Chương 72: 29.Talk of the Base 29-2

Looking at Harvey and Jess, I suddenly wanted to crawl back into yesterday's cherry cola cases and pretend this entire day hadn't happened. Unfortunately, no. Harvey spoke first, tone as flat as reporting a half-burnt screw.

"You went to the faculty office and came back with two VIP escorts." He glanced at Leo and Heinrich's retreating figures.

"Efficient. Next time see if you can bring the commandant." I looked at him without expression.

"If I had the option, I'd rather bring lunch." Jess jumped in immediately, smile sharp and uncharitable.

"Lunch isn't worth nearly this much. That entrance you just made? Upper House gets three pages of gossip, Lower House gets two pages of conspiracy theories."

"Subtract one," I said.

"Which one?"

"The version where I'm secretly related to the Centaurus Sector Commander." I pressed my fingers to my temple.

"That one's too stupid even for me." Jess thought about it seriously.

"No, that version will probably outlast all the others. The stupider the story, the better it fits Academy conditions." That logic was annoyingly sound. I couldn't find a counterargument. Harvey folded up the half-opened component bag and finally shifted his attention from the two disaster-class figures behind me back to my face.

"So?"

"So what?"

"You were gone half the morning. Don't tell me you went up there just to demonstrate how to drive the administrative system insane." He paused, then added with precision: "Although you do have genuine talent in that area." I looked at him.

"Admission file updates." Jess blinked first, then her entire face wrote out that's it?

"Just for that?"

"Yeah," I said.

"Family section blank, address blank, emergency contact blank. The school just realized that if I die outside, they might not even know where to send the notification." Jess choked on that for a second, then smoothly pivoted into laughing at something she absolutely shouldn't find funny.

"What did you tell them?"

"I said I was an orphan."

"That's normal."

"Then they asked for an address, so I gave them Tallander Federal High Security Correctional Facility, Sector Fourteen." Jess burst out laughing, loud enough that two passing grey uniforms turned to look.

"You're completely broken!"

"I wasn't making it up," I said, perfectly calm.

"That genuinely counts as the longest I've lived anywhere with functional management." Harvey absorbed this in exactly one second of silence, then delivered his verdict.

"Reasonable." If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. I stared at him.

"That 'reasonable' makes me uncomfortable."

"Because your life history is inherently uncomfortable," he said without a trace of apology.

"Then what?" I tilted my chin toward the space ahead.

"Then I said I had someone they could contact. You saw the rest." Jess's smile finally pulled back a little. She wasn't slow. She'd laugh at plenty, but she caught the important parts fast.

"So it wasn't just paperwork," she said.

"The school's started seriously auditing your accountability chain." I nodded.

"Because Forest School preliminary groupings are starting." That landed and even Harvey went quiet. The background noise kept moving — people hauling equipment in the mixed dorms, students dispersing from the distant academic buildings — but in that moment I could feel the atmosphere change. Jess frowned first.

"This soon?"

"Leo said preliminary groupings and risk reviews go first." I pulled one corner of my mouth.

"Special recruits, observation classes, emergency evacuation clearance, survival fitness, medical liability — all of it gets re-audited. Normally I could sit in the system as a grey-uniform nobody with unknown origins. Not anymore. Because the school's about to throw us outside." Harvey leaned back against the post, eyes on my face like he was evaluating a component the system had just repriced.

"So today wasn't about backing you up," he said.

"It was about filing you."

"Right," I said.

"And incidentally reminding the whole campus that I'm not the kind of consumable you can cover with a single form if I die." Jess let out a low click of her tongue.

"Well then."

"Well then what?"

"Weren't you just yesterday worrying about being treated like some Special Observation freak?" She looked at me, tone so sincere it made me want to strangle her.

"Congratulations. Starting today, you're not a freak anymore." A bad feeling settled in.

"Then what am I?" She gave me the most radiant, most thoroughly damnable smile.

"You're the center of attention." I stared at her for two seconds. Those words felt dirtier than detention.

"I'd rather run twenty laps."

"Too late," she said, far too cheerful.

"You just got personally escorted back to the Lower House by two living landmarks. The Upper House had their eyes practically grafted to your back. Humanities will decide you have connections that reach the sky. Engineering will suspect you're a core sample in some classified program. The Lower House will start debating whether you came in through the back door, the military door, or were simply airdropped in with no door at all." Harvey supplied the clinical follow-up.

"All versions will be updated before dinner." I looked at both of them, feeling my temples start to pulse.

"Could you possibly show a little sympathy?"

"No," Jess said.

"Unnecessary," Harvey said. Right. This was the human nature I knew. I tucked the clipboard under my arm and looked up at the cold Academy crest above the gate. Yesterday, I was just a new intake trying not to get crushed by shields and regulations in heavy armor class. After today, I'd probably become a strange piece of metal everyone wanted to tap — checking whether it was solid, hollow, or packed with explosives. That feeling was terrible.

Out of place and overexposed, like someone had hammered an unidentified component into precision machinery, and the whole school was waiting to see when it would blow. Jess must have noticed I was considering spontaneous combustion, because her tone finally eased.

"It's not entirely bad, though." I looked at her.

"You'd better not be about to tell me fame is best seized early."

"No." She put her hands in her pockets and leaned against the wall.

"It's because Forest School was always going to sort people. Who gets brought into a team, who's just filling gaps, who can be trusted, who can only be used — all of that gets reshuffled. You're a focal point now, that's pressure, but at least nobody's going to treat you like disposable grey-uniform scrap they can kick into a corner to rust." Harvey nodded — rare agreement.

"Groupings are coming. Information concentrates around people. Being noticed isn't entirely bad, as long as you can hold."

"And," Jess added with a slight smile, "going into Forest School in your current state, you'll figure out pretty fast who's there to ride coattails and who actually wants to survive." I was quiet for a few seconds, then managed: "The way you put it, I suddenly hate this place even more."

"Congratulations," Jess said.

"You're finally starting to sound like a qualified cadet." Harvey tucked the component bag back into his pocket, tone as flat as ever.

"Anyway. Low profile is finished after today. Instead of worrying about that, start thinking about what Forest School actually needs. Firestorms, humid heat, sustained survival, hunter units — those two dozen cherry colas probably can't all come with you." I looked at him.

"You're managing my cola now?"

"I'm managing load weight." Jess immediately pulled the floor out from under him.

"Wrong. He's managing himself. He's afraid you'll actually pack only cola and no brain."

"I was never planning to bring two dozen," I said.

"One dozen?"

"Shut up." They both laughed. Standing just inside the gate, listening to the mixed dorms and classroom blocks humming in the background, I felt like this day still had a long way to go. But at least two things were clear. One: I really was about to become the unlucky bastard everyone watched. Two: Forest School had stopped being rumor. Its shadow was already touching our boots. And I probably didn't get a choice. All I could do was learn not to catch fire before the spotlight finished with me.