The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere

U𒊹bi𒊹ici𒊹n 𒊹io𒊹nclo𒊹u𒊹e | 5:58 PM | 𒊹5,535th Day

I floated over, and carefully reached my hand behind the fabric. Seth glanced nervously at me, visibly sweating, but I avoided his gaze.

Come on, I said to myself. Why should you be feeling guilty? He's the one who's incredibly suspicious.

In truth, I probably should have been more explicitly cautious. If he had been reaching for his pistol, he'd have nothing to lose in this moment, and might have tried to take me hostage. Perhaps, as a person used to living in fear of my own unforgivable crime being discovered and being reasonably judged on that basis, I couldn't help but empathize with someone called out on their bullshit. I imagined what it would feel like if he was telling the truth, even if only in spirit, and was just trapped in a bad situation, knowing it was impossible to explain what was really happening...

Fortunately, I wasn't punished for my complex interfering with my thinking, because as my hand slid over his chest, what I grasped was obviously just bound parchment. I pulled the document out, catching a glimpse of the text inside as I did so. '...as predicted, recurrence is unable to approach infinity due to the continuing presence of unpredictable entropic behavior, but modelling shows it is now feasible to foster a static object in absolute space, should the surrogacy experiment offset this as hoped...'

"See?" Seth said shakily, still staying very still. "Those are the documents that he-- That he told me to take. I snuck it out of the box back when we were in the security center. Now put that thing down, alright?"

"I think I'll keep it right where it is, thank you," Kamrusepa replied. "After all, it's obvious that you're still trying to lie to me, and not even with much deft. Again: The fact that you accepted my story about you and Theodoros showed not only your own willingness to lie about what really took place, but also your awareness that he, too, was in on the lie and willing to spin a plausible tale if pushed. The only possible explanation for that your entire class traveled here by a different route - likely one that arrived sooner - and the only explanation for that­--"

"You've got it wrong," Seth claimed urgently, but then hesitated. "I mean-- Okay, yeah, we did go by a different route, but that doesn't mean we were in on the plan... Or at least me and Theo weren't. I got into a fight with Ezekiel before we were gonna set off because I wanted to pull out of what we had planned, and it all turned into a shitfest. We missed our trip on the Aetherbridge. S-So Theo got in contact with his dad, and he set up another way in from near the city, off the coast... But we weren't supposed to talk about it."

It wasn't very convincing.

"Is that right," Kam stated flatly, with obvious skepticism. Her eyes hadn't wandered so much as an inch from the scope of her rifle.

"It's true!" He insisted. "Like, yeah, Ezekiel had to have known to have planned this shit in the first place, but the rest of us didn't know a damn thing! Do you think Bardiya would be dead if we did?!"

"If you weren't part of the Order's conspiracy," she asked, "then what happened at the top of the stairwell? And how do you explain the discrepancy in time passage, where we didn't hear you and Ptolema's escape?

"I don't know," he said desperately. "I was telling the truth. All I remember was that there was fire, and this thing jumped at us..." He hesitated. "Fuck, maybe my mind is filling in the gaps like Ema's, and it was all part of some set up, by Ezekiel or somebody else. We still don't know what the hell happened to Zeno other than Linos just telling us he thinks the guy is dead, so who fucking knows!" He lowered his brow, his expression becoming almost pleading. "But I swear to god I had nothing to do with it! This is all some fucked-up setup!"

She said nothing, simply staring at him.

"You absolute fucking prick," Ezekiel finally cut in, his teeth gritted in rage and his tone dripping with contempt toward Seth. "That's how you're going to finally address your fuckup? By passing the buck to me?"

"Wh..." Seth's eyes darted towards him sharply, filled with rancor himself. "D-Don't try to drag me down with you into this shit, Ezekiel. We're done.It's over. I don't care what you tell my family any more."

His family?

"He's lying," Ezekiel went on, shifting from speaking to Seth to addressing the group at large. His voice trembled subtly - it sounded like, beneath his veneer of confidence, he was in a state of total panic. "The Rhunbardi bitch is right. The four of us were all in on the Order's idiotic plan from the start."

