Chapter 20

Dao found me on the Drift field.

I'd come back here without really meaning to. The morning after everything with Lucia, after the conversations that hadn't told me what to do but had made me think harder about why I was asking. The field was empty this early, the pools dormant, the grass still wet with dew.

I sat in the middle of the pitch and watched the sun climb. Trying to feel something. Trying to figure out if I was staying or going or just waiting for something to make the choice for me.

Footsteps behind me. I didn't turn.

Dao sat down without asking. Close enough to talk, far enough to give me space.

"Sasha says you're thinking about leaving."

"Thinking about it."

"Don't."

I almost laughed. "That's your pep talk? 'Don't'?"

"I'm not good at pep talks." He picked at the grass, pulled up a handful, let it fall. "But I know what it's like to watch someone give up. And I know what happens after."

"Your grandfather."

"Yeah." He was quiet for a moment. "He didn't give up all at once. Nobody does. It was gradual. First he stopped fighting the accusations. Then he stopped writing letters. Then he stopped believing anyone would ever listen. And once he stopped believing..." He pulled up more grass. "He just faded. Like the giving up was what actually killed him. Not stress. Not heartbreak. Just the absence of something to fight for."

"Maybe he was right to stop. Maybe fighting was pointless."

"Maybe. But at least when he was fighting, he was alive. He had purpose. Something to wake up for. When he stopped, all he had was waiting. Waiting for an end he couldn't control. Waiting for someone else to decide how his story finished."

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?"

"It's supposed to make you think." Dao turned to look at me. His face was hard, but not angry. Something else underneath. "You can leave. Go back to Ohio. Be the weird kid who reads people in a town that's dying anyway. Spend the rest of your life wondering what would have happened if you'd stayed."

"Or?"

"Or you stay. Keep fighting. Probably lose." He shrugged. "But lose with people who give a shit about you. That's the choice. Alone and safe, or together and fighting. There's no option where you're both safe and together. That doesn't exist."

I thought about that. The way he framed it. Not "stay because you can win" but "stay because you won't be alone."

"Sasha's scared," I said.

"Sasha's terrified. She fits the profile better than any of us. First-gen, scholarship, no family connections. She knows she's a target. Goes to sleep every night wondering if tomorrow's the day they come for her." Dao's voice got harder. "You know what scares her more than that? Being alone when it happens. Having nobody who knows the truth. Nobody who'll ask questions when she disappears."

The words landed heavy.

"If you leave," he continued, "it's not just you giving up. It's you telling Sasha and me that we're not worth staying for. That the fight we're in isn't your fight. That when things get hard, you'll find the exit and leave us to deal with what's left."

"That's not fair."

"None of this is fair. But it's true." He stood up, brushed grass off his pants. Offered me a hand. "Stay or go. I can't make that choice for you. But know what you're choosing. Know who you're leaving behind."

I looked at his hand. Thought about Sasha in the library, researching symbols with shaking hands. Thought about Dao's grandfather, fading away because he'd run out of things to fight for. Thought about Lucia, staying because leaving meant they won.

I took his hand. Let him pull me to my feet.

"I haven't decided yet."

"I know. But you're listening. That's something." He almost smiled. "Come on. Sasha found something. Says it's important."

The empty classroom felt different with just three of us.

The table where we used to crowd together had too much space now. Marcus's absence was obvious. Thaddeus's was quieter, more like a slow leak than a sudden loss. Just me and Dao and Sasha, sitting in a triangle, trying to figure out what came next.

Sasha had papers spread across the table. Notes in her precise handwriting, photographs from the facility, pages copied from old books.

"I've been thinking about what Thaddeus said," she started. "About accumulating power. Fighting from within. Playing the long game."

"And?"

"And it sounds smart. It sounds like the adult thing to do. Graduate, get positioned, work your way up until you have the influence to change things." She tapped one of the pages. "But I've been looking at the pattern. Everyone who tried that approach. The people who played by the rules and tried to reform from inside."

"What happened to them?"

"Nothing. That's the point." She spread out a timeline she'd constructed. Names, dates, career trajectories. "They got promoted to positions with no real power. Transferred to remote postings where they couldn't cause trouble. Given honors and titles that came with no authority. The system knows exactly how to handle reformers. It doesn't destroy them. It neutralizes them."

Dao leaned forward, studying the names. "These are all people who investigated the disappearances?"

"Or tried to. Or got too close to questions they weren't supposed to ask." Sasha pointed at one name near the top of the list. "This woman was a professor here forty years ago. Started asking about students who'd transferred unexpectedly. Within six months, she was 'promoted' to a research position in some archive nobody's ever heard of. Spent the rest of her career cataloging old documents that nobody reads."

"So Thaddeus's plan won't work."

"Not the way he thinks. Not slowly, not carefully, not by accumulating the kind of power the institution is willing to give you." Sasha looked at me. "But that doesn't mean there's no way to fight from inside."

"What do you mean?"

