Chapter 139| Hidden Talents

Chapter 139: Chapter 139| Hidden Talents

Zane’s pen had stopped moving entirely. He didn’t notice until the person beside him shifted and he caught the movement in his peripheral vision.

’Same facility,’ he thought. ’That’s the same coordinates.’

Mori kept talking. The case study walked through escalation triggers, authorisation chains, projected impact assessment. Two students near the front were asking questions. The room was doing exactly what it was supposed to be doing on a Friday theory block.

Zane sat very still and let it happen around him.

The folder had eight pages. A facility floor plan with no label and no official header. Internal NSA memos. Three analysts who had flagged an intelligence discrepancy before the Harbor Collapse and been ignored. His father sent into a Category S operation deliberately short-handed by people who knew exactly what they were sending him into. And in the margin of page six, in Kael’s handwriting, four digits that Zane had written down and stared at and filed away because he didn’t have anything to attach them to yet.

Now he did.

『 System Note: The host has found the connection. 』

’Yeah,’ Zane thought. ’I found it.’

He looked at Mori. Standing at the front of the room, pointer moving across the slide, voice level and measured and entirely professional. Running through a redacted case study like it was any other teaching material he’d used a hundred times before.

Either she didn’t know what was sitting in the third row right now.

Or she did.

After what Vael had said in her office yesterday — your father was one of the better students I’ve seen come through this program. Zane wasn’t confident about which one it was.

He wrote the four digits down in the margin of his notebook. Drew a small box around them. Closed the cover.

"Zane.."

He didn’t register it. His head was somewhere else entirely, back in Room 714, back on page six of Kael’s folder, running the same loop it had been running since the slide appeared.

"Zane."

He blinked.

Maren. Sitting one seat across, leaning slightly toward him, voice low enough that it didn’t carry past the two of them.

"What are you thinking about?" she whispered.

"Nothing actually."

She held his gaze for a beat. Then."You need to pay more attention. Your dad’s case is being referenced up there."

He looked at her. Then at the front of the room. Then back at her.

"Yeah." He let out a slow breath. "Thanks for bringing me back."

He smirked.

She smirked back.

The rest of the class passed without him retaining much of it.

_ _

Maren was still in her seat when the last few students filed out. Zane hadn’t moved either. By the time the room cleared it was just the two of them and Mori at his desk with his head down over something.

Not deliberately, he just didn’t move when the room started clearing. Chairs scraped, bags zipped, people filed past him and he sat there with his notebook closed on his lap until the room was empty and Mori was at his desk with his head down over something and the doorway was clear.

Zane stood. Picked up his bag.

Maren fell into step beside him without saying anything about it. They walked out together.

The corridor outside was its usual Friday energy, people moving with the particular looseness that came from knowing the weekend was one practical session away. Conversations happening. Someone laughing about something near the water station at the far end.

Zane stood in the middle of it for a moment.

His father. Kael’s folder. A facility with no official name and partial coordinates that had just appeared on a classroom projector screen in Mori’s theory block, filed under a redacted operation header, presented as curriculum.

He’d known it was deliberate since Wednesday night. He’d sat in the dark with that knowledge and let it settle and thought it was as heavy as it was going to get.

It turned out knowing something alone in your room at 9 PM was different from watching it show up in a slide deck at 8 AM while thirty people around you took notes on the classification framework.

’Okay,’ he thought. He wasn’t sure what came after that. Nothing yet. Just okay.

He had a practical session in Arena Two in forty minutes. He had Saturday. He had Nyx and Kinetic Force and three more daily quest reps between now and the milestone.

Forward-moving things. Concrete things.

"Zaneee."

He heard his name being dragged like it was a music rehearsal, it was Maren again. He stopped and turned.

She caught up to him in the corridor, eyes reading his face the way she always did when she was deciding how much to push.

"You sure you’re okay?"

"Yeah. I’m fine."

"I want to believe you." She paused. "And between you didn’t actually give me a reason for stopping the training. You just told me briefly and that was it."

’Ohhh. Maren caring about me,’ he thought.

"It’s not much of a big deal," he said. "Just decided to take a break. Explore some other things. I’ll probably be back in a while."

She stared at him for a moment. Then nodded once.

"Okay. Take care then." She shifted her bag. "I’m actually in a rush, me and Nil have some kind of contest going in the practical session. I need to be there." She waved. "Catch you later."

She turned and went.

Zane watched her go.

It was like everything played out in slow motion. The sway of her hips, the gentle bounce of her butt with each step, and the way her whole figure moved in rhythm as she half-jogged toward her destination. Zane found himself watching her longer than he intended. For a moment, the rest of the world seemed to fade into the background, and he couldn’t have looked away even if he’d tried.

『 System Note: The host appears to have hidden talents. 』

Zane snorted before he could stop it. A short laugh, quiet, mostly to himself.

’Don’t make me laugh,’ he thought.

He turned and started walking.