"That's bullshit!" Seth shouted, sweat rolling down his brow. Kamrusepa tightened the grip on the barrel as his head moved slightly.

"We found out about it a few weeks ago," Ezekiel explained, sounding so angry he didn't even care about implicating himself. "It was through Theodoros, when our class was split up during that overnight trip to Qatt. We overheard a conversation with his father after a mix-up with the logic engine, and they brought all of us in. We were going to get a huge payout."

"What the hell is wrong with you?!" Seth shouted. "Don't try to bring Theo into this, you asshole!" His eyes flared. "He's going through enough shit having just learned his dad has been lying to him for god knows how long, and was planning to fake his own death and probably never seen him again for some insane fucking reason! Like, shit, look at him!" He gestured sharply to Theo, who was still standing mutedly, his face turned away. Guilt flashed across Seth's face for a moment, and he clenched his fist, looking at the ground. "I knew you were scum, but this is lower than low. You think if you smear enough shit on everyone else, it'll come off you?! He doesn't know a damn thing, and you know it!"

"Everyone was part of the plan from the start," Ezekiel insisted, ignoring Seth's anger. "Not just Theodoros, but Bardiya, too. That's why you saw his room in the state it was earlier in the night-- He'd been upset about the whole thing, and drunk himself half to death." He snorted. "But he was going along with it anyway. So much for his fucking high ideals.

"You piece of shit," Seth seethed. "Now you're dragging even his memory through the mud! I wouldn't be surprised if you did kill him!"

"Wouldn't that be convenient," Ezekiel replied bitterly. "Everything bad that happened was because of the bigot you all love to sneer at. Mystery solved. What a storybook ending."

"Fuck you," Seth cursed.

"Ezekiel," Kamrusepa spoke calmly, seeming almost to be ignoring Seth. "Forgive my difficulty following, but is this refutation of Seth's account, or merely a correction? Are you saying you and the rest of the boy's have simply all been part of the Order's conspiracy since the start, or is Seth's story about you forcing him into stealing from them also true, on top of that?"

Ezekiel snarled. "What does it even matter? We're criminals! We're fucking criminals." He clapped his hands. "If that's what you wanted to hear, then there you have it-- You can have a nice bit of confirmation of your sneering misandry to sweeten the aftertaste of your heroes being exposed as frauds."

"Answer the question," Kamrusepa insisted.

"But if you haven't noticed, we criminals outnumber the rest of you!" Ezekiel added. "So how about we get to the damn gateway before we miss our window again, go home,and then argue about this when we're not trapped in a plane made out of mostly fucking vacuum?"

Answer the question!" Kamrusepa stubbornly repeated.

"Or what?!" He spat out laughter. "You'll shoot the Mekhian? Go on! Do it! I don't give a fraction of a shit!"

Seth twitched nervously, closing his eyes for a moment and pressing his lips together. Ptolema looked on at the situation in horror, looking like she had no idea what to do or say.

"Ezekiel," Linos spoke for the first time in a while, his tone cold. "Is it true?" He narrowed his tired eyes. "Were you using this opportunity to try to steal our records?"

"Why would you even care?" the younger man yelled confrontationally. "It's all going up in flames anyway! What does it even matter whether or not some of your old paperwork makes it out?"

"That's a yes," Ran stated quietly.

Linos's tone hardened. "Why? Why would you..." He hesitated, his face scrunching up. "No, there's no point in asking that at this stage." He looked towards him. "This is all your doing, then. Everything that's gone wrong."

"What?" Ezekiel hesitated in a way he hadn't when Kam had been threatening him. His face flushed red. "No-- I was saying I haven't killed anyone! That's why I'm trying to clarify things, before the Mekhian, or this bitch, try to pin everything on me!" He exhaled, running a hand through his unkempt hair. "Look, I went along with this psychotic plan! I kept my mouth shut, I played my role, even when your idiotic improvising became painfully stupid. I didn't even ask questions about whatever the fuck happened Sacnicte!" He hesitated, biting his tongue.

