Wesley opened the Cell panel to find his aunt standing over him, arms crossed.
Excellent. A warm start to the morning.
His first thought was Roz. Had the drones found her? Had someone checked the ventilation shaft? He’d left her under a tarp in a maintenance alcove, one day old and unable to raise her arms, and he’d left her there.
Brilliant parenting, Wesley. Father of the year material.
Then a shiver went down his spine.
Mom. Only to be interrupted.
“One day closer to your Beta,” his aunt said, her smile forced.
“Good morning to you too,” Wesley muttered. But quietly. Very quietly.
His fingers found his pocket. Empty. The bar was still under his pillow. He needed to retrieve it, needed to get back to Roz, needed to do approximately seventeen things before breakfast, nineteen if you counted breathing and pretending to be a normal nephew, which he did, and his aunt was standing there watching him.
Was there a class for aunts on Strategic Observation Techniques? A certification program? Probably a Partisant subcommittee. Annual recertification required especially for stubborn aunts.
She was frustrated about something.
Climbing down from his cell, he stood in front of her.
“Welp” he stated as he walked past her and stepped into the kitchen. Thomas sat at the table, gaze locked on his tablet, oblivious to everything else. The smell of half-baked bread filled the air. Dense. Disappointing. The usual.
“Morning,” Wesley tried.
Thomas nodded. Did not look up.
Riveting conversation as always.
Wesley’s mind kept drifting to the drones. Checking the boxes in his mind, Roz for sure had powered down. Check. Her systems entering low-consumption mode to conserve energy. Check. She’d be fine. Probably. Tarp was covering her entire body. Check. Unless the drones had thermal sensors that could detect residual heat. Unless someone had noticed the power tap he’d installed. Unless the tarp was the exact wrong color. Drones would find her then. The drone manual had a whole appendix on detecting wrong colors. He’d skimmed it. Unless—
“Wesley.” His aunt’s voice cut through the spiral. “You’re not eating.”
He looked down. The bread sat untouched on his plate. Maybe 180 grams, dense as a brick. Technically bread. Technically cardboard.
“Sorry. Thinking.”
“About the test?”
About the illegal AI I built and abandoned in a maintenance shaft. “Yes. The test.”
Thomas looked up. Actually looked up. His eyes met Wesley’s for the first time in weeks.
“You’ll do fine.” A pause. Something worked behind his father’s expression. “Your mother...” [Pause] “She always did.”
[ENCRYPTED:Helena passed stack two hundred.]
Wesley’s chest tightened. His father never talked about her. Never.
“Dad...”
“Be careful.” Thomas’s voice dropped. “Up there. In the higher Stacks. Some truths cost more than ignorance.”
Before Wesley could respond, Thomas turned back to his tablet. The moment sealed itself shut.
But Wesley had seen it. Just for a second. A flicker of the father he remembered.
His aunt walked to the doorway and paused. “Your mother was the same way before her test. Head somewhere else. Always somewhere else.”
“I’m not her.”
“No.” His aunt turned. “She passed.”
The silence stretched. Wesley chewed bread that tasted like compressed disappointment and tried not to think about Roz, alone in the dark, waiting for him to come back.
I am concerned for you, she’d said. Is that a normal function?
He’d told her it was called caring. He hadn’t mentioned that it went both ways.