Page 54 of Zenith Tower

“He may not have time for you to be careful,” Hale said.

“I know.” Marrow signaled to the stewards outside.

Kieran pushed himself upright before Hale could reach him. His knees held until the first step.

Hale caught him around the ribs before he struck the wall. Caspian moved in at once, taking Kieran’s left side while Hale steadied his right without pressing the shoulder.

“I had it,” Kieran said.

“You didn’t,” Hale replied.

Kieran did not argue again.

I walked beside them with the green-gold line still warm at my wrist. The administrator had recognized the change.Whatever she expected to happen next, she meant to have it recorded.

A reader was waiting outside his room when we reached it, a ledger tucked beneath her arm.

She followed Kieran inside and opened to a clean page.

Kieran

The hourly checks reduced my life to the space between one knock and the next.

Different readers came with the shifts. Each pressed two fingers below my collarbone and another against my throat, then wrote down figures with the ledger angled away from me.

The small pause before each reader put pen to paper told me enough. I had seen the same hesitation in healers for years, just before they told me nothing had changed.

The numbness no longer stopped at my fingers. My forearm had failed twice since the review, each time for longer than the last. The pain in my shoulder no longer eased when I held it still. I sat against the wall with my right arm supported across my chest and watched water-light move along the floor.

The lock turned near dusk.

The reader entered with Astra and a steward. Astra’s eyes went first to my face, then to the arm against my chest.

“What happened to your arm?”

“It stopped working.”

The reader spoke before she could ask more. “You were brought for proximity observation. The administrator wants both Marks measured before and after one hour in the same room.”

“You could have told me what this was before bringing me here.”

“I have told you now.”

Astra stared at her. I almost intervened.

The reader drew my collar aside and placed her fingers below the green-gold spread at my shoulder. She measured Astra’s wrist next. The open line there was brighter than it had been at the review.

She wrote down both readings and closed the ledger.

“The door remains open. No deliberate attempt to influence either Mark.”

“We don’t know how to do that deliberately,” Astra said.

“Then the restriction should not trouble you.”

The reader left. The steward took his place outside the door. Water moving below the false window covered our voices as long as we kept them low.

Astra remained near the threshold.