"What are you implying, Ezekiel?" Kamrusepa asked. She was still holding her gun to Seth, but was starting to look increasingly tense by the escalating complexity of the situation.

"My point is, I played my part!" He shouted, ignoring her. "In spite of everything. I kept my story straight and the others in line - even when they being fucking degenerates­ right before the moment of truth - and followed the instructions. I did your little investigation for you when you asked, I played substitute for Zeno, and I helped drag that stupid dummy out of storage and stick it to the wall." He floated a little closer to Linos, pointing his scepter at him. "But you were going to leave everything you learned here to rot, and not even for a good reason!Just deranged, paranoid spite, like a pack of Fire Epoch book-burners! Why wouldn't someone profit from that, and do the world a favor while they're doing it? So yes, I found my way in here . I took the notes from this project from the library." He pointed over to the building. "But I did nothing to derail the damn plan!

This was an increasingly strange tone. How much did Ezekiel know?

"There's no reason for me to believe that," Linos stated, with what came across as false calm. He looked like he was holding something back, hesitating repeatedly even as frustration seethed through his words. "This amounts to a means and a motive. You knew the details of the plan, which meant you knew how to sabotage it. You had reason to kill us, and Bardiya - and the rest of your co-conspirators. And Fang as well, if they found out the truth."

Linos's theory felt like it barely made sense, but unspoken was his confirmation that at least this premise - that some of the men in our class had been part of the Order's conspiracy - was true. And...

"I notice," Kamrusepa spoke carefully, "that though you're drawing these conclusions about Ezekiel, you're not extending that to his conspirators. Is that your way of confirming Seth's story? That him and Theodoros weren't aware of the truth?"

"Of-- Of course they weren't," Linos claimed adamantly. "I would never get my son involved in something like this." His face scrunched up. "I know even this much was a betrayal of him... But I never intended for him to do anything that could get him in trouble with the law, much less put him in danger. Ezekiel is lying. I admit, we involved him in the plan, and I was trying to omit the point in the hope that he could leave peacefully with the rest of you. But now that I know this, there's no point in holding back."

Ezekiel double-taked, widening his eyes and floating backwards a little. "I can't fucking-- You're going to stab me in the back, too?!"

"I don't know what you hope to gain by lying about this. Even considering the situation, I have no reason to accept such a story," Linos spoke coldly. "Regardless of if you're telling the truth, your actions are still the reason that everything is ruined. You've exposed us. And even if you weren't directly responsible for any deaths, your attempts to re-engineer our plans with master Ikkuret as an accomplice would be the reason that the culprit had a chance to kill Fang and the others."

"That doesn't even make any sense!" Ezekiel objected desperately. "What would the original plan even have been if the other two weren't supposed to be there?! How the hell would I have got that damn thing attached to the ceiling? Or subdued all three of them?!"

"The golems were scripted to help him," Linos claimed, now speaking more to the rest of us than Ezekiel, though his gaze remained fixed on him. "That's what they were setting off to do when we saw them from the window in the intensive care room. They're also the ones who set the fire in the first place-- A small contained blaze to cultivate the illusion."

"That's a lie, and you know it's a fucking lie!" Ezekiel shouted back. "Our group set that up ourselves. We started an oil fire and then cleaned it up after there was enough smoke!" His eyes rapidly jolted between Seth, Theodoros and Linos. "This is insane!"

Everything was happening so quickly now that I could barely keep up. My mind raced.

There were two layers - well, probably more than two, but it was at least simpler to put it that way - to consider. The first was the surface level and obvious: The two versions of the story, where Ezekiel had either been working 'alone' with the Order and had enlisted Seth without informing him of their wider plan, or where all of the men in our class were his accomplices via Theodoros from the very beginning.

