Chapter 94 | Joel Marsh’s Family

Chapter 94: Chapter 94 | Joel Marsh’s Family

The message from Dana Marsh arrived on a Wednesday.

Not through Denko. Through Mira’s RF-7 unit — the communication frequency she had registered through the hero authority accessibility system six weeks ago when she started tracking the motion filings. The unit converted incoming messages to audio. She heard it during her morning session.

She came out after breakfast with the board and set it face-up on the table.

Dana Marsh wants to meet.

Kai read it.

"Joel’s sister," he said.

Yes. She says she’s been following the investigation. She didn’t file independently because she didn’t think it would be acknowledged. She held the board. She says she sat in her car outside the hero authority building for forty minutes the day the canyon record correction was published.

He looked at the board.

She wants to know if I’m willing to meet. She says she’ll understand if I’m not.

He looked at the board.

"What do you want to do," he said.

Mira held the board.

She wrote slowly.

Ask her if she can come Thursday.

He looked at her.

She was looking at the wall near his shoulder.

"I’ll tell Denko to pass the message," he said.

Don’t use Denko, she wrote. She messaged me directly. I’ll reply directly.

He looked at the board.

"Okay," he said.

She took the board back. She went to her room.

He sat at the table.

—--

Thursday morning.

Dana Marsh arrived at ten.

She was thirty-one. Support-class instructor from the look of her — the particular posture of someone who spent their days telling other people to hold a position and demonstrating it themselves. Dark hair pulled back. She had the steady frequency in her voice that Mira would hear before he did.

She stood at the door and looked at Kai.

"Kai Renmei," she said.

"Yes," he said.

She looked at him for a moment.

"She didn’t tell me you were young," she said.

"She didn’t tell me much about you either," he said.

She almost smiled.

He let her in.

===

Shira was at the window. She turned when Dana came in and looked at her directly.

Dana stopped.

She looked at Shira for a moment.

"Shira Voss," she said.

"Yes," Shira said.

"My brother talked about you," Dana said. "He said you were the cleanest wind-type form he’d ever assessed in a joint expedition briefing."

Shira looked at her.

"He had good eyes," Shira said.

"Yes," Dana said. "He did."

Mira came out of her room.

She had the board and the RF-7 case and she stopped in the hallway when she saw Dana.

Dana turned.

She looked at Mira.

She did not say anything for a moment.

Mira looked at the wall near Dana’s shoulder.

Dana said: "He described your Gift frequency to me once. He said it was the closest thing to a pure resonance tone he had ever heard from a human source."

Mira held the board.

She did not write anything.

Dana looked at her.

"He would have been glad the filing went through," Dana said. "He tried twice. They returned both of them."

Mira held the board.

She wrote very slowly.

She held it up.

I know. Denko found the records.

Dana looked at the board.

"He never told me he was filing," she said. "I found out after."

I know that too, the board came back.

Dana looked at the board.

She looked at Mira.

"How," she said.

The filing dates don’t match anything he told you. If he had told you, you would have filed your own statement sooner.

Dana was quiet.

She looked at the board.

"Yes," she said. "That’s right."

===

They sat at the table.

Kai made tea.

He brought four cups and sat down.

Dana held her cup and looked at the table.

She said: "I have something. I wasn’t sure whether to bring it. I brought it anyway." She set the cup down. She reached into her bag. She brought out a small device — a personal audio recorder, the kind heroes used for debrief logs. "He made recordings. Not official debrief. Personal notes. He had a habit of talking through his Gift assessments out loud." She set it on the table. "There are three recordings from the week before the expedition. He talks about the canyon briefing in all three."

The table was quiet.

She looked at Mira.

"I thought you should hear them," she said. "Before anyone else. Before the investigation team, before the committee documentation." She looked at the recorder. "He talks about the frequency. The Resonance node. What he thought it was."

Mira looked at the recorder.

She looked at the wall near Dana’s shoulder.

The board came up.

What did he think it was.

Dana looked at the board.

"He thought it was a second generation node," she said. "Not a standard Resonance deposit. Something that had been developing for a long time. Something that would change the classification of every dungeon in the surrounding district if it was properly documented."

The Renmei family knew, Mira wrote.

"Yes," Dana said. "That’s what the recordings suggest. He had picked up information through the assessment network — nothing official, just fragments. He was trying to document them before the expedition." She looked at the recorder. "He thought if he documented everything beforehand and something happened, someone would find it."

The table was very quiet.

Someone did, Mira wrote.

Dana looked at the board.

She looked at Mira.

"Yes," she said. "You did."

—

Mira held the recorder.

She held it for a long time without pressing anything.

Then she said: "Play it."

Not through the board.

Out loud.

At the clearest function Kai had heard from her — not fourteen percent, not the practice sessions, not her name said once in the dark. Clear and deliberate and present.

Two words.

Dana looked at her.

Shira looked at her.

Mira was looking at the recorder.

Dana pressed play.

—--

Joel Marsh’s voice filled the apartment.

He had a support-class voice — the frequency that carried without effort, the kind that was built to be heard through wind and distance. He was talking through a Gift assessment, the way Dana had described. Methodical. Clear. The canyon briefing. The node. What he had picked up through the assessment network.

