Chương 2: Episode 2 - B-7

The room wasn't on the standard accommodation map. Cassian had checked the map three times before locating B-7 through a service corridor that wasn't on the map either. He had filed this as either an administrative oversight or a statement. He was prepared to accept both. Six names on the panel beside the door: Vail, Torr-Ashak, Thal-Renn, Ashborne, Nyx'ara, Vex. Squad 7-Delta. Ranked twenty-fourth out of twenty-four. The academy's formal documentation described this as a 'developmental cohort.'

He had looked up what that meant. It meant they had not yet figured out how to fail them out quietly. He went in first because he was listed first and because going in first gave him thirty seconds with the layout before the others arrived. Six bunks. One common table. One shared terminal. Ventilation panel behind the third locker — he noted it as he crossed the room, automatically, the way he noted all of them. Door with a biometric reader on the wrong wall.

Emergency hatch at the corridor's far end, distance not yet confirmed. A viewport on the exterior bulkhead, facing the belt. Three bolts across the frame, not the standard two. He stopped in front of it for a moment. Standard viewports in standard barracks rooms were sealed for pressure safety, not bolted. You bolted a viewport when you had a specific reason to ensure it stayed shut. The bolts were old. Whatever the reason had been, it predated this cohort. He noted it, filed it under: investigate, and moved on.

The ventilation panel was the most viable secondary exit; he'd need to check the clearance dimensions before he could put Krell'va in the plan. Three exits. Standard enough. He sat on the bunk nearest the door and opened his personal unit — older, scratched at the corner, the triple-encrypted backup already running — and started a new file: B-7. * Krell'va arrived second. He filled the doorframe the way large things filled doorframes — not by blocking it but by making it look briefly inadequate. 2.

3 meters of High-Fang Vaskarr, dark fur near-black in the corridor's light, the single warrior braid running from crown to shoulder-blade. He stood in the doorframe for a moment and did not come in. Not uncertainty. Assessment. Cassian had the specific impression of something checking whether the territory was worth entering. It apparently was. Krell'va crossed the threshold and took the bunk furthest from the door — which also, Cassian noted, gave him the best sightline to the room's center.

Not monitoring the exit. Watching what was inside. He said nothing. He set down his case and sat with the particular stillness of something that had decided where it was going to be. Korrath arrived third. Cassian felt him before he saw him — a two-degree shift in the room's ambient temperature, the specific warmth of a Dravak who ran hot and didn't think to mention it. 2.

4 meters of obsidian-scaled Fire-Seer engineer, bronze and copper highlights in the scales catching the overhead strips, the heat-reactive crest along his skull sitting low and flat. He was carrying a fireproof case on his belt with the care of someone carrying something that had survived things it shouldn't have. Korrath surveyed the room with methodical attention, confirmed the locker dimensions, noted the ventilation panel, and selected the bunk with the best sightline to the door.

Then he opened the fireproof case and laid out its contents on the shelf beside him with the unhurried precision of someone for whom arrangement was not logistics but liturgy. Heat-etched tablets. A folded square of volcanic cloth. Small instruments in specific order. Cassian wrote in the file: Dravak ritual implements. Pre-sleep sequence likely. Duration unknown. Investigate.

Ren-Thalen arrived fourth, which Cassian would later understand was not coincidence but calibration — she had positioned her arrival to have the most information about the room's current emotional state before walking into it. She was Thal'kesh: 1. 85 meters, fluid in her movement even on dry ground, her bioluminescence running at rest — the slow amber cycling through her skin, barely visible in the lit room, like something breathing at its own pace.

She found the position at the common table that gave her sightlines to all five of the other bunks and sat down with her hands folded and did not explain this choice. Cassian wrote: Thal'kesh. Psionic read capability unknown, suspected significant. Position selection deliberate. File for later. Cirus arrived fifth. Avarin, Kyrr-caste: 2.

1 meters, hollow-boned and precise, the emerald-and-gold plumage of an artisan-scholar lineage visible in the feather-patterning along the vestigial wings folded against his shoulder blades. The keratin crest from crown to skull-base was held at trained neutral — mid-height, controlled, the expression of someone who had learned very young that what your face showed was a choice.

He entered, confirmed the room's dimensions with a single pass of his eyes, identified the remaining available bunks in order of tactical quality, and selected the second-best one without apparent hesitation. The crest moved fractionally when he registered Korrath's ritual implements. Not alarm — the micro-calculation of someone who had just identified a variable he hadn't anticipated and was incorporating it. He said: "The lights will go out at 2200. Standard academy cycle." Nobody had asked.

He appeared to feel this was relevant information regardless. Nyx'ara arrived last. Youngest by three years, which Cassian hadn't expected to be visible and was. Seraphi Umbrathi: 1. 72 meters, deep grey-violet photodermis with shadow-reactive undertones. She came through the door the way someone came through a door when they had already decided the room was probably fine and were moving at the speed where slowing down would require a specific reason. She stopped. Looked at the five of them.

Looked at the room — a fast, specific survey, the kind that was checking something. Whatever she was checking, the result was apparently inconclusive rather than alarming. Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

"This is smaller than the map said," she announced.

"There was a map," Cirus said.

"I checked the map."

"This room wasn't on it," Cassian said. A beat.

"Well," Nyx'ara said.

"That explains several things. The orientation document showed four bunks. I was wondering where they put the other two." She took the last available bunk and sat on it.

"Apparently they put them in the room they forgot to put on the map." She said it without any particular bitterness. She was simply updating her model of the situation. * It was Nyx'ara who noticed the ritual first, because Nyx'ara noticed everything that moved and Korrath's pre-sleep sequence had been going for eleven minutes.

