Chapter 11

Derek found me in the library.

I'd been there since breakfast, hiding from the noise of the dining hall and the pressure of too many people broadcasting their morning moods. The library was quieter. Not silent, never silent in a building this old, but the traces here were different. Accumulated focus instead of accumulated anxiety. Easier to filter.

I was pretending to read when he slid into the chair across from me.

Second-year, lanky, the kind of guy who looked like he hadn't slept in a week even on his best days. I'd seen him around but we'd never talked. Different years, different circles. But today his eyes had a hollow quality I recognized. The look of someone who'd seen something that didn't make sense and couldn't stop turning it over in his head.

"You're the one who can read people, right?" He kept his voice low, almost a whisper. "The transfer kid. Cross's project."

"Yeah."

"I need to tell someone." He glanced around the library, checking who might overhear. A few students at distant tables, a librarian reshelfing books. No one close. "And the normal channels... they're not listening. Or they're pretending not to."

I closed my book. Set it aside. Gave him my full attention.

"What happened?"

"My roommate's gone." He said it like the words tasted wrong. "Jerome Wallace. Second-year like me. Scholarship kid, first-gen, no connections in this world."

The description hit me like a punch. The same profile as Lucia.

"When?"

"I woke up yesterday and his bed was made. Not slept-in-and-made, you understand? Made like it hadn't been touched. Hospital corners. Pillows arranged. The way the cleaning staff does it at the start of term." Derek's hands were flat on the table, pressing down like he needed the solid surface to keep himself grounded. "His desk was cleared. Closet empty. Everything gone. Every book, every photo, every piece of clothing. Like he'd never been there at all."

"Family emergency?"

"That's what housing said. Said his family came early that morning and picked up his stuff." Derek laughed, but there was no humor in it. "His family lives in Detroit. That's a ten-hour drive on a good day. You're telling me they got here before 6am? Packed up an entire room without making a sound? Left no trace at all?"

The same question Kezia had asked about Lucia. Different student, same impossible timeline.

"Did you hear anything during the night?"

Derek went still. His hands pressed harder against the table.

"That's the thing." His voice dropped even lower. "I did hear something. Or I think I did. I woke up around 2am. Just for a second, you know how you do sometimes. And there were... there were people in the room."

My skin prickled. "What kind of people?"

"I couldn't see them clearly. It was dark, I was half-asleep, everything was fuzzy. But there were shapes. Two of them, maybe three. Standing around Jerome's bed." He swallowed hard. "And there was this feeling. Like the air was wrong. Heavy. Like something was pressing down on the room."

"What did you do?"

"Nothing." The word came out like a confession. "I couldn't move. Couldn't speak. I tried to sit up and my body just... wouldn't. Like I was paralyzed. I remember thinking I needed to help him, needed to say something, but I couldn't make anything work." His eyes were wet now. "And then I was asleep again. Like someone flipped a switch. One second I was watching these figures around his bed, the next second it was morning and his side of the room was empty."

"You think they did something to you. Made you sleep."

"I don't think. I know." Derek's jaw was tight. "I'm a light sleeper. Always have been. If someone had come in and packed up everything he owned normally, I would've heard them. Boxes, footsteps, something. But there was nothing after those figures. Nothing until morning."

I thought about what I'd felt when I touched Lucia in the hallway. That draining sensation. The dimness spreading through her. Her token going cold.

"Was Jerome acting different before this? Tired? Having trouble focusing?"

Derek stared at me. "How did you know that?"

"Because there was another student. Lucia Medina. First-year. Same profile, same impossible timeline. I bumped into her in the hallway the week before she vanished. Felt something off. Saw something off."

"What do you mean, saw?"

"She was fading. Dimming. Like someone was draining everything that made her a Zant." I hesitated. "Her token had gone cold. I'd seen it before, when she was healthy. It was bright. Alive. The last time I saw her, it looked dead."

Derek was quiet for a long moment. Processing. I could feel him trying to decide whether to believe me, weighing the impossibility of what I was describing against the impossibility of what he'd witnessed himself.

