Chapter 126: The Cooperative Guest

Astrid Vale

I decided, walking back from my conversation with Liora, that fighting openly wasn’t going to get me anywhere near Ivy. Every question I’d asked so far had come wrapped in suspicion, and suspicion only made people careful. If I wanted access, real access, I needed Maximus to stop watching me like a problem waiting to happen.

So when he came for me that evening, I met him with something closer to ease than I’d shown since arriving.

"You look rested," he said, studying me as we walked toward the dining hall.

"I am," I said, and let myself smile, small and genuine-looking, the way I used to smile at difficult customers back at the boarding house when my mother needed the money too badly to let me show my temper.

He seemed pleased by it. "You’re finally beginning to understand that you’re safe here."

I didn’t argue. I simply nodded, and let the conversation drift toward easier things, the food, the settlement, small talk that cost me nothing and revealed nothing either. Underneath it, I stayed alert to every detail he let slip, every small piece of the puzzle he didn’t realize he was handing me.

"How does the medical system actually work?" I asked, keeping my tone light, curious rather than probing. "It seems so organized, for something built underground."

"We’ve had generations to refine it," he said, clearly enjoying the question. "Ordinary care happens in the public wards, staffed by doctors like the one who’s been checking on you. But certain patients require more specialized attention."

"The restricted areas," I said, careful to make it sound like idle observation rather than something I’d been circling for days.

"Yes," he said. "Those require my direct authorization. Not every doctor has unrestricted access, even senior ones. It’s a matter of protecting both the patients and the wider community."

"You personally authorize it?" I asked.

"For certain cases," he said. "I keep an office near the medical sector for exactly that reason. It allows me to remain close to decisions that matter."

I filed that away carefully, letting the conversation move on to something else before the question could sit too long in the air between us.

I found an excuse to speak with Liora the next day, catching her near the edge of the market where fewer people lingered to overhear.

"He has an office near the medical sector," I told her. "He said certain patients are under his direct authority. Access to the deepest areas requires his authorization specifically."

Liora’s expression tightened. "That’s not something people talk about openly."

"You said you know the layout of parts of his section," I said. "How much, exactly?"

She hesitated, glancing around before answering. "I’ve delivered reports to his private office before, as part of my training. I know the general layout. I know where he keeps certain documents." She paused. "I don’t know if there’s anything there that would help you get into the restricted ward. I’ve never had reason to look."

It wasn’t a solution yet. But it was a thread, and I intended to pull on it.

Over the following days, I paid close attention to everything I could observe without appearing to observe it at all. Maximus left his office most mornings to check on the medical wards personally, a routine that took him at least an hour, sometimes longer if there’d been an incident overnight. He traveled with two guards most of the time, though occasionally only one, depending on where he was headed. Documents were brought to him by a small handful of attendants who moved freely enough through the corridors that nobody questioned their presence.

I noticed, too, that he carried something small and metallic clipped to his belt whenever he moved toward the medical sector, something he didn’t wear the rest of the time. I couldn’t get close enough to see it clearly, not yet, but I marked its existence carefully in my mind alongside everything else.

He tested me eventually, the way I’d expected he might. "There’s a section of the eastern district I think you’d enjoy seeing," he said one afternoon. "Gardens, of a sort. Artificial light cultivated to mimic sunlight as closely as we can manage. You may walk through it, provided you stay with an escort."

I accepted immediately, grateful and a little too eager, exactly the reaction he seemed to be looking for. As I walked through the gardens under careful watch, I understood the freedom was deliberately limited, a leash disguised as a courtesy. But I also understood something more valuable underneath it.

He didn’t suspect me. Not yet. Whatever careful performance I’d been putting on was working exactly as intended.

I found Liora again that evening, my mind already circling the next question I needed answered. "Is there any way into the restricted ward directly?" I asked. "Any door, any entrance, that isn’t guarded?"

"No," she said immediately, firmly enough that I believed her.

I considered the problem from another angle. "What about Maximus’s office itself?"

Liora went quiet, and that silence told me more than any answer could have. Something existed there, some connection between his office and the access I needed, that she understood even if she wasn’t ready to say it outright.

"What would I need?" I asked. "If I wanted to get past that ward’s security, what would actually be required?"

She was quiet for a long moment, clearly wrestling with something internally, before she finally spoke. "There’s a device," she said. "Small, metal, carried by very few people. It grants passage through the ward’s outer seal. I’ve seen doctors use something similar, but only under Maximus’s direct authorization. Without it, or without him physically present, the door simply won’t open."

The metal object clipped to his belt. I’d already noticed it, without knowing exactly what it did.

"Where does he keep it," I asked, "when he isn’t carrying it?"

"I don’t know for certain," Liora admitted. "I’ve seen him with it in the medical sector, always. I’ve never seen him without it there. But in his office, I couldn’t say."

That was the gap I needed to close. I thanked her, and she left looking more unsettled than reassured, clearly understanding that whatever she was helping me build toward had stopped being hypothetical.

That night, lying in the dark of my room, I turned everything over in my mind one final time. Maximus’s schedule. The device he carried only near the medical sector. His office, sitting quiet and mostly unwatched during the hour each morning he spent walking through the wards himself.

I didn’t have a plan yet, not a complete one. But I finally understood the shape of what I needed to do, and more importantly, I understood that the pieces required to do it actually existed, close enough to reach if I was patient and careful enough to take them.

Somewhere behind a locked door in that medical sector, Ivy was waiting, and I had just found the first real thread leading toward her.