Nobody slept that night.
Not really. Eli had a cot in the back room of the old science block — Sera had been supplying him for three weeks, food and blankets and the particular care of someone who understood that surviving required more than just not being caught. I sat against the wall until 2 AM with the interface open, reading and rereading the System's revised threat assessment. Sera sat at the lab bench with her folder open, adding notes in the small precise handwriting of someone converting shock into documentation.
At some point the silence became a different kind of silence — not empty, but working.
"We need to tell Zane," I said finally.
"I know," Sera said without looking up.
"Tonight was a lot of information."
"I know that too."
I looked at Eli. He had his back against the wall and his knees pulled up and his eyes open, staring at nothing in the particular way of someone whose mind was somewhere else entirely — running scenarios, probably. Calculating exits. Nine months of hiding did things to the way a person thought.
"Eli," I said.
He focused on me slowly.
"You came to Sera three weeks ago," I said. "Why then? Why not sooner?"
He was quiet for a moment. "Because I spent six months just surviving. Moving. Not staying anywhere long enough to matter." He looked at his hands. "And then I heard about the trial. A Level 1 first year, nullification type, cleared the building and walked away from Marcus Holt in a stairwell." He met my eyes. "I needed to see if it was real."
"And?"
"You're here," he said. "So I guess it is."
DING.
[The System notes: Eli Marsh has been operating without System support for approximately nine months.][Clarification: his System is still active but has been running in minimal mode — suppressed output, reduced notifications, near-dormant state.][This is an extreme measure. Systems enter minimal mode only when the Host manually suppresses them or when external interference disrupts the System-Host connection.][The System suspects the Research Division's passive scanning device may have caused partial interference.][The System finds this — the System finds this deeply concerning.][A System and Host are not meant to be separated.][The damage to Eli Marsh's System-Host connection may not be fully reversible.]
I looked at Eli differently after reading that.
Nine months not just without support — with a connection that had been deliberately damaged. Like someone had cut a wire that was supposed to run between two things that needed each other and then left both of them to figure out how to function anyway.
I didn't tell him what the System had said. Not yet. Some information needed the right moment.
Zane arrived at the science block at 7 AM.
I had messaged him at 6:30 — come to the old science block, bring nothing, tell nobody — and he had replied in under a minute with a single word that meant he was already moving.
He walked through the door and stopped.
Looked at Eli Marsh for a long time.
Eli looked back.
Something passed between them — not words, not gesture, but the specific communication of two people who share a history that has weight. Zane's operational composure, the thing he wore like a second skin, developed a crack along one edge. Small. Brief. Real.
"You're alive," Zane said.
"Mostly," Eli said.
Zane crossed the room and sat down. Looked at me. "Tell me everything."
I told him everything.
He listened without interrupting, which I was learning was how he processed serious information — completely still, completely silent, storing it all before responding to any of it. When I finished he stayed quiet for another thirty seconds.
Then: "The prototype."
"Nine months," Sera said. "Minimum. Possibly complete."
"If it's complete they haven't deployed it," Zane said. "We would have seen signs. Ability disruptions. Unusual incidents in controlled environments. Someone would have tested it."
"Unless they've been testing it quietly," Eli said. "Small scale. Contained. The kind of tests that look like equipment malfunctions or ability inconsistencies." He paused. "There were three incidents in the Academy's lower training rooms over the past six months. Documented as System calibration errors."
Silence.
"You think those were tests," I said.
"I think they're the right size and spacing for iterative prototype trials," he said. "I think Vorne is careful and patient and has been doing this for years and he doesn't make the kind of mistakes that get noticed."
DING.
[Cross-referencing: three System calibration incidents in lower training rooms, past six months.][Incident one: four students reported temporary ability suppression lasting 90 seconds. Documented as equipment interference.][Incident two: two students, same suppression profile, 110 seconds. Documented as residual calibration error.][Incident three: six students, 140 seconds. Documented as scheduled maintenance side effect.][Pattern: escalating duration. Escalating subject count. Consistent suppression profile across all three incidents.][The System's assessment: these were not calibration errors.][Prototype testing. Iterative. Successful.][The device works.]