Despite the three-against-one consensus, it felt almost obvious that the latter version was the truth, or at least closer to it. So much made sense with that idea in mind, while Seth and Linos's version raised more questions than anything. If the boys traveling to the sanctuary via a different route had just been some incidental event as a result of Seth and Ezekiel fighting, why would it even be worth keeping a secret? Trying to conceal the true nature of Apsu made sense in a more casual context, when wondering why they'd forced us to use the Aetherbridge route in the first place, but if the truth was already out for half of the class, it just felt strange. Getting all their stories straight for something so minor. And what's more, how could Theo and Bardiya have seen the fight, without asking any questions about the context surrounding it? Their behavior just didn't match up.

That was just the start. So much about Theodoros's behavior was explained by him having been a part of it since the beginning - his strange behavior on the first day and desire to speak with me, then his sudden reticence on the second, when the plan was presumably already in motion. Then there were the holes that Ezekiel had only really begun to suggest at in regards to what the original plan for the events leading up to Fang's death. Like, forget subduing Theodoros and Seth-- How would he have even kept control of the group enough to set up the scenario in the first place? The light trick - even recontextualizing it to have been an actual light created to foster the illusion, rather than merely a story of one - depended on at least several of them having been at the door at the right moment to witness it, and to have responded in a more or less predictable way, to the point of being in the stairwell at the right moment for the climax.

And speaking of illusions, how would they have even created the impression of the monster leaping at them without the Power? Again, if it was a collective lie, there was no need for one, but the smoke-and-mirrors stunt pulled on Ptolema couldn't have been expected to work on everyone. And speaking of Ptolema, even if the plan had been to have Anna handle her originally and for her to never have ended up in the bathing room at all, how the hell was Ezekiel supposed to have 'managed' her - or Fang, for that matter - if the group had split up, like had actually happened?

But the most damning contradiction, which I could only imagine Linos and Seth either simply hadn't noticed in their scrambling to produce this story, was that Bardiya had explicitly been working with Ezekiel to find this place during the duel. So it couldn't have just been Seth in the first place!

I knew that if I brought up any of these observations individually, they could find a way to slip out of them. Linos could fudge details of this plan that supposedly existed, as he had repeatedly during this 'confession', if something so vague could even be called that. He could say that there were other failsafes to drive people to the proper locations - golems posing as the monster, traps, whatever; when you were the only voice of authority, you could make up anything you wanted. And Seth could spin some story about him having lied to Bardiya about what they were doing.

But when you put it all together, it was a cobbled-together mess that they were obviously making up on the spot!

But why? Seth I understood, but why would Linos would be going along with it?

Obviously to protect his son, the logical part of my brain deduced instantly. Linos has given on protecting himself, but he's still trying to stop us leaving here having implicated Theo.

That was obvious, wasn't it?

But then there was the second layer - the implications if you thought beyond just this moment. Why would the inner circle even want to fake their deaths in the first place, and why would Theo go along with it? The others weren't from the wealthiest backgrounds; it was conceivable that they'd been bought, even Bardiya. But all Theo would have to gain would be presumably the loss of his own father from his life, and he clearly wasn't happy about it. So... So...

Something was wrong. All three of them were dancing around some truth underpinning everything; Ezekiel was just the most obvious about it. It was like there was an invisible ball they were passing around, trying to use our ignorance of it, the empty space, to carve what became the truth for the rest of us. And that even though Kam had figured out this much, we still weren't even really here.

For example, why was Linos so confident that Zeno had been killed? Linos's explanation that they'd been passing messages via the golems sufficed as an explanation for how he'd know about Durvasa, but we'd set such a quick pace after we'd awoken on the stairs that we couldn't encountered more than one or two, and incredibly briefly at that. So... Was just the absence of a message enough for him to draw that conclusion?

Or... Or...

Or what?

"Why Ezekiel?" Ran asked suddenly.

Linos looked up at her. "What?"

"Why would you specifically recruit only Ezekiel?" she elaborated. "If he was the only accomplice you actually had and wasn't brought in by Theodoros, there must have been a reason."

"Mm," Kam said, but seemed almost distracted now, her focus on Seth relaxing. Her body was tense, her eyes still flickering to and fro. "A good question."

