Chapter 38: She Believed Him

Chapter 38: Chapter 38: She Believed Him

Dante braced his heels while Professor Bell’s barrier held his legs away from the stand. He had imagined remaining calm inside enemy restraints, letting everyone wonder why he smiled. The belt squeezed his ribs again, and all he wanted was enough breath to ask them to stop.

"Look at me and keep your feet where they are," Professor Bell told him, drawing a second line across the floor. "Martin, disconnect the tether, and everyone else move behind the seats."

Martin called equipment support on speaker and left his phone on the cart before lifting the yellow fork. He repeated Professor Bell’s instruction, asking the person on the call to stay while he worked.

Rhea guided Jett away from the demonstration area and asked a student to fetch the medical staff at reception. Posey went with them, but Anika stayed beside the end seat, watching Dante struggle to stop the belt turning him sideways.

Dante told Anika to stay back and answered twice when she asked if he could breathe. His practiced voice almost sounded certain. She believed it, which should have reassured him, but he wished she could supply the certainty he was borrowing from her face.

Martin came around the barrier carrying yesterday’s yellow fork. Dante recognized it. He had asked questions, understood the answer, even imagined using that knowledge impressively. Remembering any of it became harder when the line tightened around his own waist.

"It’s the same line we tested," Martin said, lowering himself carefully. "I’m putting the fork around it, and then you need to give me three beeps."

Dante repeated three beeps. Yesterday he had watched the dummy drop safely onto a mat; now the same line was tightening around his ribs.

He watched Martin’s hand, trying to hold the explanation in his head. Three beeps meant release. Another tug hurt, and his mind supplied a different order: get the man away. He counted breaths until the first beep gave him something better to count.

Martin fitted the prongs around the blue line beside Dante’s hip. The first beep sounded, and the line jerked hard enough to fold Dante forward before Professor Bell raised the barrier beneath him.

Pain spread across his ribs as he grabbed the strap. He asked Martin to stop the pull, but it sounded like he wanted him to stop working, and all Dante could see was the moving yellow handle.

"Don’t pull the fork out," the voice on Martin’s phone said. "Keep the handle pressed until it finishes."

Anika stepped past the end seat with her hand raised. A bright spiral followed her finger, gathering loose air around the corners while she began the Korean words Dante had heard before the theater scenery stopped falling.

Professor Bell saw the shape and ordered her to hold. He was keeping Dante’s lower body from reaching the stand, and releasing that support to stop her would leave the line free to pull him the remaining distance.

The calm instructions sounded like the assessment room, where Professor Vale had bled while someone told him to cooperate. Dante’s thoughts rearranged the scene around a familiar enemy. He knew how this went, surely. A confident voice always claimed the pain was necessary.

"Anika, don’t let him," Dante said, looking straight at her. "He’s hurting me, get him away."

He wanted the pain stopped, and he’d named the man instead of the belt. Anika was finishing her shape. Someone had finally accepted his judgment without asking for proof, and his first feeling was relief.

Her eyes stayed on him as she finished, and he realized she had stopped checking what Martin was doing. That should have frightened him more than the yellow handle. Instead he reached toward her with his good hand, accepting her certainty because it promised the relief he wanted. He reached again instead of telling her to wait, and the wind crossed the mat.

Professor Bell shouted her name over the closing words. The wind hit Martin across the chest, driving him backward toward a concrete support beside the practice area.

His hand stayed clamped around the isolator. The third beep sounded before the tool pulled free, and the blue line vanished between Dante’s belt and the stand.

Dante dropped onto Professor Bell’s barrier, then the professor lowered him onto the mat. He could breathe properly again, which felt wonderful for the second before Martin struck the support and fell beside his cart.

Anika caught Dante’s shoulder as he sat up and called Martin’s name, expecting a complaint about the landing. Rhea was already checking his breathing when another medical team arrived, and a medic kept Dante on the mat to give them room.

The yellow fork lay beside Martin’s hand. Dante tried fitting the scene into the version he needed: a threat, his order, Anika’s rescue. The third beep kept interrupting it. He looked at her hand on his shoulder instead, because that part still felt safe.

Professor Bell knelt beside Dante and checked whether he could remove the slack belt. Dante nodded, letting him open the catch before a medic examined his ribs and asked exactly where it hurt.

While the medic examined him, Dante noticed Martin’s folded pool towel on the cart. Yesterday they’d been choosing game seats, and he’d promised snacks without asking what Martin liked. He still had the plan saved on his phone. Nothing had told the little calendar reminder that the man beside the cart might never need a seat, and Dante couldn’t make himself reach for it.

Security moved students back. Someone called Anika his rescuer, offering Dante the ending he’d been searching for. He nearly thanked them. Then he saw Posey holding Jett’s hand beyond the seats and couldn’t make himself say anything.

He tried to rise and order people back. The medic kept him seated; they had already made room. There was no command he could give that would improve this. He covered Anika’s shaking hand, unable to tell whether he wanted to comfort her or keep her close enough to defend him.

The medical team’s instructions continued until they didn’t. Rhea stepped back with her hands held away from her shirt, and Professor Bell rose when the senior medic spoke quietly to him.

Dante could no longer pretend the pause meant they were waiting for Martin to apologize about the cart. A blanket covered the man who had been beside his knee less than half an hour earlier.

Martin’s phone was still connected to equipment support, and its speaker crackled as somebody tried again to reach him.

"Martin, did you get Dante clear?" the voice asked, while Dante sat alive on the mat and Anika’s hand tightened around his sleeve.