The central recreation ground was engineered grass and concrete benches, crammed into the gap between the dormitory wings and the admin block. Someone had planted trees along two edges, but they hadn't grown enough to be called trees. There was a gravel path that crunched under your boots, no matter how carefully you walked, and a drinking fountain near the south end that Caelum had never actually seen work.
Not a park. Barely greenspace. Just the closest the facility had to open air.
Most cadets used it for eating lunch when the cafeteria got too loud. Nobody came out here at night.
Caelum and Kifah got there at nineteen hundred. She'd cleaned up since yesterday — fresh bandages, hair pulled back, a clean uniform that didn't fit right because it wasn't hers. Borrowed, and he didn't ask from who. Her face was still drawn tight but the dust was gone and her hands weren't shaking.
Caelum had gotten the hoodie on over the sling this time, which felt like an achievement he probably shouldn't have been proud of. The shoulder hurt under there and it wasn't going to stop, but he was getting used to working around it.
They hadn't told anyone except Yara. Kifah had tracked her down in the medical wing, sitting next to Malik's bed. Told her in about four sentences. Yara said she'd handle her side.
Caelum had gone back and forth on Éloïse. High-strata wing, different rules up there. What was he supposed to do, walk up to her floor and say come sit on a bench with us? He didn't even know if Blanchard had mattered to her beyond the mission. Left it alone.
Dawson, he didn't bother with.
They set up on one of the benches near the south tree line. Kifah had brought a candle in a glass holder, commissary gift section, two credits maybe. She set it on the bench and lit it with a match from her kit. Flame leaned hard in the breeze, almost went out, then caught and held. That was it. A two-credit candle in a glass jar on a concrete bench. Blanchard's entire memorial service, right there.
Yara arrived first, alone. Malik was still in medical. The boy from the caverns — Designation 701, Caelum had never learned his actual name — was apparently in resonance-stabilisation two floors underground. Yara's two fighters were staying with him.
She sat across from them. Didn't speak for a while. Then she looked at the candle.
"He carried Malik for almost a kilometre on one arm," Yara said. "You know that."
"I know," Caelum said.
"Malik knows too. He wanted to come."
Kifah nodded.
After Yara, two people Caelum didn't recognise walked down the gravel path. Girl with short red hair, hands in her jacket pockets. Tall boy with a shaved head who moved like he'd done time on a drill square. They stopped at the edge of the benches and the girl said, "We heard about Blanchard. From the board."
Caelum looked at them. Never seen either of them.
"How did you know him?"
"Study group," the girl said. "Last semester. He helped me pass resonance theory. Three nights going over the material and wouldn't take anything for it." She shrugged, but the shrug was carrying a lot. "He was just like that."
The boy with the shaved head sat down without a word.
Two more came after. Then another. Then a pair Caelum thought he recognised from the cafeteria but couldn't place. By twenty hundred there were eleven people sitting or standing near the benches, and Caelum knew maybe four of them.
Eleven people. Caelum wouldn't have believed it if he hadn't counted them himself. When he'd agreed to this, he'd doubted even three beyond his own family would show up—maybe Kifah, maybe Yara, and that was it. That's what Caelum kept coming back to.
Blanchard had been in the system as long as he had, same pipeline, same district, same empty file. Caelum had come out of it with maybe two people who'd notice if he vanished. Blanchard had somehow collected eleven, and Caelum hadn't known about a single one of them.
Study groups he'd never been invited to. Cafeteria tables he'd walked past without looking. The kid had just been sitting down next to people, all that time, and Caelum had been too busy watching his own back to see it.
Nobody made speeches. People talked in low voices, and Kifah didn't join in. One of the strangers — older cadet, second-year maybe — left a ration chocolate bar on the bench beside the candle and walked away without a word.
Caelum was about to say something to Kifah when movement caught his eye from the path.
Éloïse.
Alone. Clean uniform, hair down, solemn. She looked different without her rapier too, somehow smaller, which was a stupid thought, but he couldn't shake it. She stopped a few paces from the group and stood there. For a second Caelum thought she'd turn around.
She didn't. Walked to where Yara sat. Yara moved over without being asked. Éloïse sat.
Said nothing to Caelum. Nothing to Kifah. Just sat there with her hands in her lap, looking at the flame.
He didn't know what to make of it. Turned away before she caught him looking.
The candle burned. People talked in low voices around it, and Caelum lost track of time for a while. The girl with the red hair was crying at some point, then she wasn't, then she was wiping her face hard with her sleeve and looking furious about the whole thing. Malik's name came up. Blanchard's laugh came up more than once, and everyone who mentioned it seemed to remember a different version. Nobody talked about the rift. Nobody talked about what happened in the shaft. Caelum was grateful for that.
Kifah sat with the candle holder between her knees the whole time, hands around the glass, staring into it. When the flame finally went out she didn't try to relight it. Just watched the smoke for a bit, thin line of it going crooked in the breeze, and then there was nothing.
"Thank you," she said. Quiet. Not aimed at anyone.
Yara left first. Squeezed Kifah's shoulder on the way past, said something Caelum didn't catch. Éloïse left after that, stood up, fixed her uniform out of habit, walked back toward her wing. The rest thinned out until it was just the two of them on the bench with the dead candle and the compound lights dropping to night cycle.
"He would have hated this," Kifah said.
"Probably."
"He would have made a joke about the candle. Something about it being cheap."
Caelum almost laughed. "Two credits. He would've said he's worth at least five."
Kifah's mouth twitched. Not a smile. Ghost of one. Close enough.
She picked up the candle holder and stood. "I'm going to sleep."
"Good."
"Thank you. For coming with me yesterday. For this."
"Yeah."
She left. Caelum sat there another minute, rubbing his shoulder through the sling, looking at the bench where the chocolate bar still sat next to a ring of dried wax. He pocketed the chocolate. Someone should have it even if Caelum didn't want it. Blanchard would've eaten it without thinking twice.
He got up and started back toward his wing. Halfway across the gravel he stopped. Not a sound, not movement. Just a feeling. The kind you get when someone's watching and they're not trying to hide it.
On the Fourth floor. East wing. High-strata dormitory.
Dawson was at his window. Arms at his sides. Face lit by the corridor light behind him, just enough to make out the shape of him. He wasn't leaning on the glass or crossing his arms or doing anything Caelum could read. Just standing there. Looking down at the bench where the candle had been.
Caelum held still for a second. Dawson didn't move either.
Then Caelum turned and walked inside.
Dawson kept watching.