Chương 54: “The Categorization”

It came in a letter. Not a Seeker. Also, not the administrative thing from the garden. An actual letter, paper, dropped through the mail slot on a Tuesday morning and lying on the doormat when June came downstairs for school. She picked it up. Looked at it. The envelope was blank: no address, no stamp, no postmark. The paper was the color of old ivory and felt wrong. She brought it upstairs. He read it through her hands without her needing to open it, the way he read things now, through contact and walls.

NOTICE OF CATEGORIZATION Entity: Vorrath (prev. Consuming Dark, Hollow Below, Throat of World) New Classification: Aberrant Bound The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Definition: Consuming entity in violation of natural function through sustained protective attachment to mortal life. Status: Subject to Correction. Timeline for Correction: 30 days. Method of Correction: Dissolution of bond. Extraction of core. Processing.

Note: Resistance has been observed and accounted for. Correction team has been assigned accordingly. June read it over his awareness. She couldn't read it through him but she could feel the shape of his response to it, like she always could.

"Bad?" she said. He wrote on the water glass. Thirty days. She read it. Read it again.

"Thirty days until what?" He wrote: until they come back. With more. She was very still. Then she put the letter face-down on the desk, picked up her school bag, and said: "Okay. Then we'd better get started." He looked at her.

"We're not just going to wait, are we?" She looked back at him with calm.

"Thirty days is thirty days. What do we need?" He thought about this. He thought about what he had and what was coming and what the gap was between them. He wrote two words on the water glass. More floors. She nodded.

"You don't have any more floors." He wrote: not mine. She looked at the water glass for a long moment.

"Oh," she said. Then, quietly: "Oh."