Chương 70: 28.Guardian Field Cannot Be Blank 28-3

Half an hour later, I had my answer. Colonel Leo Wiesland walked into the office and the air split down the middle. He wasn't wearing dress whites for show, just standard duty uniform, but the rank tabs and unit markings sat on him like they'd grown there. His expression was black enough to suggest someone had stuffed my entire life into his breakfast. Standing next to him was Dr. Heinrich von Steiner.

The first thing that crossed my mind when I saw his well-practiced half-smile was: great, this just went from ugly to cult laboratory meeting. Leo looked at me first, the meaning clear.

"What did you do this time?" I shot back without thinking.

"Why'd you bring the doctor?" Heinrich stood behind him, smiling that precise, predatory smile of someone with a deep academic interest in experimental outcomes.

"I came to see you," he said. I looked at him.

"You came to check on the test subject." He didn't bother denying it. Just kept smiling. So: acknowledgement. I nodded. At least the man had some basic commitment to honesty.

"The school wanted an emergency contact on file," I said.

"I was worried they wouldn't believe me." Leo's expression went several shades darker — dark enough that I suspected his next move would be personally resetting me back to blank file status. He drew a long breath, apparently suppressing the urge to disassemble me on the spot and rebuild me in a more manageable configuration, then turned to Nikaido and the Tactical Theory instructor.

"She's a special recruit," he said. His voice wasn't loud, but every word hit the desk like something dropped from a height.

"Do you people think I have nothing better to do?" No one answered. Leo clearly didn't need them to.

"Put me down as emergency contact." He paused, making sure every syllable registered.

"Colonel Leo Wiesland, Centaurus Sector Commander." I had no idea what was going through everyone else's minds at that moment. I only knew that the instant "Centaurus Sector Commander" finished landing, the air changed again. Not just surprise — something heavier, harder, more immediate pressing down. The Tactical Theory instructor's hand stopped at the edge of the file. Behind Linde's lenses, his gaze finally acquired real weight. Even Nikaido's brow tightened, just barely.

I don't know how far Centaurus actually is, and I don't particularly care. But I know faces. And right now, every face in that room was telling me the same thing: I hadn't become cleaner. I'd become much harder to process. That realization improved my mood considerably. After Leo's "put me down as emergency contact" landed, the office went quiet for half a beat. Not the quiet of no one speaking. The quiet of everyone rapidly recalculating variables they'd assumed didn't matter.

I was about to stay quiet and play dead when Dr. Heinrich von Steiner — who'd been standing to the side this entire time wearing that smile of someone who finds everyone in the room scientifically fascinating — stepped forward to deliver another polite kill shot.

"If Leo's too busy," he said, pausing with the tone of someone giving directions, "and you can't reach him, you can always contact me." He stepped forward half a pace, positioning himself with the ease of someone who regularly appeared on institutional brochures under the heading Our Faculty: Well-Funded and Beyond Question.

"Heinrich von Steiner, Deputy Grand Fellow, Federation Central Research Institute." He smiled pleasantly.

"At your service." I had no clear picture of how significant a "Deputy Grand Fellow of the Federation Central Research Institute" actually was. I wasn't even sure if a title like that usually required its own conference room and two rows of people afraid to breathe. I only knew that after he finished saying it, the other three people in the room all looked distinctly unwell. That was enough.

Heinrich pulled a card from his pocket and set it on the desk with the unhurried grace of someone who'd come not to deliver a fatal blow, but to attend afternoon tea. Then he glanced at me, that particular smile still in place — the kind where you genuinely couldn't tell whether goodwill was involved.

"Well then. I'll take my leave." He left as cleanly as he'd arrived, like someone who'd only stopped by to add unnecessary ballast to my student file. The door closed. I stood there, briefly uncertain who deserved condolences first. Myself, or the three people who'd just been forced to revise their assessment of what exactly I was. Stolen novel; please report. In the end, I gave a perfectly correct salute to Linde, Nikaido, and the instructor. Then I turned and went after him.

Because there were questions I'd rather ask the man who smiled like he was watching a live dissection than stay in that room competing with three adults who all had their own agendas. I caught up with Heinrich just as he reached the corridor turn. He wasn't walking fast. Leisurely was closer. The irritating kind of leisurely — like he'd known I would follow and had calibrated his pace accordingly.

Morning light slanted through the long windows along the administration building, catching the edge of his white coat and dark jacket, making him look exactly like a senior researcher specializing in the most efficient ways for humans to break down. I stopped behind him, caught my breath, then spoke.

"You two just put me on a spit over an open fire." The doctor turned. Seeing it was me, he looked genuinely pleased. Not normal-person pleased. The pleased of a researcher who'd just watched an unexpected mutation develop in the petri dish.

"Not at all," he said, with the ease of someone who'd just helped me file routine paperwork.

"Leo and I simply completed some administrative details."

"You call that administrative details?" I stared at him.

"You dropped that title sequence and all three faces in there looked ready for pathological examination." Heinrich blinked.

"Isn't that wonderful?"

"How is that wonderful?" He beamed at me, then delivered the second blade with the same unhurried care.

"Starting tomorrow, you're the most interesting person in the Academy." I nearly rolled my eyes hard enough to strain something.

"Thank you. I have absolutely no interest in being famous this way."

"You were always going to be noticed eventually," Heinrich said.

