater threat changed their trip. Professor Vale confirmed security had approved the shuttle route and told him to stay with the group. Dante agreed. He wanted to explore his new world without making every outing a rescue operation.

The professor took Dante and Anika through the visitors’ gallery, where a wall map showed Blackwell, Tenswa and the marked road between them. Separate lines linked the campus to gateways on the surface, including the dry cleaner’s doorway he recognized from his arrival.

Dante found the shuttle stop himself, then followed Professor Vale onto a service balcony behind the gallery. A high rail stood between them and a bank of cloud, and he was still checking the return route when the cloud broke apart beneath his shoes.

Cars moved across fields far beneath the balcony. Dante gripped the rail. Blackwell and Tenswa floated above America on hidden land. Of course his university belonged in the sky, though he would have appreciated learning that before considering a bicycle.

A lower platform came into view through the next break in the clouds, holding an enormous glass stadium. Blue water moved behind its walls while lights followed players along the bottom, and Dante asked whether someone had flooded the football field. Anika explained that it was meant to look like that. He stared until a helmeted player shot upward through the water and another hit him hard enough to make the watching students cheer. Apparently drowning had needed a competitive version.

Professor Vale explained the marked routes, gateways, and screens hiding the landmass. Dante asked whether Anika’s weather research helped. It didn’t control concealment, she said, though the mast involved her subject. He kept looking, delighted that her ordinary coursework belonged to this.

An alarm stopped three students on hovering boards beside the next platform. Dante photographed the marked flight lane for Jett, then pocketed his phone when Anika reminded him that neither injured man had permission to try it.

"I’m learning what counts as normal here before he starts teaching me shortcuts," Dante told her. Anika said that sentence deserved recording for use when both men inevitably denied it. He photographed the return gate beside the lane as well, because getting lost above a continent seemed like a mistake that would make the group chat even if he survived.

He stepped away from the rail, imagining flight. The wind would do excellent things to a long coat. It would also drop him onto America if he failed, so perhaps the permission process had some merit.

Professor Vale walked them to the shuttle stop and showed Dante the return timetable before leaving. She and Professor Bell were heading to Rhea’s family pub for a microphone check before the weekend karaoke, so they would see the group there. She reminded him that knowing where Tenswa was didn’t make the broker’s address an invitation.

By lunch, rain had canceled tennis, and the court’s painted cloud dripped onto the apology written beneath it. Posey messaged that the bakery had reserved Lucan’s replacement pudding, then went to fetch her coat while Dante waited under the shuttle shelter with Anika.

At the stop, Anika opened Dante’s umbrella over them and told him to stand closer because she wasn’t covering two separate counties. He asked to put his good arm around her coat, and she moved against him, leaving him desperately interested in the timetable while he remembered how to breathe.

His phone buzzed in his pocket, forcing him to remove that hand to check it. An old school contact, Mitch, had sent a message asking whether somebody was finally paying attention to the Dark Lord, with Dante’s teenage drama recording underneath.

He tapped the attachment before thinking, and the laughter started while his younger self announced that everyone would remember his name. Dante stopped the clip with his thumb, but Anika had already heard enough to stop smiling.

He was fifteen again, hearing boys bow whenever he entered class. He tried joking about his loyal audience. Anika asked whether he wanted her to watch the clip, giving him a choice none of his supposed subjects had ever offered.

He said no. Someone had shared the performance without asking. He still liked the speech, or parts of it, and admitting that felt more dangerous than showing her a spell. Laughter hadn’t made him stop wanting to be impressive.

"That was cruel, Dante, and you don’t have to play it again for me to believe you," Anika said. She asked what he wanted to do about the message, and he blocked the number while she watched the rain instead of reaching for his phone.

"I still like doing it. I just want to know when people are laughing with me." He hadn’t meant to defend his imaginary life so seriously, but she was listening, and he wanted that part of him welcome too.

Anika asked whether he doubted her too. He looked at the blocked number, then put his phone away so he could answer her without watching for another message.

"I wanted you to like me when I ran out of things to say," he told her, and her smile returned without making him feel laughed at. She invited him to ask her back to town another day, preferably without an evidence bag, then nudged his good arm until he put it around her again.

She chose to stay under his arm. He considered a line about sheltering her from the world, then kept the umbrella steady. "Warm enough?" he asked. "Getting there," she said. Perhaps he could save the world-sized promise until he owned a larger umbrella.

Posey arrived with her coat, followed by Rhea and Jett arguing about whether pub lunch counted as rehabilitation. Dante put his phone away and joined them on the shuttle, deciding he could tell his friends about the clip when he didn’t have to compete with the sound of rain.

The road into Tenswa passed apartment balconies, a repair shop and groceries delivered in floating baskets. Rhea pointed out the copper turtle above her family’s pub, and Dante followed her inside expecting food, warmth and a break from being watched.

Professor Vale spotted him from the little stage and raised the spare microphone while Professor Bell covered one ear. Her cheerful invitation carried through the speakers, and the room turned toward Dante before he had worked out how to say no.