Chapter 170| Admin Block

Chapter 170: Chapter 170| Admin Block

The third message arrived at 6:40 AM on Tuesday, while Zane was still brushing his teeth.

Thursday. 9:00 PM. The old greenhouse behind the practical complex. Come alone.

He read it with the toothbrush hanging out of his mouth. Same unknown number, same cold tone, no signature. He spat in the sink and read it again.

『 System Note: The sender has chosen a location inside campus grounds. This is either courtesy or a trap. 』

’Which one?’

『 The system cannot tell. 』

He thought about Vael in the corridor yesterday, her voice low and flat. If they want you, they’ll come to you. Better that happens here, where I’m in the room. The greenhouse was on campus, technically. It was also the one place nobody went, a glass shell with half its panes cracked and a padlocked door.

He pocketed the phone. He didn’t answer, and he didn’t tell Dex, who was snoring through his second alarm with one foot hanging off the bed.

_ _

He told Sera at lunch.

It wasn’t a decision, exactly. He sat down across from her at the corner table, she raised an eyebrow at his face, and the words came out before he could stop them.

"He texted me," Zane said, sliding the phone across the table.

Sera read the three messages in silence. She turned the phone over, turned it back, and set it down very carefully, like it might be warm.

"The grey jacket," Sera said.

"Probably."

"And you’re going."

"I haven’t decided."

"You’ve decided." She picked a fry off his plate and pointed it at him. "You’ve got the face. The one where you’ve made up your mind and you’re waiting for someone to talk you out of it."

"Is that a bad face?"

"It’s a stubborn face." She chewed. "Have you told Vael?"

"Not yet."

"You told me She told you to."

"I know what she said," Zane replied, stabbing at his rice. "I’d like to know what this is before I hand it to her. If it’s nothing, I’ve worried her for no reason. If it’s something..."

"If it’s something, she’ll want to be there."

"Exactly."

"And you’d rather she wasn’t."

Zane didn’t answer. Sera studied him over the rim of her coffee cup, her olive eyes steady and unhurried.

"Okay," she said at last. "Then we find out what it is first."

"We?"

"I can read heat from a distance. You can’t." She shrugged one shoulder. "I’m not letting you walk into a glass box alone."

He opened his mouth to argue. She raised the fry, and he shut it again.

"Admin block," Sera said. "Tonight. Five o’clock. Bring a jacket."

_ _

The records annex stood across the lane from the admin block’s east entrance, two storeys of brown brick with a flat roof and a rusted access ladder bolted to the back wall. Nobody used it after four. Sera went up first, light as a cat, and Zane followed with a lot less grace and a scraped palm.

They lay flat behind the low parapet and looked across the lane.

It was almost dusk, around 5:15 PM. The lamps were coming on one by one, and the glass doors of the admin block glowed amber. A janitor wheeled a bucket past the entrance. Two instructors walked out together, laughing. A girl with a stack of folders ducked in and out.

"Nothing," Zane murmured.

"Give it time." Sera had her chin on her folded arms and her eyes half closed, scanning with the faint, unfocused look he’d seen on her in the gallery. "People have heat. It sticks to the air. Most of it fades in a minute or two, but if somebody stands in the same place for a while, it stays."

"And?"

"And the doorway’s warm." She paused. "Not warm like people. Warm like somebody waited there, last Friday, for twenty minutes."

"Still?"

"A smear of it." She pointed with her chin at the pavement across from the entrance. "He stood right there. I’d bet on it."

Zane looked. A bare patch of paving. A lamp. A trash can.

’She can see where he stood,’ he thought. ’A week later.’

『 System Note: Sera Dunne’s Heat Sense output is significantly above her listed rank. The system finds this interesting. 』

’Don’t start.’

『 The system is merely noting. 』

They waited another half hour. The cold crept through his jacket and into his ribs. At one point Sera shifted closer, ostensibly to keep her view, and her shoulder pressed against his. Neither of them said anything about it.

At 5:42 PM, Sera stiffened beside him, her eyes snapping wide.

"There," Sera whispered, nodding toward the east door without moving her head.

Zane followed her gaze to the east door. A man in a charcoal suit had come out, mid-forties, hands in his pockets, walking at an even pace along the pavement with no hurry at all. He stopped directly beneath the lamp and looked at nothing in particular.

"That’s not him," Zane whispered. "That jacket’s black."

"It isn’t him." Sera’s voice was very low. "But look at his chest. Look at how still it is."

Zane looked. The man breathed so evenly that his coat barely moved. He wasn’t tense. He wasn’t bored. He was simply there, perfectly steady, the way a post is steady.

"Same signature," Sera said, keeping her voice low. "Same flat, unbothered heat as the man in the gallery."

"So there’s two of them," Zane said, narrowing his eyes. "The jacket man from the duel, and now him."

"At least." She exhaled slowly. "Maybe more. They don’t flinch, Zane. Everyone flinches, and they don’t."

The man turned his head. Not toward the annex. Toward the practical complex across the field, where the glass roof of an old greenhouse caught the last of the light.

He stood there for a full ten seconds. Then he walked back inside.

Zane’s mouth had gone dry.

"That’s where they want to meet me," he said.

"I know." Sera’s hand found his sleeve and gripped it, hard. "That’s why I wanted to see it first."

_ _

Zane climbed down at 6:20PM and walked her to the girls’ dorm gate.

"I’ll be there Thursday," Sera said, hands in her hoodie pocket. "Not inside. Somewhere I can see the door."

"You don’t have to."

"I know I don’t." Her mouth quirked. "I want to."

"Thanks."

"Stop saying thanks." She looked at him a moment longer than she should have, then turned and went through the gate without another word.

Zane stood in the cold for a bit.

Then he started back toward his dorm, taking the long way along the east wall, hands in his pockets, thinking. Two men, same heat. A message telling him to come alone. Vael’s voice in his head, patient and firm.

_ _

Dex was waiting at the corner of the boys’ dorm with a bag of chips and no headband.

"You’re out late," Dex said.

"Just seen for a short Walk."

"On the east wall? In the dark? With your hands in your pockets like a man who’s carrying a secret?" Dex tilted his head, and the easy grin slid off his face. "You’ve been strange all week."

"I know. Everybody keeps telling me."

"Maybe because it’s true." Dex crunched a chip, watching him. "You’d tell me if you were in trouble."

"I’m not in trouble."

"That’s not what I asked."

Zane looked at him. At the crooked collar, the half-eaten chips, the blunt, steady attention that Dex only ever aimed at him when it mattered.

"I’m figuring something out," Zane said. "It’s not dangerous yet."

"Yet," Dex said, his eyes narrowing.

"Yet," Zane agreed, meeting his gaze.

Dex held his eyes a second longer. Then he sighed, tossed him the bag, and turned toward the stairs.

"Tell me before it gets dangerous," Dex said over his shoulder. "I’ll bring the headband."

Zane stood alone on the path with the bag of chips in one hand and his phone in the other. Thursday, 9:00 PM. The old greenhouse.

He thought about Vael. About a promise he’d made twice in two days.

’Thursday,’ he thought. ’I’ll tell her Friday morning, once I know what they want.’

It sounded reasonable. He wasn’t entirely sure he believed it.

He went inside.