"The only question was whether people would remember you as recyclable expendable material, or as trouble too complicated to handle carelessly. The second option isn't pleasant, but it has much better longevity." That sentence was shaped like a blessing and functioned like a curse. Coming from him, there probably wasn't much difference. I leaned against the wall, arms crossed, watching that face of his — always wearing some version of a smile, always apparently dissecting something you couldn't see.

"After what you just stirred up, by this afternoon the whole academic block will know I've got two deeply abnormal adults attached to my file."

"A small correction," Heinrich raised one finger.

"Two abnormal adults with considerable institutional weight. There's a meaningful distinction."

"I don't see one."

"That's because you're young." I gave a cold laugh.

"You use that line to get test subjects to relax." Heinrich actually nodded.

"I do." This man's honesty was physically uncomfortable. I watched him for two seconds, then decided to be direct.

"You and Leo showing up today — it wasn't just about filling in my emergency contact, was it?" He didn't answer immediately. He tilted his head and looked at me, the look light but recalibrating, like he was revising an estimate of a piece of equipment's heat tolerance.

"You get to the point faster than I expected. Good."

"So there is something else."

"Of course there is." That familiar sick feeling shifted in my stomach. Every of course there is in a military academy usually meant something that would make you wish you'd faked illness the day before. Heinrich didn't continue right away. He tilted his chin toward the space behind me.

"Leo." I turned. Colonel Leo Wiesland was walking out from the office direction, expression still dark enough to suggest I'd just casually detonated another warehouse. He stopped in front of us, gave me one look — clearly meaning don't give me anything else to deal with today — then got to it.

"Do you know why the Academy suddenly pulled your file today?" I thought about it.

"Because their administrative backlog finally caught up and they picked today to have a breakdown?" Leo's expression suggested he would very much like to feed me back into the records system and hit reboot.

"Because Forest School preliminary groupings are starting." I didn't respond. He kept going, voice low but each word carrying weight.

"Special recruits, observation classes, Lower House mixed units, Upper House observers, survival fitness, medical risk, emergency evacuation clearance — normally all of that can sit in the queue until someone's half-dead before getting patched. But once you're talking about extended off-campus survival exercises, every file gets re-audited. Who goes out, who's responsible if something happens, who gets notified if someone dies, who owns them when they come back — the entire accountability chain gets rebuilt."

I stood there and assembled those pieces slowly. So today's trip to the faculty office wasn't just about filling in blanks. It was because the next, bigger problem was arriving, and the Academy had finally remembered that I couldn't keep sitting in the system as origin unknown, difficult to process if deceased.

"Forest School," I said.

"So the team assignments are actually starting." Leo looked at me.

"Not just assignments. Screening." Something in the corridor air thinned at that word. Heinrich stood nearby, still smiling with the ease of someone listening to a particularly observable natural disaster unfold.

"Firestorm planet. Extreme humid heat environment. Sustained survival pressure. Irregular hunter units. Plus internal team attrition." He counted them off slowly, with what sounded disturbingly like appreciation.

"Ideal conditions for observing at which point people begin to hate each other, and at which point they relearn cooperation."

"You make it sound like a tourism brochure."

"I am genuinely looking forward to it."

"Because you're a sick bastard."

"Thank you. I accept that." I pressed my fingers against my temple. My head was starting to hurt. So the entire administrative circus earlier hadn't been random. It was because the Academy was about to throw us outside — somewhere that could actually produce casualties — and had suddenly started caring: when this grey-uniform nobody called Hoshino Shimo dies, exactly who gets the notification? Framed that way, the whole thing was more consistent with the Academy's character than simple paperwork ever could be.

Not concern. Just not wanting deaths that were difficult to file. Leo watched me with the look of someone checking whether I'd actually understood.

"Starting today, you'll be more visible on campus than before." Heinrich immediately supplied the line that made me want to hit him.

"Like I said. Tomorrow you're the most interesting person in the Academy." I was quiet for two seconds.

"Right now I'd rather be the least visible person in the Academy." Heinrich smiled.

"Unfortunately, the most interesting test subjects rarely get that option." I stared at him and seriously considered whether I could fake a stumble convincingly enough to take him down the stairwell. Unfortunately, people of his caliber would probably maintain that smile all the way down, and I'd be the only one paying for it later. Leo had clearly read the murder on my face and spoke coldly.

"Cut the attitude. What you need to think about right now isn't staying invisible. It's getting yourself under control before the next round of groupings."

"Under control?"

"Your mouth. Your temper. That habit you have of seeing something broken and immediately wanting to take it apart." He paused.

"And your judgment about people." That last line made me look up. He knew more than I'd assumed. Or rather — he'd known from the start that I'd end up here eventually. Forest School. Team assignments. Screening. Firestorms. Hunter units. And the memory card currently sitting in a light novel, not yet ready to see daylight. Everything connected at once. Heinrich straightened his cuffs, tone back to conversational.

"Well. That covers the essentials. You can go back to class and enjoy the gradually deteriorating campus atmosphere." I pulled one corner of my mouth up.

"You make it sound like I'm heading to a school festival."

"In some respects, considerably more eventful than any festival." That was probably true. I took a slow breath and stood up straight. Suddenly that boring Tactical Theory class felt almost nostalgic.

At least when the instructor walked through standard boarding procedures, he didn't smile and tell you: congratulations, you're about to become the center of attention, and also we're dropping you onto a planet that bursts into firestorms every seventy-two hours, with a team that isn't fully assembled yet, to learn how not to die together. The Federation Military Academy really was committed to incremental development. First it humiliated you. Then it made you famous.

Then it threw you into the wilderness to see if you were worth bringing back.