Page 89 of Zenith Tower

The administrator unfastened her left cuff.

Two lines lay beneath it, their color banked almost to gray. She pressed her thumb to the inside of her wrist and closed her eyes.

A third line surfaced.

It came slowly, darkening by degrees until the same impossible branching shape I carried lay exposed along her forearm. Her hand shook once. She caught it with the other and waited for the tremor to pass.

“I was seventeen when the Tower reviewed me,” she said. “Three lines. Untethered.”

I stared at her wrist. “You hid one.”

“I convinced the readers there were only two. By the time they released me, I had suppressed the third so completely that even I struggled to call it back.”

“You’re Untethered,” Caspian said.

“I still am. I chose concealment before I learned where thethird line might lead.”

“And then you came back here.”

She refastened her cuff over the lines. “Someone was going to sit behind the panel table. I thought a person who had survived it might do less harm than someone who believed the process was merciful.”

“Did you?”

Her fingers rested on the final button. “Sometimes.”

She crossed to the narrow water channel in my wall. Silver light moved over her face, showing the fatigue she usually kept hidden.

“For nine years, I delayed findings. Lost transfer requests. Sent residents to infirmaries that asked fewer questions. Small things, carefully spaced.”

“Delphine still went through the west door,” I said. “Sadie still went below.”

Her jaw tightened. “Yes.”

Caspian’s anger came through cold. Kieran’s distant fear pulled at the other.

“Why didn’t you stop it?”

“Because I was afraid that one open refusal would end the quieter work.” She met my eyes. “Every time I spared one person, I told myself it justified staying quiet about the rest.”

She did not look away.

“What changed?” Caspian asked.

“Marrow’s severance attempt. The Council rewarding him for it. Kieran taken because his healed Mark frightened them.” She drew a folded sheet from inside her sleeve. “And I stayed quiet too long.”

She opened the sheet on my table.

A map had been drawn in a small, exact hand. Our corridor sat at the top. The eastern stair descended past the records room to a pair of doors marked with black crosses. West of it, a narrower passage ended at Hale’s room.

“Kieran is here.” She touched the space beyond the secondblack cross. “Level four, lower processing. The first door accepts my authorization. The second requires mine and Marrow’s together.”

Caspian bent over the map. “Where is Marrow’s key?”

“Inside his coat, left side.”

“And Marrow?”

“He checks the processing rooms during the handover after the next evening infirmary round.”