"Jerome was the same," he said finally. "Off for weeks. Forgetting things. Missing classes. His personality was just... dimming. He used to be funny, you know? Quick with a joke, always had something to say. But the last few weeks, he'd just sit there. Staring at nothing." Derek's hands were shaking now. He noticed and pressed them harder against the table. "And his token. He had this old coin his grandfather gave him. He used to flip it when he was thinking. I hadn't seen him touch it in days. I thought he'd just lost interest."

"It probably went cold. Like Lucia's."

"Yeah." Derek's voice cracked. "I should've noticed. Should've said something."

"You couldn't have known."

"I watched them take him." The words came out raw. "I was awake. I saw them in the room. And I couldn't do anything."

The silence stretched between us. I could feel the weight of what he'd told me settling into my bones. Not just another disappearance with a convenient cover story. A witness. Someone who'd seen the moment it happened.

"I asked housing for more information," Derek continued. "Asked to see the email Jerome supposedly sent. Asked for a contact number for his family. They gave me nothing. Said it was a privacy issue." He shook his head. "And when I pushed, when I said I'd seen something in the room that night, they looked at me like I was crazy. Said I must have been dreaming. Said the stress of exams makes people imagine things."

"They're covering it up."

"They're not even trying to hide that they're covering it up. They just don't care." Derek looked at me with those hollow eyes. "You're the only person who's listened. The only one who believes me."

Above us, the library's monitoring wards pulsed. Just a flicker, barely visible, thin lines of pale gold running along the ceiling beams. They did that sometimes when conversations got too intense, when emotional energy spiked in ways the library's passive systems were designed to dampen. Derek noticed and lowered his voice even further.

"Be careful," he said. "If I'm right about this, if someone really is targeting scholarship kids with no connections..." He looked at me. "You fit the profile too. So do I."

"I know."

He stood up, gathering his things, then paused.

"The figures I saw. Around Jerome's bed." He hesitated. "One of them was doing something with their hands. Moving them over Jerome like... like they were pulling something out of him. And Jerome was just lying there. Not moving. Not fighting. Just lying there while they took whatever they were taking."

He walked away before I could respond. I watched him go, feeling the weight of everything he'd told me pressing down on my chest.

Two students in two weeks. Same profile. Same impossible timelines. And now an eyewitness who'd seen the extraction happening. Seen the figures. Felt himself paralyzed while they worked.

Someone was taking students. And the school was helping cover it up.

I found the others in the dining hall at our usual corner table. They already knew about Jerome. Word traveled fast among scholarship kids, and Dao had heard the basics before breakfast. But they didn't know what Derek had told me. They didn't know there was a witness.

"He saw them." I kept my voice low, barely above a whisper. "Derek. He woke up in the middle of the night and there were figures around Jerome's bed. Two or three of them. And he couldn't move. Couldn't speak. Like they'd paralyzed him."

The table went quiet.

Across the hall, a third-year touched the ring on her finger before starting her meal. The metal flared briefly, a soft amber glow, and I watched her shoulders relax as whatever the token held flowed into her. Casual magic. The kind of thing that was everywhere at Mudwick if you knew how to look. The kind of thing that made you forget this place could also hide something monstrous.

"He's sure?" Sasha asked. Her voice was steady but I could feel the fear underneath. "It wasn't a dream?"

"He's sure. And he said one of them was doing something with their hands. Moving them over Jerome like they were pulling something out of him."

"Extraction." Dao's voice was flat. "He watched them extract Jerome."

"And they made him sleep through most of it. Made him unable to move or call for help during the parts he did see."

Thaddeus looked pale. "If they can do that, make witnesses sleep, make them unable to move... how do we protect ourselves? How do we even know if it's happening to us?"

"We don't." Sasha closed her notebook. She'd been writing, but now she set down her pen. "That's the point. That's why they can keep doing it. No witnesses. No evidence. Just empty beds and family emergencies that don't add up."

Marcus hadn't said anything. He was sitting at the edge of our group, same as always, but something was different today. He looked worse than he had at the lake. Like he'd aged a year in the days since.

"Marcus." I kept my voice gentle. "Have you heard from your grandmother?"

