Chapter 204: The Imperial Response [2]

Professor Antoine Chastellain had listened to his daughter’s recording seventeen times.

Ilya knew because the professor had accidentally left the playback counter visible on his desk. The message was barely twenty seconds long, and its contents hadn’t changed since the Imperial authorities delivered it the previous evening.

Lucile identified herself, assured her father that she was safe, and reminded him about the communication device they had promised to build together.

It sounded ordinary enough.

Unfortunately, the circumstances were anything but ordinary.

"Papa, you promised we’d finish it this weekend. You can’t forget again, okay?"

The recording ended.

Antoine had apparently decided that listening to his daughter’s complaints was preferable to spending another morning wondering whether she was still alive.

Ilya couldn’t blame him.

However, there was something he wanted to ask.

"Professor, does Lucile normally call you Papa?"

"Of course. Why?"

"Nothing particularly important. I was wondering whether there’s anything about the recording that strikes you as unusual."

Antoine considered the question seriously. He had already recognized his daughter’s voice, but after listening again, he admitted that she sounded more subdued than usual. Lucile had a habit of becoming increasingly talkative whenever she discussed one of her projects, especially when she believed her father had neglected some important detail.

This time, her message sounded rehearsed.

"She wouldn’t normally end a conversation after reminding me about the device," Antoine explained. "She’d spend another five minutes telling me which components I’d forgotten to purchase."

Ilya could easily imagine that.

He had met Lucile before, and the girl possessed the rather dangerous combination of intelligence, confidence, and an accomplished researcher for a father. Few adults could compete with a child who had access to both technical knowledge and an unlimited supply of questions.

Unfortunately, the recording offered little information about her present circumstances.

The Imperial investigators had already confirmed that it was unlikely to have been artificially fabricated. They couldn’t establish when it had been made, however, and the perpetrators continued refusing requests for an unsupervised conversation.

Antoine had submitted another request that morning.

He wanted to hear Lucile answer a question chosen by him.

The Imperial negotiators supported the proposal and had requested similar arrangements for several other families. The captors hadn’t responded.

While they waited, Ilya accompanied Antoine to a meeting with the officials supervising the investigation.

The Imperial Guard had received twelve recordings altogether. Several parents had confirmed recognizing their children’s voices, although the messages were uniformly brief and contained little information about their surroundings.

One recording was particularly concerning.

A nine-year-old girl had begun crying halfway through her statement before someone instructed her to continue.

The voice belonged to an adult.

The captors had apparently forgotten to remove it.

"Then we know someone was supervising them," Antoine said.

"We assumed as much," the Imperial negotiator answered. "But the recording gives us evidence. We’ve requested that the children be permitted to speak naturally during the next exchange."

"And if they refuse again?"

"Then we’ll have to consider what their refusal tells us."

Antoine wasn’t satisfied, but Ilya found the official’s answer reasonable.

The negotiators couldn’t force the perpetrators to cooperate. What they could do was continue establishing conditions, identify inconsistencies in their statements, and prevent the government from surrendering its bargaining position without receiving anything meaningful.

Unfortunately, that required time.

And time was precisely what the families were struggling to endure.

The meeting continued with a discussion of the six prisoners demanded by the captors. Several had connections to illegal magical research, but the investigators hadn’t yet established whether they belonged to the same organization.

The authorities were examining their former associates and financial records.

Ilya listened until the negotiator mentioned something unexpected.

One of the prisoners had refused to be released.

"Refused?" Antoine repeated.

"He claims he doesn’t know who’s demanding his freedom and believes the arrangement may place him in danger. We’ve offered him an opportunity to cooperate with the investigation."

That was interesting.

Ilya had assumed the prisoners would welcome the possibility of release, even under suspicious circumstances. Apparently, at least one of them considered remaining inside an Imperial prison the safer option.

"Could someone be trying to get him out against his wishes?" Ilya asked.

"That’s among the possibilities we’re investigating."

The negotiator offered no further details.

Nevertheless, the discovery suggested that the prisoners might possess more complicated relationships with the perpetrators than the authorities initially believed.

By the time the meeting concluded, Antoine had received another refusal concerning Lucile.

The captors would permit additional recordings, but they wouldn’t allow the children to answer questions chosen by their families.

The professor read the message before speaking.

"They’re making the rules because they know we can’t refuse."

"Then we need to give them a reason to cooperate," Ilya replied.

"Such as?"

"Something they actually want. The government has their prisoners, and those people haven’t been transferred anywhere. For all their threats, the captors still need the authorities to agree."

Antoine knew that. However, hearing Ilya explain the situation helped him recover some of his composure.

The professor thanked the negotiators and returned to SkyRune.

Unfortunately, another development was waiting for them.

