Chapter 31: Five Days

Chapter 31: Chapter 31: Five Days

The walk to the command wing felt considerably longer than the actual distance warranted, Alouis’s warning still ringing in his ears, and by the time Ren reached the doors, he’d already resolved himself into something steadier than the panic that had first gripped him. He wasn’t going to walk into that room and simply accept whatever his father decided. He’d fought back once already, in this exact wing, in front of witnesses who’d clearly expected him to crumble. He could do it again.

The confrontation itself, when it came, proved shorter and considerably less dramatic than Ren had braced for, his father delivering his ultimatum with the same cold, clinical precision as everything else he said, and Ren countering with a firm, immovable refusal that eventually, grudgingly, bought him a temporary reprieve rather than an outright victory. His father would return to the Capital as scheduled, but the matter, he made clear, was far from settled, merely postponed until circumstances shifted more favorably in his direction. Ren left the confrontation exhausted, but intact, and more determined than ever that he needed an actual plan of his own, not simply a series of increasingly precarious refusals strung together and hoping they’d hold.

The plan crystallized fully on his walk back from the command wing, simple and clean in its logic even if the execution would require considerably more care. He needed to leave. Not eventually, not once some vague, undefined future crisis resolved itself, but soon, deliberately, on his own terms before Imperial Command arrived to claim him as a strategic asset or his father found some new leverage to drag him back to the Capital against his will. The training with Reven had given him control he genuinely needed, control that had already saved him once during the berserk episode, but staying indefinitely, waiting for some perfect, fully-stabilized moment that might never actually arrive, was no longer a luxury he could afford.

He found Reven in the training chamber later that afternoon, and approached the question with careful, deliberate casualness, doing his best to keep any trace of his actual intentions from showing on his face. "I’ve been thinking," Ren said, settling onto the padded floor across from him, "about the training program overall. How much longer is this supposed to take? Realistically, I mean. Not the vague, open-ended timeline nobody’s actually bothered giving me yet."

Reven glanced up from the diagnostic panel he’d been adjusting, something faintly amused flickering across his expression at the question. "Ten years," he said, deadpan, and Ren’s stomach dropped straight through the floor before Reven’s mouth curved into an obvious, teasing smirk. "I’m joking. Five days, give or take, depending on how consistently you continue progressing. Your control has stabilized considerably faster than I initially anticipated, given the rank you’re working with."

"Five days," Ren repeated, careful to keep his voice level despite the sudden, sharp spike of relief and calculation now running through him in equal measure. ’Five days,’ he thought, filing the number away immediately, already reworking the entire shape of his plan around it. ’That’s it. That’s my window. Five days to finish learning whatever I actually need to survive on my own, and then I disappear, quietly, before Imperial Command arrives, before my father finds a new angle to drag me back, before either of these two men manage to talk me into staying somewhere I never actually intended to remain permanently in the first place.’

"That’s sooner than I expected," Ren said out loud, keeping his tone carefully neutral, curious rather than urgent.

"You’ve been an unusually fast study," Reven said, setting the diagnostic panel aside and studying him with a considering look that made Ren’s carefully maintained composure waver slightly under the scrutiny. "Most Sentinels at your rank require months, sometimes longer, to achieve the level of containment stability you’ve already reached in under two weeks. I’ll admit, part of me suspects you’re motivated by something beyond simple diligence."

’He’s not wrong,’ Ren thought, keeping his expression as neutral as he could manage despite the uncomfortable accuracy of the observation. "I just don’t like feeling out of control," Ren said instead, which wasn’t technically a lie, even if it wasn’t the whole truth either. "After the berserk episode, I’d rather get this handled as quickly and thoroughly as possible."

Reven studied him a moment longer, something searching in his expression that made Ren distinctly uncomfortable, like he suspected there was more to the answer than Ren was offering but hadn’t quite decided whether to press for it. "A reasonable motivation," he said finally, apparently deciding to let it go, at least for now. "In that case, we should use the remaining five days efficiently. I want to push your containment thresholds further than we have been, given everything currently converging on you. If Imperial Command does arrive sooner than expected, I’d rather you walk into that confrontation with as much control as possible already secured."