"The headmaster. Cross. Whoever's really running this. They're afraid of exposure. That's why they created the Blackwood story so fast. Why they wrapped everything up so neatly. They need the institution to look legitimate. Need students and families and the outside world to trust that the system works."

"So?"

"So their power depends on secrets. On nobody knowing what's really happening. On keeping the truth buried under official stories and convenient explanations." She leaned forward. "What if we could know? Really know, not just suspect? What if we could see through the stories and understand who's compromised and who isn't?"

Dao caught on before I did. "Eli."

"Right." Sasha nodded. "You can read people. Not perfectly, not everyone, but better than anyone else here. What if that's the weapon? Not evidence they can bury. Not accusations they can deflect. But knowledge. Understanding who's who before they know you're looking."

"Cross has walls," I said. "Perfect walls. I've tried to read her and gotten nothing."

"Cross has had decades to build those walls. She knows what she's hiding and she's had years to practice hiding it." Sasha pulled out another page. "But what about everyone else? What about the headmaster? What about faculty who might know pieces without knowing the whole picture? What about students from old families who've heard things they don't realize are important?"

"You want me to read people without their permission. Deliberately. As a strategy."

"I want you to use what you have." Her voice was steady. No judgment, no moral lecture. Just pragmatism. "We can't fight with evidence. Every time we find some, it disappears. We can't fight with accusations. They just get absorbed into new stories. We can't fight with institutional power because the institution is the enemy. But information? Understanding who knows what? That's something they can't take from us. And you're the only one who can get it."

I thought about what she was asking.

Reading people on purpose. Not just letting impressions wash over me but actively reaching in, looking for secrets, treating my ability as a tool for gathering intelligence. It went against everything Cross had taught me about control and boundaries and respecting the privacy of other minds.

But Cross might be the enemy. Her rules might be designed to keep me contained. And my discomfort was a luxury I might not be able to afford.

"The headmaster," I said. "I want to start with the headmaster."

"Why him?"

"Because he gave the speech. Sold the official story. If he knows the truth and chose to cover it up, I'll feel it. And if he doesn't know, if he's being played too, then maybe there's someone at the top who isn't part of this."

"And if his walls are as good as Cross's?"

"Then I'll have learned that the walls go all the way up. That's information too."

Dao grinned. That sharp, dangerous smile I'd seen before. The one that meant he'd found something worth doing.

"Now that sounds like a plan."

"It's not a plan yet. It's a goal." Sasha was already taking notes. "We need to figure out how to get Eli close to the headmaster. A first-year student doesn't just walk into his office and start asking questions."

"Declaration Day," Dao said.

We both looked at him.

"It's in four weeks. End of the year. First-years choose their Sign." He leaned back in his chair. "The headmaster officiates. Gives a speech. Shakes hands with every student who declares. If Eli's going to read him, that's the moment."

Sasha nodded slowly. "Brief contact. Public setting. Nothing suspicious about a student being nervous during Declaration Day."

"Will a handshake be enough?" Dao asked me.

"I don't know. It depends on how strong his walls are. How distracted he is. How much I can push without being obvious." I thought about it. "But it's better than trying to schedule a meeting I can't justify."

"Then that's the plan. Declaration Day. You shake his hand. You read everything you can." Sasha made a note. "What Sign are you going to choose?"

The question caught me off guard. I'd been so focused on the reading that I hadn't thought about the ceremony itself.

"I don't know. They all feel too small."

Sasha looked up from her notes. "Too small?"

"Like I'd be choosing one room in a house I'm supposed to have the keys to." The metaphor came out before I'd thought it through. I didn't know where it came from. "Hearth, Thorn, Gate, Tide. They're all... pieces. And picking one feels like giving up on the rest."

Dao and Sasha exchanged a glance. Neither of them knew what to make of that.

Neither did I.

"You have to pick something," Sasha said finally. "That's how it works. First-years declare for one of the four Signs."

"I know how it works." I'd been thinking about this since I arrived, in the background, never quite addressing it directly. "But I'm not a place-reader. I don't sense saturation in land or buildings. I don't fit any of the categories."

"So what are you?"

I thought about the door in the Portal Hall. The unmarked one that nobody approached. The Sign that officially didn't exist.

"There's a fifth Sign," I said. "Wellspring. Absence. The one they pretend isn't real."

"You can't declare for a Sign that doesn't exist."

"No. But I can stand there and not declare for any of the others." I looked at them. "If I'm going to stay, if I'm going to fight, I'm not going to pretend to be something I'm not. I'll go through the ceremony. I'll shake the headmaster's hand. But I won't claim a Sign that doesn't fit me just to make the administration comfortable."

Dao laughed. "They're going to hate that."

"Probably."

"Good." He leaned forward. "So that's two weapons. The reading and the refusal. Hit them with both at once. Learn what the headmaster knows and show them you're not playing by their rules."

"It might backfire. They might decide I'm a problem that needs handling."

"They already think that. Cross told you as much." Sasha closed her notebook. "At least this way, you're a problem on your own terms."

A problem on my own terms. I liked the sound of that.

