Chapter 149: Morris (II)

Morris looked at Henrik.

"We share a house," Henrik said. "I’ve mentored students from Ascendant for years. I have standing." He looked at his cast. "Though my current capacity for in-person meetings is limited."

"A medical wing visit from a house mentor wouldn’t be unusual," Morris said. "Especially given recent events. Students have been checking on you regularly."

"I can send a message requesting they come to see me. Natural enough framing — I want to check on how the expedition aftermath has affected general student wellbeing, I’m reaching out to students who were connected to it." Henrik’s expression was careful. "I tell them enough to be alert without telling them they’ve been specifically targeted. I recommend they alter their competition movement patterns slightly — take different routes between venues, don’t move alone if they can avoid it."

"That’s a narrow line to walk," Seraphina said.

"I’ve walked narrower ones." Henrik looked at Morris. "When?"

"Today if possible. Tomorrow at the latest." Morris was back in operational mode, which Seraphina recognized as her natural register. "The competition begins Friday. The opening ceremonies involve significant public gathering — ideal cover for an approach if the organization has operatives already in place. I want this student alert before then."

"I’ll send the message this morning."

Morris nodded. She picked up the enrollment list and the risk assessment form. "I’m taking these. I’ll have copies made and the originals returned to your file."

"The committee members who signed the clearance," William said. "Besides Hale."

"I’ll run their backgrounds against the investigation timeline." Morris’s voice was level. "If there’s a pattern, I’ll find it. If they were pressured rather than complicit, that’s a different situation." She looked at the folder. "I’ll also pull every committee decision Hale has been involved in for the past year and review them for similar patterns."

"If you find other clearances that shouldn’t have been granted—" Seraphina started.

"Then we have a larger problem than one assassination contract," Morris finished. "Yes. I’m aware." She looked around the room at the four of them. "This doesn’t leave this room. Not a word to teammates, study groups, friends, anyone. If the organization has surveillance on the target, they may have surveillance on people close to the target. Behavioral changes in the student’s social environment could trigger acceleration."

"Understood," William said.

"Cross." Morris fixed him with a direct look. "Your mother’s source — the merchant contact in the capital. If she finds the next layer in the Hale chain before Friday, I want to know immediately. Not after practice, not at the next convenient moment. Immediately."

"Yes."

She looked at Kai. The look had a different quality than the one she’d given him before — still assessing, but with something added that was closer to acknowledgment.

"Wraith," she said. "I have significant questions about you that I’m deferring because we don’t have time for them and because the people I trust have vouched for you." She paused. "After the competition. You and I are going to have a conversation."

"I’ll be available," Kai said.

"Good." She moved to the door and stopped with her hand on the frame, which was apparently where people in this room delivered their final thoughts, because it was where she’d watched Seraphina do exactly the same thing two days ago without knowing she was mirroring the pattern.

"You did good work," Morris said. "Identifying the connection, tracing the mechanism, bringing it here rather than trying to handle it independently." A beat. "That last part specifically. Knowing when to bring in additional capability is not a skill that comes naturally to people your age. Or most ages."

She left.

The door closed.

The room was quiet.

Henrik exhaled slowly. "Elara Morris has spent thirty years making difficult situations more manageable. If anyone can position security assets around this student without triggering the organization’s awareness, it’s her."

"She moved fast," Seraphina observed.

"She always does. She assesses once and then acts. Reassessment happens in response to new information, not in response to uncertainty." He looked tired in the way people looked tired when a weight had been partially redistributed rather than removed. "You three did the right thing coming here."

"We needed the files," William said.

"You needed the files and you needed an adult with institutional authority and you were willing to trust that coming here was the right choice even though it meant disclosing things you’d been managing carefully." Henrik looked at each of them in turn. "That’s not nothing."

Seraphina looked at his cast. "How are you actually feeling."

Henrik seemed mildly surprised by the question, which suggested it hadn’t been asked often enough.

"Like someone threw me into a wall," he said. "Adequately functional for the circumstances."

Kai made a small sound that Seraphina identified after a moment as something almost like a laugh.

Henrik looked at him.

"William uses that word," Kai said. "Adequate. It’s become something of a recurring theme."

"I’ve noticed," Henrik said dryly. "It undersells him consistently."

"That’s the point," William said, without inflection.

The three of them looked at him.

He picked up the message crystal from the bedside table and returned it to his pocket, checked that the key to Henrik’s office was back in the drawer where it belonged, and straightened his jacket.

"We should get to morning classes," he said. "Normal routine."

"Normal routine," Seraphina agreed.

They said goodbye to Henrik, who was already reaching for his papers with the careful one-armed movement of a man who had things to do and a broken arm was not going to be the reason they didn’t get done.

In the corridor, walking back through the medical wing’s quiet morning atmosphere, the three of them moved in the easy proximity of people who had been through something together and had stopped performing the distance that social convention suggested.

"Morris will handle the security positioning," Kai said quietly. "Henrik will handle the student briefing. Hale’s access will be revoked by end of day."

"Which leaves us," Seraphina said.

"Which leaves us competing," William said. "And watching. And being ready for whatever they decide to do when they realize their infrastructure has been disrupted."

"They’ll know something went wrong when Hale loses access," Seraphina said. "Even if it looks routine, a careful organization will notice the timing."

"Yes," Kai said. "Which means Friday becomes critical. The opening ceremony is the first moment of full exposure. If they decide to accelerate rather than abort—"

"Then Friday evening is when it happens," William finished.

They stepped out of the medical wing into the morning light. The grounds were properly awake now — students moving between buildings, voices carrying across the open spaces, the ordinary texture of an academy day three days before a major competition.

Seraphina looked at the sky. Clear. Good weather for outdoor events. The kind of morning that made things look more manageable than they were.

"Three days," she said.

"Three days," Kai agreed.

William said nothing. He was looking at the training halls in the distance with the expression Seraphina had learned to read as him running sequences in his head — footwork, timing, coverage angles, the particular spatial mathematics of someone who was already thinking about where he needed to be and when.

She let him think.

They had classes in twenty minutes and a competition in three days and somewhere in this academy a student who didn’t know they were being hunted was going about their morning without any of the information that was going to change how they spent the next seventy-two hours.

Morris would handle that.

Morris would handle a lot of things.

What remained was what had always remained — the actual competition, the actual danger, the actual moments where preparation either held or it didn’t.

Seraphina rolled her shoulder, felt the healed muscle respond cleanly, and decided that was sufficient confirmation.

She had trained for this. Not for this specifically — not for Hollow Court contracts and compromised administrators and a target she needed to protect alongside her own performance. But for the version of reality where things went wrong and you had to be good enough anyway.

She was good enough.

So were the people beside her.

That would have to be enough, and she believed it was, and she walked toward morning classes with the particular quality of someone who had made their assessment and was done second-guessing it.

Behind her, William fell into step on her left and Kai on her right, and the three of them crossed the grounds together in the clear morning light without saying anything further.

There was nothing further to say.

The work was the work.

Three days.

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