Linos took a deep breath through his nose. "I don't know the details, but he was brought in by Hamilcar. We needed a second accomplice among your class other than Lilith for the plan to work. I'd assume he reviewed your personalities and decided who to approach on that basis-- Which it seems was a fatal error of judgement."

"I never even met him until this weekend!" Ezekiel declared defiantly.

Kamrusepa smirked. "You seem desperate, Ezekiel." Slowly, she shifted her rifle, so that it was now aimed more loosely at the men's group at large rather than Seth specifically.

"Of course I'm fucking desperate," he said. "How do you expect me to behave when everything's being pinned on me? You don't honestly believe this shit, do you?!"

"I'm not quite sure what I believe," she replied flippantly, though seemed no less tense.

What? Why is she going along with this?

"I don't know what the extent of what you've done is, Ezekiel," Linos said with an anxious determination. "But whatever you or the others might think of me at this point, I don't want anyone else to die. And I certainly don't intend to let someone who's clearly been acting with malicious intent from the start roam free." He touched something on his belt - a logic engine, probably. "We're almost out of time. The transposition will take place in less than ten minutes."

"O-Oh, crap!" Ptolema said. "Has it really been that long?"

"I'm going to say what's going to happen," Linos stated. "Theo, Utsu, Ran, Kamrusepa, Ptolema... And you, Seth, even if it feels against my better judgement... The six of you are going to leave this place at once and head to the transposition chamber." He narrowed his eyes. "Ezekiel and I will remain here."

A cold dread filled Ezekiel's eyes. "What? You..."

"What happens after that will be up to the rest of you," he declared. "Whatever you decide to do to with master Ikkuret - to leave his mistakes here behind, to report him to the authorities, or anything else - will be your collective decision to make, as will whatever you decide to tell people about the fate of this sanctuary and the events of this weekend. For better or worse, you know the truth, which takes it completely out of my hands." He hesitated for a moment, then spoke with a little regret. "We will not meet again. But for whatever it's worth, I'm sorry for all that's happened."

Seth looked confused and extremely uneasy, like he didn't quite understand what was happening. Nevertheless, his tone made it sound like he accepted this outcome. "W-What about the research we stole? If you're keeping Ezekiel here, then--"

"You can keep it," Linos interrupted. "It doesn't matter now. Perhaps you can sell it to another order and use the money to bring some comfort to Bardiya and Ophelia's family... But again, it's not my decision."

"What about Theo?!" Ptolema demanded. "You're just never gonna see your own kid again? Like you said, the plan's ruined! So whatever the heck you were trying to pull off by faking your own death, it doesn't even matter, because we already know about it!" She frowned deeply, obviously upset. "Unless you're just gonna die here for real?"

It looked as though the words stung. Linos winced, pushing his lips together like he was tasting something bitter. "Theo, I..." He flinched, stopping what he was saying suddenly, and glanced downwards for a moment. "I wish I-- No." He shook his head. "I'm sorry."

Theodoros was silent in response to this vague apology, his face still facing away.

"No," Ezekiel said, shaking his head as he breathed heavily. "No! I won't let you do this!"

He raised his scepter and managed to reach down and grab his pistol, but Linos had clearly been expecting something like this to happen. He lifted his own scepter - subtly, without even moving his hand from his waist - for what I now realized was only the second time in the night, since when he'd copied us all those copies of maps and keys. It was so understated that I hadn't even taken it in the first time, but the design on the head depicted a simple, copper transmutation circle. It was almost crude, like the mass-production ones they gave you when you first became an acolyte.

Linos might not have been as famous or his accomplishments as bombastic as his colleagues in the inner circle, but it was easy to forget - considering his mild personality - that he was still a grandmaster and one of the greatest living arcanists of his discipline. This seemed almost symbolic of that dissonance. A scepter befitting his rank would be custom-made and incorporate rare metals in creative ways like the rest of the council... But he was only comfortable with something this understated.