"Four weeks," I said. "Four weeks to prepare. Figure out what questions to ask, what reactions to look for, how to push without being obvious."

"We'll help." Sasha was already thinking ahead. "I'll research the headmaster. His history, his connections, anything that might tell us what he knows. Dao can watch the faculty, see if anyone's acting strange as Declaration Day approaches."

"And if this doesn't work? If his walls are perfect and we learn nothing?"

"Then we try something else." Dao shrugged. "That's how fighting works. You try something. It fails. You try something different. You keep going until you run out of options or you win."

"Or until you die."

"Everyone dies eventually. Might as well die swinging."

It wasn't comforting. It wasn't supposed to be. But there was something honest about it. Something that made more sense than Thaddeus's patient accumulation or the administration's smooth reassurances.

You fight. You probably lose. But you fight anyway, because the alternative is worse.

Sasha stood up, gathered her papers. "I should get started on the research. Declaration Day isn't far."

She left. Dao stayed.

"You're going to do it," he said. Not a question.

"Yeah. I think I am."

"Good." He was quiet for a moment. "For what it's worth, I'm glad. Not just because we need you. Because..." He struggled with the words. Dao wasn't good at this kind of thing. "Because you're one of us. Whatever that means. And watching you leave would have sucked."

"One of us."

"You know what I mean. The people who see what's wrong and can't look away. The people who'd rather fight and lose than surrender and wonder." He shrugged. "There aren't a lot of us. We should stick together."

I thought about that. The idea of belonging to something. Not an institution or a Sign or a family legacy. Just a handful of people who refused to quit.

It wasn't much. But it was more than I'd had in Millbrook. More than I'd had anywhere, really.

"Dao?"

"Yeah?"

"Thanks. For not giving me a real pep talk. For just being honest."

He almost smiled. "Pep talks are bullshit anyway. All that 'you can do it' crap. Nobody knows if you can do it. You just do it or you don't." He headed for the door. "See you at practice tomorrow?"

"Yeah. I'll be there."

"Good. We need to stop losing. It's embarrassing."

He left. I sat alone in the empty classroom, thinking about everything that had happened. Everything that was coming.

I called Dad that night.

"Hey, kid. How's it going?"

"Better. I think." I leaned back against the wall. "I've been doing a lot of thinking. About what you said."

"And?"

"And I'm going to stay. Finish the year. See what happens."

I could hear the relief in his voice, even though he tried to hide it. "I'm glad. Not because I don't want you home. But because I think you'd regret leaving."

"Yeah. I think so too."

There was a pause. Then Dad said, "Shelby came by the house yesterday."

My stomach dropped. "She did?"

"Just stopped in. Said she was in the neighborhood, but I don't think she was." Another pause. "She asked about you. Whether you were okay. Whether you'd mentioned her at all."

"What did you tell her?"

"That you've been busy. That school's been intense. That I'm sure you'll call when you get a chance." He didn't sound like he believed any of it. "Eli, that girl is worried about you. And I get the sense she feels like she's losing a friend."

The guilt settled in my chest like a stone.

"I should call her."

"You should. Soon. Before she stops waiting."

"I will."

"Promise?"

"I promise."

We talked for a few more minutes. Normal stuff. The weather in Millbrook. Dad's latest attempt to fix the gutters. The Reds' terrible start to the season. By the time I hung up, I almost felt normal. Almost felt like a kid talking to his father about nothing important.

I looked at my phone. Shelby's number right there. One tap and I could hear her voice.

I put the phone away.

Not tonight. Tomorrow. Or the day after. When I'd figured out what to say, how to explain the distance without explaining anything at all.

The lie felt familiar now. Comfortable. I'd been telling it so long I almost believed it myself.

Four weeks until Declaration Day. Four weeks to prepare for a reading that might reveal everything or nothing. Four weeks to decide who I was going to be.

I thought about Dad's question. Are you leaving because you want to, or because staying is hard?

Staying was hard. That hadn't changed. But somewhere in the last few days, the hardness had shifted from a reason to leave to a reason to stay. Hard meant it mattered. Hard meant I was fighting something real.

I thought about Lucia. Leaving means they won.

I wasn't going to let them win. Not by draining me. Not by scaring me away. Not by making me disappear into a comfortable surrender.

I thought about the man in gray. His certainty that I'd come around. That I'd eventually see things his way or remove myself from the equation.

He was wrong. I was going to stay. Going to fight. Going to find out what the Accord really was and who was really running it and what Miriam was really fighting against.

Not because I thought I'd win. But because I wasn't going to let them be right about me.

Declaration Day was in four weeks. I'd shake the headmaster's hand. See what I could see.

Then summer. Home. Dad. Millbrook with its empty storefronts and boarded-up windows. A few months to sleep in my own bed and eat Dad's terrible cooking and pretend to be normal.

And in September, I'd come back.

Not because I had answers. Not because I thought we'd win. But because Dao and Sasha would be here, and I wasn't going to make them fight alone.

That wasn't much. But it was enough.