I shared the System's analysis.
The room went very quiet.
"It works," Sera said. Not a question.
"It works," I said.
Zane stood up. Moved to the window, looked out at the campus morning assembling itself beyond the dirty glass. Students crossing the quad. Normal Thursday. A world that didn't know what was sitting in a research lab somewhere beneath it.
"We have maybe two weeks," he said. "Before they move from testing to deployment. Before they decide the data on Kael is sufficient and stop waiting for Board authorization." He turned around. "We need the prototype. Not just documented — physically obtained or destroyed. As long as it exists we're all targets."
"The Research Division's physical space is on sublevel two of the administrative block," Sera said. "Card access, biometric secondary, monitored twenty four hours."
"I know someone with card access," Zane said.
Everyone looked at him.
"A fourth year. She owes me a significant favor and she's been uncomfortable about the Research Division for months." He paused. "I've been saving that card."
"That gets us through the first door," Sera said. "Biometric secondary requires a registered user's physical presence or—"
"Or a spoofed signal," Eli said quietly.
We all looked at him.
"My System is damaged," he said. "But it's not gone. And nine months of hiding taught me things about System signal manipulation that aren't in any textbook." He met our eyes one at a time. "I can spoof a biometric signature. It'll take me twenty minutes to build the signal profile. And it'll hold for approximately four minutes before the security system detects the anomaly."
"Four minutes," I said.
"Four minutes to get in, find the prototype, and get out," he said. "Or destroy it in place."
DING.
[The System has run the scenario parameters.][Success probability at current capability levels: 31%.][The System notes: 31% is lower than the trial's 34%.][The System notes further: the trial was also inadvisable.][The System notes further still: Host went anyway.][The System is not recommending this plan.][The System is also not recommending the alternative.][The alternative is waiting.][The System has modeled waiting.][Waiting's success probability: 8%.][The System presents these numbers without comment.][The numbers speak for themselves.]
"31% versus 8%," I said out loud.
"You're not seriously converting this to a numbers problem," Sera said.
"My System is."
"What are the numbers?" Zane said.
"31% if we go in. 8% if we wait."
He looked at me for a long moment. "When has your System been wrong?"
I thought about it. The sandwich. The trial. Marcus in the stairwell. Every assessment, every probability, every inadvisable and statistically unsound.
"Not often," I said.
"Then 31% it is." He said it with the flat certainty of someone who had made peace with bad odds a long time ago. "We go in three days. That gives us time to prepare, get the access card, build Eli's signal profile." He looked around the room. "Everyone needs to be ready. Not kind of ready. Actually ready. Because if this goes wrong—"
"It won't just go wrong for us," Sera said.
"No," Zane said. "It won't."
The morning light was coming properly through the dirty windows now, hitting the old lab benches and the dust and the four of us sitting in the wreckage of a normal school week that had quietly become something else entirely.
DING.
[The System has one addition to the plan.]
I looked at the interface.
[Host's nullification — partial activation in the stairwell, full activation outside the school.][The System has been analyzing the pattern.][Hypothesis: activation level correlates with emotional state.][Outside the school: Host was calm, grounded, certain.][In the stairwell: Host was running, divided, reactive.][Full activation requires — the System believes — a specific internal condition.][Not stress. Not danger. Something else.][The System does not yet know what.][But Host has three days to find it.][The System suggests Host uses them.]
I read it twice.
Not danger. Not stress.
Something else.
I thought about the moment outside the school — Marcus's pressure hitting and finding nothing. What had I been feeling in that exact second? Not fear. Not adrenaline. Something quieter and more settled than either of those.
I had been certain.
Certain that I wasn't going to run. Certain that this school, this chance, this thing my mother had worked doubles to give me — I wasn't going to let anyone take it.
I closed the interface slowly.
"Three days," I said.
"Three days," Zane confirmed.
Eli looked at me from across the old chemistry lab with his structural dark circles and his damaged System and nine months of surviving written into the way he held himself.
"For what it's worth," he said quietly, "I've been running for nine months. I'm tired of running." He paused. "Don't let them take this from you the way they took it from me."
The dust settled around us in the morning light.
I wasn't planning to.