Chapter 87: Anika Knew Where the Door Was

Anika chose the covered walk outside the student union because both ends stayed open and neither person could pretend the other had needed permission to leave. She arrived early enough to watch a maintenance cloud drip into a bucket that kept edging away. The worker guiding it had apparently offended the cloud before breakfast. Every time he moved the bucket back, the rain found the floor beside it.

Anika redirected one small draft beneath the nearest spill. The drops shifted into the bucket, the worker thanked her, and she ended the spell before he could ask her to take responsibility for the weather as a whole. She had enough people doing that already. The chairwoman came down the steps carrying a folder and two cups. She offered one to Anika, who checked what it was before accepting.

"Still discussing terms?" the woman asked, offering the cup across the bench.

"Still waiting for some of the copies you requested."

"They’ll be sent. You know that contacting the students takes time." Anika knew it could. She also knew how useful an ordinary delay became when the person waiting had other problems and less money.

They sat on the public bench beneath the covered edge. Students passed between lectures, carrying bags and half-finished breakfast. Across the lawn, a small flock of sky pixies hauled a torn banner toward the building where the event supplies were stored. The chairwoman placed the work program’s public page on top of her folder.

"You’ve been treating every advance as pressure," she said. "Some students prefer being paid before a shift. Their expenses don’t wait for our accounting."

Her phone lit with a message from Dante asking whether the event stall had paid her for the weather cover. She had mentioned chasing that payment in front of the group, and he had apparently remembered between planning his victory and ruining part of it. She told him it had arrived. His reply suggested charging extra if they wanted her to take responsibility for the season, repeating their joke from the game. She smiled before putting the phone facedown.

The chairwoman noticed the smile before Anika put the phone down. "He inspires considerable loyalty."

"He remembers what people tell him," Anika answered. It was true, even when he later chose the thing that made her angry. He could notice her work without treating it as a useful background for his own, and then spend several seconds acting as though only his view of the room mattered.

She wanted a way to keep the first part without waiting for the second to make somebody weaker. The wish explained why she had come. It would not explain away what she did next. Anika read the amounts. They were ordinary jobs with ordinary pay, and some of the terms looked better than the short shifts her friends found elsewhere. She disliked how much easier the conversation would have been if every line were awful.

"What happens when a student can’t take the next job?" she asked.

"They receive no pay for work they don’t do."

"And what happened to the advance in that situation?" Anika asked.

"The unearned balance remains repayable. We can arrange time."

"Who decides how much time they get?" Anika asked.

"The people responsible for the account." The answer sounded tidy because nobody in it had a face.

Anika asked for the terms to go directly to each student, along with the contact for discussing a missed shift. The chairwoman agreed, then turned to another page while explaining the difference between routine work and jobs needing extra equipment training.

"There are students who want more responsibility," she said. "We keep a separate list so we don’t offer a difficult shift to someone who only wanted to scan tickets."

Anika saw columns for names, skills, accepted advances, and remaining work. The page held no promise to provide magic to another person. Her mind supplied the possibility before she asked it to stop. The chairwoman’s phone rang. She checked the caller and stood, leaving the folder closed beneath her cup while she moved a few steps away from the traffic. Anika looked at the folder, then at the woman speaking into her phone. It would take almost no effort to lift the loose corner. She knew exactly how to move that much air without disturbing the cup.

The thought was familiar enough to make her hesitate. Holding a door had also looked like a small use of a skill she already possessed. She told herself this was information. Nobody was connected to anything. Nobody had asked to be released. A narrow draft slipped beneath the cover. It lifted only the free edge, exposing the page the chairwoman had just shown her. Anika held her phone low and took a photograph, then let the cover settle before the call ended. The cup never moved.

When the chairwoman returned, Anika asked one more ordinary question, finished her drink, and left through the open end of the walk. She had selected the location so nobody could be trapped there. That did not make everything else she had done honest. At the library later, Honey studied the photograph without touching Anika’s phone. Rhae stood near the table while Posey moved a stack of ordinary notes aside. Mira joined on the laptop after finishing something at Lakehaven.

"You copied their names?" Honey asked, leaving the phone where Anika had placed it.

"Names and work qualifications. We need to know what choices exist."

"Those students agreed to jobs," Honey said, indicating the actual work columns.

"I know what the page said," Anika answered, keeping her voice level.

"Then don’t make it say something else." Anika felt the old impatience rise. Honey could name every limit correctly and still have no answer when the cost reached her own hands.

Rhae pulled the public work terms beside the phone. "A person needing money isn’t the same thing as a person choosing freely. Paying someone doesn’t answer every question about what you’re asking them to survive."

"We aren’t asking anyone yet," Anika said, avoiding the word that would make it sound final.

Mira’s expression hardened on the screen. "That’s the word you keep using to make this sound unfinished enough to be harmless."

Posey had been reading the lower rows. Her hand stopped beside a name, and the silence changed before she spoke. "Nell was on this."

Anika enlarged the photograph. The same name appeared beside an advance and several equipment-reset shifts, including work after the relay. A note identified the training access required for those duties. Nell no longer had that access. Honey looked toward the public study area, where the woman had spent an afternoon correcting Dante’s notes and watching his face for approval. She had offered herself after his test. Honey had refused. Now a different record showed money paid for work she could not finish.

Anika had gone looking for options outside their small circle, and the first face on the page belonged to someone already trying too hard to stay inside it.