Chapter 27: Two Minutes
Varrik didn't let them go straight back to the clinic beds.
She let Brant's team disperse, watched the vans unload, then guided Kairo and Selene through the front entrance like they were normal patients again.
Normal.
Kairo hated that word. Normal was a costume. But he wore it anyway, because costumes kept you alive.
Once the threshold door sealed behind them, the air thickened and the clinic lie fell away.
Varrik didn't sit.
She didn't ask how they felt.
She pointed at the center ring.
"Two minutes," she said.
Kairo's stomach tightened. "Now?"
Varrik's eyes were cold. "Now. You saw architecture respond to you. That means you're already on someone's board. If you're going to stay unbroken, you train while your fear is fresh."
Kairo swallowed. Fear is fresh. He didn't like how accurately she said it.
Selene leaned against the wall, quiet, watching him with that controlled focus she had when she didn't want to show concern.
Varrik held up the stabilizer sensor pad and stuck it to Kairo's forearm.
It hummed.
Sustained circulation target: 120 seconds.
Kairo stared at the number and felt his chest tighten in a way that wasn't Veil.
Two minutes felt like forever when your channels were young.
Varrik's voice stayed flat. "Destination."
Kairo blinked. "Destination?"
"You don't Thread in a vacuum," Varrik said. "You Thread with purpose. Otherwise you learn endurance without control."
Kairo looked around the room.
His eyes flicked to the locker with the resonance recorder. Then to the far corner where a small sensor light blinked.
He chose something simple.
"The sensor panel," he said.
Varrik nodded once. "Intent."
Kairo exhaled slowly. "Arrive unseen."
Selene's fingers brushed her collarbone briefly. The jade token. Grounding. Then her hand dropped.
She didn't activate Still Seal.
Not yet.
Kairo understood. This was his weight to carry today.
He stepped into the ring.
In. Hold. Out.
The thread slid through him, thin and cold.
The room sharpened.
Not into a glowing path, but into timing windows.
He moved.
Three steps.
Pause.
Breathe out.
Cross the camera angle as the ceiling fan clicked.
Angle left so the metal table blocks the sensor's reflection.
Thirty seconds in, his lungs started to burn.
Not because he was out of breath.
Because his body wanted to stop doing something unnatural.
He kept going.
His eyes threatened to darken to deep blue.
He forced them steady. Not black, not fully blue. Somewhere in between, like he was holding a door mostly shut.
He reached the halfway point.
Sixty seconds.
His channels began to itch. A crawling sensation under his skin, like the Veil wanted to leak out of him and be done with it.
Kairo tightened his jaw and kept his breath rhythm clean.
In. Hold. Out.
He thought, briefly, of the obsidian corridor map. The way the lattice looked like constellations made real.
He thought of the light-line that had nearly marked Brant.
Two minutes, he told himself. If I can hold two minutes, I can hold myself.
Ninety seconds.
His vision fuzzed at the edges.
His body tried to bargain with him.
Stop. Just stop. No one will know you quit.
But Kairo knew the truth.
The Veil always knew.
Selene's voice came, soft, steady, not a command. Just a metronome. "Breathe."
Kairo latched onto it.
One hundred seconds.
The thread wobbled.
He felt the flare threatening, the desperate yank of Northbind trying to take over.
He didn't let it.
He held the thread like holding a cup filled to the brim.
No shaking.
No spill.
One hundred and fifteen.
His heart hammered. The fragment against his sternum pressed heavier, as if listening to whether he'd break.
One hundred and twenty.
The sensor panel was right there.
Kairo touched it.
The light blinked once.
Stayed green.
No chirp.
No alarm.
Kairo released the thread cleanly and nearly swayed, catching himself on sheer stubbornness.
He didn't collapse.
He didn't gasp.
He stood there and swallowed air like it was medicine.
Varrik peeled the sensor pad off his arm and checked the reading.
Sustained circulation: 121 seconds.
Leak rate: controlled.
Clarity: improved.
Her mouth didn't move much, but something in her eyes shifted.
"Good," she said.
Selene exhaled quietly.
Kairo looked at his hands. They were steady. That surprised him more than anything.
"So I'm Thread," he asked, voice rough.
Varrik's gaze stayed sharp. "Not yet. But you're close enough to survive a lot of things you couldn't yesterday."
Kairo didn't know whether to feel proud or sick.
He settled for calm.
Varrik stepped closer, lowering her voice.
"You felt the map," she said. "Tell me honestly. Did your fragment react too."
Kairo's throat tightened.
He could lie. He could play boring even here.
But Varrik wasn't Brant. She wasn't an official clerk. She was infrastructure, and infrastructure needed real data.
Kairo nodded once. "Yes."
Selene's posture tightened slightly.
Varrik stared at Kairo for a long moment, then nodded like she'd expected it.
"That means the fragment isn't just loot," she said softly. "It's a key part of a system."
Kairo swallowed. "A system that someone owns."
Varrik's eyes were cold. "Or a system that used to have an owner."
Selene's voice was quiet. "Which is worse."
Varrik didn't answer right away.
Then she said the one sentence that made Kairo's skin prickle.
"Unowned systems attract new owners."
Kairo's thread tightened instinctively.
He thought of officials, Families, inspectors like Rook, and the silent thing behind the obsidian reflections.
He thought of how the door had noticed him.
And he realized, with a sinking feeling, that training wasn't just about getting stronger.
It was about becoming hard to claim.
Varrik tapped the recorder case on the table.
"Tomorrow," she said, "we see if you can Thread for three minutes while someone tries to distract you."
Kairo's mouth went dry. "Someone?"
Varrik's gaze flicked to Selene.
Selene's eyes narrowed slightly, like she already understood her role.
Kairo looked at Selene and felt something settle in his chest that wasn't Veil.
Not romance.
Not comfort.
Reliance.
He didn't know if that was safe.
But he knew it was real.
And in the Veil world, real things were either protected…
or stolen.