He didn't look up. "She's gone downhill. Hospice called last night. They said it could be any time now." His voice was rough. "She tried to tell me something again. Kept saying the name Vance. Kept saying he was the one who figured it out, who found the way. Then she just... stopped. Couldn't remember what she'd been saying."

"Vance." Sasha wrote the name in her notebook. "Who's Vance?"

"I don't know. Old family name, maybe. Someone from when she was young." Marcus finally looked up. "But she said something else. Before she forgot. She said the portal in sublevel three, the one near the eastern foundations, she said that's where they take them. That's where they go through."

The table went silent.

"She said it's been happening for decades. Longer than that. And the portal is how they move them. How they keep it quiet." Marcus's jaw was tight. "She said the families who control everything, they've always needed fuel. Always needed power. And the easiest power to take is the kind nobody's protecting."

"First-generation students," Dao said. "Scholarship kids. People without connections."

"People nobody would miss."

The words hung in the air. I thought about Lucia saving good eggs for her roommate. About Jerome's personality dimming week by week. About the figures Derek had seen, moving their hands over a paralyzed body, taking whatever made him who he was.

"Two weeks until we all go home for winter break," Thaddeus said quietly. "Maybe we should wait. Start fresh next semester when we've had time to think."

"We can't wait." Dao's voice was sharp. "Another student could disappear while we're sitting around at home. Another person nobody will miss."

"What do we do?" Thaddeus asked. His voice was barely a whisper. "We can't go to the administration. They're clearly part of this. We can't tell our families because most of us don't have families in this world. We're just... we're just first-years. We don't have any power."

"We have information," Sasha said. "We know more than we did yesterday. We know there's a portal. We know there's a name, Vance. We know Derek saw something."

"And what good does that do us?"

"I don't know yet." She met each of our eyes in turn. "But we watch. We listen. We document. And we don't talk about this where anyone might overhear."

"That's it? Watch and wait?"

"For now. Until we have something concrete." She looked at Marcus. "Your family has history here. Old access. Do you think you could find out more about the sublevels? About what's really down there?"

Marcus was quiet for a long moment. Then he nodded slowly.

"Gran always said the Holloway name still meant something to the old systems. The wards, the doors, the things that were built before anyone alive was born." He looked at his hands. "Maybe it's time to find out if she was right."

"We plan over break," Sasha continued. "Research what we can. Come back in January ready to actually do something."

It wasn't much of a plan. More like the beginning of one. The decision to stop being passive and start being careful in a different way.

But it was all we had.

After lunch, Cross caught me in the hallway.

"Eli. Do you have a moment?"

Her office felt different today. The same books on the shelves, the same tokens on the windowsill, but something in the air had shifted. Or maybe I'd shifted. Maybe knowing what I knew now made everything look different.

"I wanted to check in before break," she said, settling into her chair. "See how you're adjusting. How your abilities are developing."

"Fine. Same as before."

"Aldridge says you're making progress with the people-traces exercises. Not standard place-memory, but something." She tilted her head. "Would you demonstrate for me? There's a lot of accumulated experience in this room. See what you can feel."

I didn't want to. The last thing I wanted was to open myself up in front of Cross, not after what I'd learned. But refusing would raise questions I couldn't answer.

I closed my eyes. Let my awareness expand.

The room pressed in. Not the room itself, not the way other students would feel it, but the people who'd been here. Cross, layer upon layer of her, decades of conversations and lessons and moments of connection. Students who'd sat in this chair before me, some anxious, some hopeful, some terrified of what they were becoming.

And underneath all of that, something else. Fainter. Harder to read.

The room itself.

Just for a second, I felt the walls. Not the people who'd touched them, but the stone itself. The weight of years pressed into every surface. The building remembering what had happened here.

Then it was gone.

I opened my eyes. Cross was watching me with an expression I couldn't quite read.

"What did you feel?"

"People. Mostly you. Some students from before." I hesitated. "And something else. Just for a second. The room itself, maybe. But it was gone before I could focus on it."

Cross was very still. Something flickered in her face. Not surprise, exactly. More like recognition.

"Your development is unusual," she said slowly. "More unusual than I expected."