"Agreed," Ren said, and meant it, even as a fresh wave of guilt settled uncomfortably in his chest at the deliberate omission sitting underneath the conversation. ’I’m going to disappear the second this training ends,’ he thought, watching Reven cross the chamber to retrieve additional equipment, apparently already planning out the next several sessions in his head. ’And I’m not telling him. I’m not telling either of them. Because if I do, they’ll try to stop me, or insist on coming with me, or use whatever authority they’ve each got to keep me tethered here in ways I won’t be able to argue against, and I cannot afford that right now. I need to disappear cleanly, on my own terms, before anyone decides my fate for me again.’

The guilt sat heavier than he wanted it to, especially given everything Reven had already offered him, protection, patience, the promise of eventual honesty about his own classified identity, all of it apparently building toward some future Ren was now quietly planning to walk away from without a word of warning. ’This isn’t personal,’ he told himself, watching Reven return with a new set of diagnostic tools, expression focused and entirely unaware of the deception currently unfolding right in front of him. ’This is survival. I can’t let myself get tangled up in feelings for either of them if it means becoming exactly the kind of asset the Empire wants to claim and study and use however it decides is most strategically convenient. I have to protect myself first. Everything else, whatever this is turning into with Reven, with Yegard, has to come second to that.’

The training session that followed pushed him harder than any before it, Reven’s usual careful patience replaced by something more demanding, more urgent, clearly determined to extract as much progress as possible from their remaining time together. Ren found himself summoning containment thresholds he hadn’t attempted before, holding the blade steady through increasingly difficult conditions, distractions deliberately introduced, sudden shifts in focus demanded without warning, and by the end of the session, exhausted in a way that felt genuinely productive rather than simply draining, he had to admit, privately, that Reven’s instruction had made a real, measurable difference in his capability.

"Better," Reven said, watching the final containment fade clean, none of the earlier instability lingering at all. "Considerably better. At this rate, five days should be more than sufficient to get you fully stabilized."

"Good," Ren said, and the word carried a weight Reven couldn’t fully understand, a private, quiet countdown now ticking steadily toward an exit Reven had no idea was coming.

Reven studied him for a moment longer, something in his expression softening slightly despite the earlier intensity of the session. "You’ve been different today," he said. "Focused. More determined than usual, even for you." He paused, something searching in the observation. "Is everything alright? Beyond the obvious, I mean, given everything currently converging on you."

"I’m fine," Ren said, forcing a small, reassuring smile despite the guilt still sitting heavy in his chest. "Just trying to make the most of the time we’ve got left. Seemed like the practical thing to do, given how much is apparently riding on this."

Reven accepted the explanation with a slow nod, though something in his expression suggested he wasn’t entirely convinced, a faint thread of suspicion lingering just beneath the surface that Ren did his best to ignore for the remainder of their session. He left the training chamber that evening with the number settled firmly in his mind, an actual, concrete deadline finally giving shape to the vague, formless plan he’d been carrying since the moment his father’s ultimatum had first landed.

Five days.

’Five days to finish training,’ Ren thought, walking back toward his quarters through the quiet, evening-lit corridors, already turning over the practical details of an actual escape in his head, resources he’d need to gather, routes off the outpost he’d need to research, ways to disappear cleanly enough that neither his father’s reach nor Imperial Command’s growing interest could easily track him down again. ’Five days to say goodbye to a life I never actually asked to be part of in the first place, without either of them realizing that’s what I’m doing.’ The guilt sat uncomfortably alongside the relief, a complicated tangle he didn’t have the energy to fully untangle tonight, but underneath all of it, something stubborn and resolved held steady, the same core conviction that had carried him this far since the very first night he’d woken up in a stranger’s bed wearing a stranger’s face.

’Stay alive,’ he reminded himself, the old plan resurfacing with fresh, renewed urgency. ’Stay rich. Stay away from both of them, apparently, no matter how complicated that’s become.’ He reached his quarters and let himself inside, the door sealing shut behind him with a soft, final hiss, and sat down on the edge of his bunk with the countdown now ticking steadily forward in his mind, five days standing between him and whatever freedom he still had left to claim before the entire Empire decided his fate without him.