The frequency at eight-forty hertz is consistent with a second-generation deposit. Sustained. Not passive. It’s been building. If the expedition classification is accurate at S-rank then the node exposure should be manageable, but if the classification is wrong—

A pause.

The Elys girl is going. She’ll feel it before anyone else. Her base frequency matches the node’s primary resonance within a standard deviation. Make sure she knows what she’s going in.

A longer pause.

They probably didn’t tell her.

—

The recording ended.

The apartment was quiet.

Mira was looking at the recorder.

She was not looking at the wall near Dana’s shoulder. She was looking at the recorder itself. At the object.

Her ears had gone a color that was not flustered and was not the shy version.

Something else.

Dana looked at the recorder.

She looked at Mira.

"He tried to warn you," Dana said. "He told the expedition coordinator the day before. I found that in the network records after. The coordinator filed it as a standard pre-expedition concern and did not pass it on."

Mira looked at the recorder.

She picked up the marker.

She wrote slowly.

She held the board up toward Dana.

It said: He was right. I felt it before anyone else.

Dana looked at the board.

"I know," she said.

I didn’t know what I was feeling, Mira wrote. I had never felt a second-generation node before. I thought it was an anomaly in my own Gift reading.

"He thought that might happen," Dana said. "That’s in the second recording."

Mira held the board.

She lowered it.

She looked at the recorder.

She wrote one more thing and held it toward Dana.

Dana read it.

She was quiet for a moment.

She nodded once.

She picked up the recorder.

She put it back in her bag.

She stood up.

"I’ll send you the documentation files," she said. "Everything I found. You should have them before the investigation team does."

She looked at both wives.

She looked at Kai.

"Thank you," she said. "For the filing. For not stopping."

She left.

—-

The apartment was quiet after the door closed.

Shira was at the window.

Mira had the board in her lap and was looking at the table.

Kai sat at the table and did not say anything.

After a while Mira picked up the marker.

She wrote something and pushed the board to the center of the table.

It said: He tried to warn me.

Shira looked at the board from the window.

"Yes," she said.

He tried to warn me and then he went in anyway, Mira wrote. Because the expedition was happening and someone with his Gift frequency had to go.

The board stayed on the table.

That’s what support-class heroes do, it said. They go in because someone has to.

The table was quiet.

Shira said, to the window: "Yes."

Mira looked at the board.

She wiped it clean.

She wrote: The second recording. Dana said he thought I might not recognize what I was feeling.

"Yes," Kai said.

He knew me by my Gift frequency before the expedition. From the briefing documentation.

"Yes," Kai said.

He knew me that way and he still tried to warn me.

He looked at her.

She looked at the table.

She wrote one more line and left the board face-up.

I want to hear the second recording.

"I’ll tell Dana," Kai said.

She nodded.

She picked up the board.

She went to her room.

—-

He sat at the table.

He looked at the window.

Shira was still there.

He said: "The expedition coordinator."

"I know," she said.

"He filed it as a standard concern."

"I know," she said.

"It’s in the criminal complaint," he said. "The suppression of pre-expedition safety assessments. That’s one of the counts."

She looked at the window.

"Good," she said.

He looked at the table.

"Shira," he said.

She looked at the window.

"The noodle shop," he said. "When this is done."

She was quiet.

Then: "Green awning."

"Yes," he said.

"All three of us," she said.

"Yes," he said.

She looked at the window.

The corner of her mouth moved. Not the armor version. The underneath one.

"Mira will fire the board twice," she said.

"At minimum," he said.

She ate.

He looked at the table.

He went to make tea.

—-

That evening the system chimed.

『 Bond Level — Shira Voss: 4.0 / 10. 』 『 Bond Level — Mira Elys: 4.0 / 10. 』 『 BOND LEVEL 4.0 — BOTH WIVES SIMULTANEOUSLY. 』 『 MULTIPLIER: ×2,000. ACTIVE. 』 『 The system notes: 』 『 Mira Elys said play it out loud. Two words. Clear function. Not practiced. Not the name. Not a phrase from the album. Something she decided to say in the moment. 』 『 The system notes that this is new. 』 『 Joel Marsh tried to warn her before the expedition. She did not know until today. 』 『 The system will not note what that means to her because it is hers. 』 『 Shira Voss said: Mira will fire the board twice. At minimum. 』 『 Kai Renmei said: at minimum. 』 『 The system notes both of them knew. 』 『 Bond Level 4.0. 』 『 Both wives. Simultaneously. 』 『 The dungeon unseals in six days. 』 『 The system is watching. 』

Kai read it.

He put the phone down.

From Mira’s room — the RF-7 at eight-forty hertz.

Then Joel Marsh’s voice frequency running through the Gift pathway. Not his voice. The frequency she had been calibrated to — the same resonance range, eight-forty hertz, the Gift matching the node matching the support-class hero who had tried to warn her.

She was running his frequency through her own.

Learning the shape of it.

He sat at the table and listened until it stopped.

Then he went to bed.

----

Author Note

The RF-7 Audiological Unit was a specialist device calibrated for Gift practitioners whose abilities operated in the acoustic and resonance frequency range. It served two functions. The primary function was therapeutic , it generates sustained tones at precise hertz values to stimulate damaged Gift pathways during recovery sessions. The secondary function was a built-in audio communication channel, standard on the specialist grade unit, which allowed frequency-based contact between practitioners and registered clinics without requiring visual interaction.