Chapter 24| Thought I Skipped Training.

Chapter 24: Chapter 24| Thought I Skipped Training.

It was 7:00 AM in the morning.

Zane had skipped training today.

First time since week one. He’d lain in bed at 6:10 AM staring at the ceiling and made the decision without much deliberation. His body needed rest more than another activation rep. The daily quest could wait until evening.

He grabbed his jacket and headed down to the cafeteria.

Sera was already at a table when he arrived. Today’s hoodie was dark green. He’d never seen that one before. Still oversized. Still completely unreadable underneath it.

’New hoodie,’ he thought. ’Still same problem.’

『 This will continue to be a problem for the foreseeable future. 』

’I know,’ he thought. .Naughty system’.

She looked up from her communicator when he sat down across from her. Something shifted in her expression. Not surprise exactly. More like someone recalibrating an expectation they hadn’t realised they’d formed.

"You’re not at training," she said.

"Observant," Zane said. "Could say the same for you. Can’t train on an empty stomach."

Sera looked at him for a second then nodded once. "Fair."

She pushed the wrapped breakfast item across the table toward him without further comment.

Zane unwrapped it and ate.

’Prodigies,’ he thought, glancing around the near empty cafeteria. ’Most of them don’t even think about skipping training. They’ve had their Sigils since they were young. Some as early as three. Training isn’t discipline for them. It’s just maintenance. They were never in a position where they had to work for something they didn’t have.’

He looked at his food.

’Must be nice,’ he thought. ’To grow up already knowing what you are.’

She looked up when he sat down and pushed his cold coffee across without being asked.

"You look tired," she said.

"I’m fine, just stress," Zane replied.

She looked at him with the specific expression of someone who had decided not to push but had also made a note.

"The drill session yesterday," she said, picking up her cup. "Vael ran your section outside?"

"Yeah," Zane said.

"Ours too." Sera shook her head slightly. "Station three nearly finished me. Sixty seconds of sustained output is longer than it sounds when you’re actually running it."

"How did you manage it," Zane said.

"Badly," she said without hesitation. "But I managed it." She tilted her head. "You?"

"Footwork drills," Zane said. "No Sigil to run."

Sera looked at him. Not with pity. With something more considered than that.

"Does that bother you," she said. "The stations that don’t account for you."

Zane picked up his coffee.

"Less than it used to," he said.

She nodded once and let it go.

They ate in the comfortable silence that had become theirs. The cafeteria ran its noise around them. Someone dropped a tray two tables over. Nobody at their table acknowledged it.

Then Sera said quietly, "I looked up the Harbor files."

Zane went still.

Not visibly. Just internally. The specific stillness of someone who had heard something they hadn’t expected and was deciding how to receive it.

"The public ones," she added quickly. "Academy library archive. Nothing classified." She wrapped both hands around her cup. "I just wanted to understand what actually happened. Not the version people repeat in corridors."

Zane looked at his coffee.

"What did you find," he said.

"That it was more complicated than anyone talks about," she said. "The official report cited structural failure and delayed response time. But the archived news coverage from the week after. Some of it mentioned that the NSA had given your father incomplete intelligence on the building layout before he went in." She paused. "That detail disappeared from most coverage pretty quickly."

Zane was quiet for a moment.

’Incomplete intelligence,’ he thought. ’I didn’t know that.’

The original Zane’s memories had carried the shape of the Harbor Collapse. The failure, the casualties, the fall from grace. Hut not the specifics. Not that detail. It was all just fuzzy.

"Why are you telling me this," Zane said.

Sera looked at him directly.

"Because people in this building carry your father’s name like it’s a verdict," she said. "And I thought you should know that the case was more complicated than the verdict."

Zane held her gaze for a moment.

He didn’t say anything.

She went back to her food.

He picked up his coffee and drank it and thought about incomplete intelligence and archived news coverage and a detail that had disappeared from most coverage pretty quickly.

’The NSA gave bad information,’ he thought. ’And then spent fifteen years letting the story be about his failure.’

He filed that away somewhere specific.

’But that’s done,’ he thought. ’Whatever happened. Whatever the NSA knew or didn’t know. Iit’s not mine to carry. Let bygones be bygones. His story ended the way it ended. Mine is still going.’

He picked up his coffee.

’The son doesn’t owe the father a verdict. Just his own life.’

Sera stole one of his fries.

He didn’t stop her this time.

"There," Zane said. "I fulfilled my promise."

Sera looked up from her food. "Oh yeah." The corner of her mouth pulled into a slow smirk. "You actually remembered."

"I said I would," Zane said.

She said nothing to that. Just smirked at her food and kept eating like the whole thing hadn’t happened.

They finished breakfast in the comfortable silence that had become theirs. The cafeteria was starting to fill as more students trickled in. The early morning quiet gave way to the usual noise of a building waking up.

Most students usually ordered food to their dorms. The academy had a delivery system through the internal network. Convenient in theory. In practice the delivery times were unreliable enough that half the building had stopped trusting it. Cold food arrived late. Hot food arrived cold. Sometimes it didn’t arrive at all and the student had already committed to staying in. Zane at least had to snack a lot in the morning or settle with what he was given.

The ones who showed up in person at least knew what they were getting.

Zane checked the time on his communicator.

7:48 AM. Classes started at 8:30 AM.

He was about to pocket it when it buzzed.

Got it. Here’s the updated message format:

He was about to pocket it when it buzzed.

One message. From Maren.

Maren: You skipped training today. Hope you’re not becoming lazy.

Zane looked at it for a second.

Sera glanced over from across the table. "Something wrong?"

"No," Zane replied.

He typed back.

Zane: Rest day. The body needed it.

The response came in under ten seconds.

Maren: Fair enough. Can you come to the training grounds before class? Thought we’d do something different today.

Zane checked the time. 7:48 AM. Classes at 8:30 AM.

Forty minutes. Might be enough.

He pocketed his communicator and stood up.

"Leaving already?" Sera said.

"Have some training to do," Zane said.

She looked at him. "I thought it was a rest day."

"It was," Zane said. "Until it wasn’t."

She almost smiled at that.

He picked up his jacket and headed out.