The Imperial Guard had authorized a small experiment near an unoccupied section of the school’s outer boundary. Its purpose was to determine whether the barrier could be opened safely without relying on the captors.

The researchers had already prepared the procedure, and Antoine had reviewed its potential risks.

He approved the experiment, provided that the disturbance remained weak enough to avoid threatening anyone inside.

The test began shortly after two in the afternoon.

For several seconds, everything appeared to proceed as expected.

Then the barrier corrected the disturbance and returned to its original state.

The attempt failed.

Nobody was injured, and the school showed no sign of damage, but the result confirmed that the perpetrators had installed additional safeguards.

One Imperial researcher immediately proposed another experiment.

Antoine refused.

"We’ve learned enough for today. Repeating the same procedure without understanding why it failed would accomplish nothing."

The specialist accepted the decision, and the remaining work was postponed until the researchers could examine the results.

Ilya was relieved.

The laboratory had spent several days investigating the barrier, and he was beginning to suspect that the school possessed enough defensive equipment to occupy an entire generation of doctoral students.

Unfortunately, the children didn’t have that kind of time.

Rather than remain with the researchers, he accompanied Antoine back to the professor’s office.

They had barely arrived when another message came from the Imperial Guard.

The hostage-takers had detected the experiment.

Their representative accused the authorities of attempting to breach the school and threatened to suspend all communication with the families.

Antoine was furious.

"They’re using my daughter to prevent the government from investigating them!"

The Imperial official delivering the message didn’t attempt to argue. He explained that the negotiators were already responding and that the rescue command would reconsider how future investigations were conducted.

Antoine demanded that his request to speak with Lucile remain active.

The official promised it would.

After he departed, the professor returned to his desk.

For several minutes, he concentrated on the drawings Lucile had prepared for their unfinished project.

Ilya recognized several familiar components among the notes. The design itself was relatively simple, although the girl had added enough unnecessary features to make its construction more complicated than required.

Apparently, she wanted the device to play a melody whenever someone sent a message.

"She spent an entire evening arguing that a communication device should announce who was calling," Antoine explained. "I told her that identifying the sender was already possible without making the equipment sing."

"And she disagreed?"

"Naturally. According to Lucile, a device that can do something interesting should be allowed to do it."

Ilya found that reasoning difficult to oppose.

"She might have a future in product development."

"God help the customers."

The professor laughed, and for a few minutes, they discussed the little invention as though the occupation were happening somewhere far away.

Antoine explained that Lucile had been fascinated by his research since she was young. She frequently visited his workshop, asked questions about unfamiliar equipment, and occasionally attempted to improve his designs without understanding why certain components had been included.

Once, she had removed an entire safety mechanism because it made her prototype too heavy.

Antoine had spent the rest of that afternoon explaining why researchers generally preferred their inventions to remain intact.

"She was quite offended," he recalled. "Apparently, I was interfering with her creativity."

"She sounds like she’ll make an excellent researcher."

"Provided she learns to read the safety instructions."

Their conversation ended when the professor received another communication.

This time, the message concerned the children inside Saint Aurelia.

The captors had agreed to provide additional proof of their condition, but only if the Imperial Guard suspended further attempts to interfere with the barrier.

The government was considering the proposal.

Antoine requested that the negotiators continue pressing for live communication rather than another prepared recording.

He had already heard his daughter’s voice.

What he wanted now was to speak with her.

Ilya couldn’t offer a better suggestion, so he returned to the workshop while Antoine remained with the officials.

The day’s failed experiment had produced enough information for the senior researchers to continue investigating, although their progress would probably remain limited until another test was authorized.

Fortunately, there was no need for Ilya to spend another afternoon repeating calculations everyone else had already completed.

He finished organizing his assigned materials and prepared to leave.

Before he could depart, however, Antoine contacted him again.

The Imperial negotiators had obtained a small concession.

Lucile would be permitted to participate in a supervised conversation with her father, provided that the discussion remained limited to personal matters.

The arrangement hadn’t been scheduled yet, but the captors had accepted it in principle.

For Antoine, that was enough to justify another evening of waiting at the communication terminal.

Ilya returned to his office and found the professor reviewing Lucile’s drawing again.

"Well, Professor, it seems you’ll finally have an opportunity to explain why you haven’t purchased those components."

Antoine smiled.

"At this point, Belozersky, I’d gladly let her scold me for an entire afternoon."

The professor placed the drawing beside the communication device and continued preparing the questions he intended to ask.

Outside Saint Aurelia, negotiations continued while the Imperial Guard maintained its positions around the school. The failed experiment had complicated matters, but the authorities were still investigating, and the families remained hopeful that the next exchange would offer something more substantial.

For Antoine, however, the immediate question was much simpler.

He wanted to know whether his daughter had eaten.

And when the negotiators eventually connected their call, he intended to ask her himself.