Page 32 of Zenith Tower

I knew where CORWIN had been filed. That was all the familiarity one visit had given me. The narrow boards still shifted beneath my feet, and when I passed the receiving table, my sleeve brushed a stack of new folders hard enough to make them slide. I caught them before they fell and waited for any answering sound from the corridor.

None came.

The older files began beyond the last shelving row. I found CORWIN between two names written in the same faded ink and eased the folder free.

Sadie Corwin. Untethered. Admitted for review at seventeen, following an unstable Mark reading at [REDACTED; see attached]. Contained pending resolution.

Contained.

They had usedresidentfor us when we crossed the bridge. Even Kieran’s cover began with his name. Sadie had become something that required containing before the first page of her file was finished.

I carried the folder to the reading table and opened it beneath the wall light.

The early pages held examination dates, reader signatures, and measurements written without explanation. Sadie had been brought back repeatedly during her first months. Then the entries stopped for several weeks. When they resumed, the language had changed. Her name disappeared from the notes. Every line began withsubject.

Near the bottom of the next page, one sentence had been underlined.

Subject’s reading pattern shows partial correlation with prior case S. Verita. See cross-reference file 0091.

My mother’s name sat between two clinical entries about a girl who had vanished.

I put one fingertip beneathS. Verita, careful not to touch the ink.

Selene had been dead for nine years. Until that moment, everything I knew about her connection to the Untethered had come from what she left behind: the wren brooch, the warning carved beneath a table, the marks she had hidden where the Council would not think to look. This was different. Someone in the Tower had examined her closely enough to compare another girl’s Mark to hers.

My hands had begun to shake. I set the folder flat before I damaged it and pressed my palms against the cold table.

I tried to remember my mother’s hands and could not. I remembered the weight of her brooch in my palm and her voice telling me to survive. I remembered the same few facts I had carried since childhood, but not the shape of her fingers or whether they had trembled when she was afraid.

File 0091.

The numbered cross-references occupied the shelves along the far wall. The labels ran in order until 0090. The next visible file was 0092.

A narrow space remained between them.

I drew the neighboring folders apart. The wood beneath the gap was clean, while dust had settled along the exposed shelf in front of it. A folder had rested there until someone removed it. Whether it had been taken deliberately or carried to another room, I could not tell.

I could not tell when. It might have happened before we entered the Tower. It might have happened after Marrow learned whose name I was following. There was no way to know which.

I returned to Sadie’s folder.

Later reports described episodes of pain, sudden changes in her reading, and intervals when no stable result could be taken. Names of attendants and readers filled the margins. The file recorded no visitors and no messages sent. Beyond the Tower officials handling her case, no one else appeared in its pages.

The final page held a stamped line.

OUTCOME: PENDING FURTHER REVIEW.

There was no date beneath it.

I searched the back of the page and the inside cover. Nothing recorded a release, transfer, or death. The file simply stopped.

Two soft knocks sounded against the archive door.

I closed the folder and returned it to the shelf. The gap at 0091 remained visible from the end of the row. I memorized the shelf and left the archive.

Caspian was waiting in the service alcove. Voices carried from the upper corridor.

“Someone is coming down,” he said.