Chapter 114: 114: The Academy Test XXIV
They set John in the chair. They tied his forearms to the arms of it. They laid the thin copper mesh across his chest and down to his waist and cuffs, then clipped it neat. The mesh did not hurt. It spread his own quiet warmth out until it felt thin and far. When he tried to pull a breath deep enough to use, the mesh felt like a hand smoothing his breath flat.
In his head, a voice he knew spoke the way it always spoke: calm, clean, like a book that had learned to talk.
[System Alert: mana flow disrupted at seven primary nodes; two secondary nodes. Ambient dampening ring detected. Safe re-route path available. Estimated full unlock: six hours, zero minutes.]
He let that sit. He did not fight it. He needed the clock.
They put the jar in its padded cradle on the shelf. The shelf had an old bracket under it with gray wood. The bracket made a sound like a tired foot when the jar’s weight settled—just a little creak. Fizz glowed once, a small orange coin inside the glass, then dimmed until the glow was a thought of light, not light.
The oldest kidnapper was lean and quiet. His eyes were the kind that check a door twice. He looked over the chalk line on the floor and the mesh and the gag strip and nodded once. "Brann," he said when the others glanced at him. He did not offer a hand. He did not pretend to be a friend.
The woman had short hair and steady hands. She looked at John’s face the way a nurse looks at a fever. She put two fingers on the inside of his wrist, timed the beat, counted his breaths, and said, "Strong." Then, to the third: "Rusk, write."
Rusk had rope on his shoulder and a small book in his pocket. He wrote with a short pencil. He had the mouth of a man who jokes even when he should not. "Strong," he said as he wrote, as if the word paid him.
Brann set a small metronome on the table and tapped it with his finger. It ticked like a steady foot in a hall. He turned the dial until the tick and John’s heart found a pace they could keep.
"We keep it clean," Brann said. "No marks that show. No loud noise. Handover before dawn. Breathing."
Edda glanced at the jar. "The spirit?"
"In the jar until handover," Brann said. "We’re not paid to argue with it."
They worked in time.
Edda stood two steps to John’s right. "You answer with your head," she said. "Nod for yes. Shake once for no. If we take the strip off for a few minutes, you give short words. If you try to shout, the strip goes back on and stays."
John watched her face and did not nod. He would not nod this rule into his body.
Rusk walked the circle. He checked the chalk. He checked the salt along the chalk. He bent and blew dust off a nick near the back chair leg and fixed it with a pinch of soot and a line from a little leather bag. "Ring is good," he said.
Edda took the ladle, dipped it in the bucket, and lifted it to show him the water. He watched, not because he feared the water, but because he wanted to see the line it made when it fell. She tipped a little at the back of his neck where it meets the shoulder. Cold ran like a fast hand down to his shirt collar and into the mesh. It shocked him. It made the skin along his spine jump. His breath wanted to hurry. He did not let it.
"First mark," Rusk said, writing. "Cold shock. No flail. Breath held two beats. Good control."
Edda put the ladle back. She opened the shutter two fingers’ width and closed it. Thin light cut his eyes, then left. She counted. She opened it again. She watched whether his eyelids jumped. They did not.
"Light flick test," Rusk said, writing. "No blink panic. Eyes steady."
Brann moved to the door, opened it a crack, listened to the stair. The house had neighbors. One would get up later to pour water. A cart would pass once on the lane around the hour. He took those sounds in and put them aside.
Edda took a small spoon from the table and held it above the little brazier until it was warm. She did not touch his skin with it. She held it near the inside of his right forearm where the skin is thin. Heat floated over the skin like a shy wasp. He felt it. It asked his body to pull away. He kept his forearm still. His fingers crept a half inch and stopped.
Rusk made a face. "You and your museum."
"It works," Edda said. She watched John’s pulse jump at his throat and settle again. "He has more walls than doors."
The metronome ticked. John watched one nail head in the beam above him where the hook sat. It had a small scratch to the left, as if someone had tried to pry it once and failed. He used it like a stone to put his mind on. He matched his breath to the tick. He made the world small: nail head, tick, throat beat, Edda’s foot, Rusk’s heel scuff, Brann’s door breath.
System: bypass initiated. Restoration twelve percent. Fizz remains inert until flow reaches sixty percent. Estimated time to sixty percent: three hours, twenty minutes.
He did not let his face change. He kept the tick. He kept the nail head.
Edda touched a point on the top of his left shoulder with her thumb and pressed for a count of eight. It hurt the way a sore knot hurts when you find it by mistake. It did not scream. It pulled his breath into a box and told it to stay there. She took her thumb away for six beats. She pressed again. She watched his eyes. She watched whether his jaw wanted to clench. The gag strip hummed when he tried to tighten his teeth. He made his tongue rest flat instead, so his jaw could not climb and bite down.
Rusk leaned against the door frame and scratched a line on his book. "Candle club. Spoon club. Thumb club. You’re a strange museum, Edda."
"Do you want to trade jobs," she said.
"No," he said at once.
Brann tapped the metronome one notch slower. John followed it. His pulse did not like it. He made it like it.
They gave him five minutes with nothing. No light. No cold. No pressure. Just the tick. He let his shoulders loosen as far as the cords allowed. He let the seat of the chair find the shape of his weight so it would not shift and talk when he did not want it to.
On the shelf, the jar caught a small draft. The bronze ring around the mouth gave a tiny ring like a coin on a table. Fizz’s ember brightened the width of a grain of rice and dimmed. If the room had been a choir, it would have been a note no one else could hear. John could not hear it. But he felt his own breath want to answer it, the way a body wants to match a drum far in the dark.
System: twenty-six percent. Heartline steady. Dampening ring stable. Suggested action: conserve.
He conserved.
Hour by hour, they kept the rhythm. The work was not cruel. It was not kind. It was like someone turning two wheels at once, one for his body and one for his head, to see which wheel would wobble first.
They asked nothing at first. When they finally started asking, Brann asked in a voice that did not try to sound friendly.
"Temple letter," he said. "From which hand."
John looked at him and did not nod and did not shake. He made his eyes say nothing.
"Is she in the city now."
Nothing.
"Will she come if we call."
Nothing.
Brann did not get angry. He looked at Edda, not for permission but to ask if there was any medical reason to stop. Edda twitched her mouth, which was her way to say, keep within lines.
They gave him a sip of water from the ladle, not enough to drown. The gag strip slid down to let his lips take it and slid back. He thought of rivers and kept his mind from them because he did not need that door open tonight.
Edda warmed a thumb of wax over the small coal. She lifted it, let the air cool it to the edge of safe, and dropped one small bead on the top of his right shoulder, near the ball of the joint. It stung. It made the muscle there jump once. She left the bead where it sat and did not smear it. She watched whether his eyes went wide. They did not. She dropped a second bead a finger’s width away. It stung again. She used the flat of her fingernail to lift both beads away and dropped them in a little dish. She wiped the spot with a cool cloth.
Rusk winced. "Still weird."
"Still working," Edda said.