"Is that bad?"

"It's not bad or good. It's just..." She paused, choosing her words carefully. "We'll explore it more next semester. When you've had more time to stabilize."

There was something she wasn't saying. I could feel it, the shape of information being withheld. But her walls were too good. I couldn't get more without pushing harder than I dared.

"Have a good break, Eli." She stood, signaling the conversation was over. "Rest. Spend time with your father. Don't worry too much about Mudwick while you're gone."

Don't worry. Right.

I left her office with more questions than I'd arrived with. Cross knew something about what I was becoming. Something that made her pause, made her careful, made her want to wait until next semester to explore it.

Was that caution or calculation?

I couldn't tell anymore.

That evening, Dad called.

"Just wanted to make sure you're still coming home for Christmas," he said. "Make sure you haven't changed your plans."

"No, I'll be there. Two weeks."

"Good. Good." I could hear him smiling through the phone. "I'm looking forward to having you home. It's been too quiet around here."

"Yeah. Me too."

The lie came easy. Part of me was looking forward to going home. Sleeping in my own bed. Eating Dad's terrible cooking. Pretending for a few days that the world was normal.

But the rest of me was dreading it. Because going home meant facing Shelby. Sitting across from her at the diner and lying about everything. Looking into the eyes of someone who knew me, really knew me, and pretending I was still the person she remembered.

"Your friend Shelby stopped by the other day," Dad said, like he was reading my mind. "Asked when you'd be back. I told her right before Christmas."

My stomach tightened. "What did she say?"

"Not much. Just that she was looking forward to seeing you." He paused. "Everything okay between you two? She seemed a little... I don't know. Worried, maybe."

"Everything's fine. Just haven't been great about keeping in touch."

"Well, you'll have time to catch up when you're here." He didn't push. That wasn't his way. "Anything else going on? School stuff? Classes?"

I thought about Derek's hollow eyes. About figures in the dark, extracting students while their roommates lay paralyzed. About portals in sublevels and names like Vance that meant something to dying grandmothers.

"Nothing much," I said. "Just ready for a break."

"Aren't we all." He yawned. "Get some rest, kid. I'll see you soon."

"See you soon, Dad."

I hung up and sat on my bed, phone in my hand. Two weeks until I went home. Two weeks until I had to sit across from Shelby and pretend everything was fine.

I didn't know how I was going to do it.

That night I couldn't sleep.

The traces of anxious students pressed in from the walls, but they felt different now. Not just the ordinary worries of people trying to learn and fit in. Some of these traces were older. Darker. The particular flavor of fear that comes from knowing something terrible and not being able to stop it.

How many students had lain in beds like this one, wondering if they'd be next? How many had felt themselves draining away before anyone noticed? How many had been paralyzed in the dark while figures moved around them, taking everything that made them who they were?

I thought about Derek watching Jerome's extraction. Unable to move. Unable to help. Watching them pull the Zant out of someone he'd lived with for a year.

Was that me? Would anyone notice if I started fading? Would anyone wake up paralyzed while figures moved around my bed?

Dao's breathing was steady in the darkness. The sound of someone who'd found a way to sleep despite everything. I envied him that.

I thought about texting Shelby. My phone was right there on the nightstand. I could send her something. Anything. Just to feel connected to a world that made sense.

But what would I say? Hey, remember me? I'm at a school where students disappear and nobody cares because we're not important enough to protect. How's your history test going?

And in two weeks I'd have to see her face to face. Have to look at her across a table at Denny's and talk about Christmas and college applications and all the normal things that didn't matter anymore. Have to pretend I was still the Eli she knew, when that Eli felt further away every day.

I put the phone face-down and stared at the ceiling instead.

Around 3am, I finally drifted off. My dreams were full of figures in the dark, hands moving over paralyzed bodies, empty beds that had been full the night before.

When I woke, Dao was already getting dressed.

"You were talking in your sleep," he said. "Couldn't make out the words. But you sounded scared."

"Bad dreams."

"Yeah." He pulled on his shoes. "I've been having those too."

Neither of us said anything else. We didn't have to.

The fear was everywhere now, once you knew how to feel it.