"What," she said, "is that." Korrath didn't look up from the heat-etched tablet in his hands.

"Evening alignment. Then equipment maintenance."

"You brought equipment maintenance into the barracks."

"The ritual includes review of the day's technical work. Yes."

"How long does—""Vocalization sequence after that," Korrath said.

"Then the thermal reading." He turned the tablet over with the unhurried attention of someone for whom doing things correctly and doing things quickly were not the same problem.

"And then the pre-sleep centering sequence. Twelve minutes." Silence. Nyx'ara's photodermis had gone very still, the shadow-reactive patterns paused. She was doing math. Not complaining yet — calculating. Whether she would complain seemed to depend on the result.

"That's over an hour of—" she started.

"Yes," Korrath said.

"Every night?"

"Every night."

"What happens if you skip it?" Korrath's hands kept moving.

"I don't."

"Hypothetically."

"I don't engage in hypotheticals about the ritual."

"That's not an answer."

"No," Korrath agreed, with the serenity of someone whose position was cosmologically secure, "it isn't." Cirus, who had been running calculations since the eleven-minute mark, said: "The complete sequence is three hours." His crest was at neutral. The precision was not an accusation. It was a filing.

"It will finish at approximately 0100." Korrath inclined his head.

"Yes."

"That is past midnight."

"Yes." Cirus absorbed this. The crest held neutral.

"I'll note it." He made a notation on his personal terminal with the focused economy of someone who had accepted the variable and was now working with it. Nyx'ara looked at Cassian. He looked back. There was a brief, wordless exchange between two people who had just confirmed that this was their life now and were taking different approaches to how they felt about it. Cassian wrote in the file: Ritual — non-negotiable, full duration three hours, completion approximately 0100.

Cross-reference with exercise schedules for morning impact. Krell'va said nothing at all. He was lying on his bunk with his eyes open and his battle-braid secured, which meant he had finished his own pre-sleep process and was now simply waiting for the rest of the room to finish theirs. Whether he found the ritual the most interesting thing in the room or simply the largest, Cassian couldn't determine yet. He wrote: territorial patience. Note for later. * The lights went out at 2120. No warning. No dimming cycle.

One moment the room was lit; the next it wasn't.

"Forty minutes early," Cirus said, from the dark.

"We noticed," Nyx'ara said.

"I'm confirming."

"Definitely not necessary." A beat.

"The confirmation is still accurate."

"Yes," Nyx'ara said.

"Thank you. It continues to be forty minutes early." Silence. Cirus appeared to accept this as sufficient resolution. Cassian lay on his back and ran his exit inventory. Door — biometric reader on the wrong wall, breach time approximately twelve seconds. Emergency hatch at the corridor's far end, to be walked tomorrow; distance not yet confirmed. Ventilation panel behind the third locker — clearance sufficient for four of them, not Krell'va, viable with modification. Three exits.

He had started counting exits at seventeen, standing on a transport dock at Harrow Station while the lockdown engaged and the indicators showed three viable exits and he'd had to choose one in four seconds. He hadn't chosen badly. The exit had held. Three hundred and forty people hadn't been where the exits were, and he had been, and the specific arithmetic of that had stuck in a way that he'd stopped calling a habit around the time he'd stopped pretending it was one. Three exits. Standard enough.

He'd work with it. The room resolved in layers as his eyes adjusted. Ren-Thalen's bioluminescence was visible now that the lights were down — the slow amber cycling through her skin, barely there, like something breathing independently of the rest of her. Across the room, Nyx'ara's photodermis was still suppressed; she was holding it deliberately, which cost her something, though Cassian didn't know that yet.

Krell'va was a shape in the dark that was larger than the shapes around it and very still — not the stillness of sleep but the stillness of something that was awake and had decided this was what being awake looked like right now. Korrath was a warmth more than a shape, two degrees ambient that Cassian could orient toward with his eyes closed. Cirus was silent in the way of someone who had decided that speaking further would not improve their current 0. 6-second improvement rate on the lights-going-out problem.

Six people. Ranked last. Assigned to each other because no one else had wanted the combination. He thought about what he'd done to end up here. He thought about the viewport and its three unnecessary bolts. He thought about starting a second file tomorrow — six names, six unknowns — and about the shape of what the first session would tell him. Korrath's ritual was still going.

Quieter now that the lights were down, but present — the sub-vocalized rhythm of the vocalization sequence, steady under the ventilation hum, the sound of something conducting its process with complete indifference to whether the room approved. He was considering whether that was useful when Nyx'ara spoke.

"I can't sleep in silence anyway." She said it to no one. Or to the ceiling. Or just to the fact of being awake in the dark with five strangers and needing to say something that wasn't an explanation and wasn't a question and wasn't asking for anything. Her photodermis pulsed once — a single involuntary shadow-burst, violet-dark, gone in half a second. In the far corner, Ren-Thalen's amber shifted — briefly, barely perceptibly, toward something warmer. Cassian couldn't have said why he noticed it. He noticed it.

He didn't write it down. Krell'va, in the dark, breathed once through his nose. Slowly. The sound of something that had heard something it recognized and had decided, for now, not to name it. Cassian ran the exits one more time. Same number. Same geometry. He'd confirm the third tomorrow, walk the corridor distance, check the hatch's breach mechanics, update the file. He would also, tomorrow, start a second file. Six names. Six unknowns. One room that wasn't on the map.

The viewport with its three unnecessary bolts. Korrath's ritual ran steady under the ventilation hum. Cassian was awake for all of it.