It was for this reason that I was surprised, despite in concept knowing how capable he was, by what happened next. He didn't speak at all, but rather traced the entire incantation on his palm with his free hand, multiple fingers sliding up and down at the same time. The motion was surprisingly graceful - like someone playing a musical instrument.

First, the barrier around us suddenly disappeared, before reappearing almost instantaneously in contracted form, with Ezekiel excluded from the radius. A repeat incantation. Ezekiel hesitated just an instant, and by the time he made the shot, it was too late. The white light from the barrel dispersed into the field harmlessly, the surface shimmering for only a moment.

Then, less than a second later, Linos's wheelchair disintegrated.

Alright, that's probably a melodramatic word for it. Rather, its metal components - the spokes and panelling of the wheel, the supports of the back and armrests, the little screws and other widgets holding it all together - suddenly turned... I don't want to say liquid, because that doesn't quite describe it. Rather, it was like someone had made a recording of slowly disassembling and repurposing them over the course of hours, then sped it up to x1000 times the speed. Matter just didn't move like that - so quickly and precisely, the components bending and coiling even as they flew through the air, seeming to have all the resistance of paper.

The wooden and cloth components fell to the ground below, slamming hard against the stonework as Aruru looked on impassively, leaving Linos simply floating, his legs now hanging limp. The metal, meanwhile, reshaped into a spiral, and then a long blade - one pointed squarely at Ezekiel's head.

It was an awkward technique and means to threaten someone, but gods, it was fast. Faster than I'd seen some battlemagi cast simple things like fireballs. I realized after a moment that the metal components of his outfit - some buttons and light gilding - had gone with it, along with those of the people standing nearby. Theo's glasses were falling to pieces, and Ptolema's surgical bag had ripped open. He must have used an incredibly broad incantation - something like the Matter-Gathering Arcana - for speed, and yet still managed to shape it into something coherent.

I guess there's one form of improvisation he's good at, after all.

"Ahh-- Holy shit!" Seth cried out. He'd been standing close by Ezekiel, so the edge of the blade had manifested less than a foot away from him.

"Mister Ilaadbat!" Linos declared, raising his voice. "You will stay right there!"

"This-- You can't do this!" Ezekiel cried out.

"I can, and I am," Linos said stubbornly, his gaze fixed. "Go on. The rest of you need to leave."

"Do you think I won't do it, if you go this far?!" Ezekiel cried in retort. "You think I won't take this whole fucking thing down with me?"

What the hell is he talking about?

No, this... Something wasn't right at all.

"W-Wait," I said, speaking up for the first time in a while. "this is all moving too quickly."

"That's a fuckin' hell of an understatement!" Seth replied, his eyes still wide at the sight of the blade. "Like, Ezekiel fucked me over, b-but this is kinda nuts! Like, he just stole some shit! Like, sure, we should tie him up... But there's basically no evidence he's the actual killer! Shit, he was with us when this happened!" He pointed at the second guesthouse, apparently having forgotten the incantation had ceased.

"My decision is final," Linos said coldly, still gripping his scepter tightly. "There's no time. You all need to go. Now."

"Just hold on!" I said, holding up my hands, ironically feeling like I sounded like Linos from just a bit earlier in the conversation. "You haven't thought this through! Seth is right. Even if Ezekiel is one of the actual culprits, the fact that we found Mehit and Lilith's bodies here means that he can't be the only one, right? So if you stay here, then that means we could easily be ambushed on the way to the gate! You're the only powerful arcanist we have left!"

Linos hesitated for just a moment, but quickly refocused his gaze on Ezekiel. "That's not necessarily true," he said, his tone stiff. "You yourself pointed out that Lilith could have done this herself. Her body was in a different condition compared to the others."

"That was before you confessed all this," I retorted. "Why would Lilith actually kill anyone, if she wasn't working with the real culprit in the first place, and just playing the role given to her by Hamilcar?"

"I--" Linos paused. "She could have been deceiving us as well. There's no way to know for certain... And besides, that's the only way it could have happened. We were unconscious in that room for a long time. If they'd orchestrated that series of events, they could have avoided the effects of the contact paradox and made it there and back in time."

I balked at the naked absurdity of the suggestion. "All of this?But we weren't even asleep for a half hour."

Linos glanced at me nervously.

Ezekiel sniffled out a strange laugh. I could tell he was absolutely terrified. "E-Even the Necromancer can see how ridiculous this is."

"And even if it were plausible, it's just speculation!" I went on, ignoring his interjection. "That's not enough to assume we'll be safe!"

A couple of seconds passed in strange, tense silence before Linos replied. His voice was firm, but I could increasingly tell that even unmasked as he was now, he wasn't at all suited for being in this sort of position. "You and miss Tuon are both very capable with your barriers, Utsushikome. If you move quickly, I'm sure you'll be alright. Regardless of what happens." His grip on his scepter tightened.

I frowned deeply. "That doesn't--"

"D-Don't try to question me!" he stammered. "I'm doing as the last member of the Order's leadership left! You can't understand what's really been at stake here-- The extent of what his sabotage has cost us. This isn't just about your safety, it's our dignity! The dignity of those who've died!"

This was absurd. He didn't even sound like he believed it himself. What the hell was going on? It was one thing for him to accuse Ezekiel specifically as a gambit to draw suspicion away from his son, but going this far...

No, I couldn't let things play out like this. If this was the wrong answer - and it felt very much like the wrong answer - we could easily be killed, regardless of what Linos claimed. At the end of the day, I didn't give a damn about what the Order was really trying to do, or if anything Linos had just told us had been true. I could even live without ever even learning the identity of the culprit.

But I couldn't die here. Not when I was so close to finally reaching my goal.

"Look!" I said, raising my voice insistently. I didn't know if this was wise, but I felt like I had to do something.I looked around at the others, trying to garner support. "What matters more than anything is that we survive, right? You said it yourself earlier, sir-- It doesn't even matter who the killer is compared to that!" I held up my hands, speaking quickly "Let's just think a second! If there's no threat of the sanctuary blowing up under us, then we can still wait for the next transposition window in an hour. Like, we could clear a lot of this up and confirm everyone's stories if we went back the main building, couldn't we?! For example, we could use the the Anomaly-Divining Arcanain the underground to establish that Zeno did conjure the illusion of that monster, and maybe look for his body! Or we could go to where the fire was and see whether it was an oil fire, or examine the area around the stairwell more closely, now that we know it's important!"

Linos tried to interrupt me again first, but Kamrusepa cut him off with her attempt. "Su--"

"Or if not that, you could at least just tie up Ezekiel and escort us to the gate! Even if you insist on staying behind, at least that way we'd still be safe! I just don't understand--"

"Su, let's just let him do it," Kamrusepa spoke sharply. "If we spend any more time here, we're taking a risk, and frankly being around a member of the Order feels just as dangerous to me at this point as anything else. There's enough of us to restrain Seth and Theo if it comes down to it, so we'll just keep an eye on them and move quickly."

I turned to her to try and counter-argue. "Kam, that's--"

...and then I saw the face she was making.

Kamrusepa was floating a little to side of me, and had angled her head in such a way that it would be difficult for the others to see now that Linos had broken the circle we'd been in. She was looking at me with an incredibly tense, suggestive expression, her face lowered slightly and her wide eyes staring dead into mine, her lips curled into a frown.

She's looking at you like your an idiot.

Why is she looking at me like an idiot?

She eyes Linos, raising her eyebrows. Then she looked towards Theo and inclined her head sharply. She jostled her rifle slightly.

I frowned in confusion, still not perceiving what she was getting at.

Kam visibly flinched in irritation at my lack of understanding. She nodded at Theo again, then subtly indicated to the right with her finger. My eyes followed the direction she was pointing, and it was at Ptolema's now-destroyed surgical bag, still under her arm.

Then she tried to make... A box-opening gesture? This was getting way too esoteric. And then letters? V? And...

I blinked.

Wait--