Chapter 248: Centuries of Blood.
Mute stopped a few feet away. The smile widened slowly across his face, pulling the corners of his mouth into something sharp and unnatural that didn’t belong on Mute’s features. An ancient, predatory intelligence flickered behind his eyes like a shadow moving beneath still water.
"Miss me?"
I looked at him. My thoughts moved fast, running through every face I’d catalogued since crossing the walls, every ability user I’d met, every person who might have reason to look at me like this. One name settled at the back of my head and refused to move.
The person Mary Stam had put a stake through.
[Digging into the essence of the host.]
[Scanning.]
Fuck. This is Vincent Vale.
"Mute," I said, voice flat and steady, face locked into perfect neutrality. My hands stayed relaxed at my sides even as my heartbeat hammered against my ribs.
Mute’s smile stayed exactly where it was, unchanging, unnerving.
"The world is small," I added, keeping my tone light.
"Indeed." Something in the smile eased back a fraction, as if he’d expected a stronger reaction and was mildly disappointed not to get it. His head tilted slightly, studying me.
[Scan in progress. Keep him close.]
"Okay, Abram." He said my name with the specific weight of someone who had earned the right to use it—slow, familiar, intimate. Not a guess. Not a briefing document. He knew me. "I’ll be visiting you soon."
He reached out and tapped my shoulder twice—casual, almost brotherly—his fingers lingering a heartbeat longer than necessary before he turned toward the director’s door.
"Wait."
He stopped mid-step and turned back, one eyebrow lifting in lazy curiosity, the smile still playing at the edges of his lips.
I took two steps toward him. I needed the system to finish and I needed to confirm what I already suspected, because if this really was Vince, if the primordial I’d fought at School Central was standing in front of me wearing a Hogsby student’s face, then the situation I was standing in had teeth I hadn’t accounted for.
"What is it, Abram?"
"Mute." I held his eyes without blinking. "I’m sorry. About Mable. I’m sorry I took her from you."
Something flickered across his face, a brief flash of amusement that crinkled the corners of his eyes.
"You’re sorry?" The smile returned, wider and sharper, revealing a glint of teeth.
He reached out and tapped my shoulder again, gentler this time, almost fond, his fingers pressing lightly against the fabric of my shirt.
"All is forgiven."
Then he turned, pushed open the director’s door without knocking, and stepped through.
[Scan complete.]
The door clicked shut behind him.
[Brahim Nadez.]
[The Nadez born into the Vale family.]
What.
I stood frozen in the corridor, staring at the closed door as the words burned behind my eyes. I read them three times, my throat tightening.
Then I turned and started walking, boots echoing down the hallway, and the voices came back to me from Riya’s house, from the memories that had played across her corridor while her body cooled on the floor behind me.
I think I’m pregnant, Maria.
What? Are you certain?
I am.
By whom?
Ethan.
Sophia Vale, pregnant by my father. Centuries ago. A child born into the Vale house carrying the Nadez blood.
We can’t do this without Eleanor. We need them.
Yes, we can. The house of Nadez turned against us. We move on without them.
We need to rethink this.
The house of Nadez declared war on the goal. They’re not part of us anymore.
And then Riya, leaning close to Sophia’s ear, low enough that Monica and Edgar couldn’t hear it.
But you have a Nadez in your house.
I walked and let it assemble.
A Nadez who had died was back, sitting inside a borrowed body, working under a Veyron in the building I reported to. Not just any Nadez.
My brother.
Half of one, anyway. My father’s son by Sophia Vale. Older than the walls. Older than the infection. And whatever he’d been doing for the centuries between then and now, he was here, in this corridor, telling me he’d be visiting soon.
I don’t know whether to be relieved or terrified, I thought. Both. It’s definitely both.
"Bram."
Becky’s voice cut through the storm. She was leaning against the corner at the end of the corridor, arms folded across her chest, waiting for me with a small, questioning tilt of her head.
"Rebecca Donman," I said.
"Don’t call me that." Becky fell into step beside me, her shoulder brushing mine. "And I think Melissa has a point."
"Yeah," I said. My mind was still three corridors back, standing in front of a man wearing a body that wasn’t his, trying to untangle what it meant that my brother had just tapped my shoulder and forgiven me for something neither of us truly cared about.
"I’ve been thinking about it since we came in," Becky continued, bumping her shoulder into mine again with easy familiarity. "Connecting the outside to the inside. That’s the whole thing, isn’t it?"
"Maybe." I slowed my pace slightly, boots echoing softly on the tiled floor. "But we can’t trust her fully. She’s giving us the version she wants us to have. You never know what’s underneath it."
"She’s clean," Becky said, with a confidence that was genuinely unsettling. Her eyes were bright, certain.
I glanced at her, then back down the hallway. The building was busier than I’d ever seen it—staff moving briskly between floors, new faces in every corridor, an institution still figuring out what it was going to become under the new regime.
She was matching my pace exactly. No limp. No hitch. Nothing.
"What happened to you?" I asked, keeping my voice light.
"What do you mean?"
"Yesterday you needed a wall to stand against. Today you’re walking like nothing happened." I kept my tone casual, but my eyes flicked down to her leg. "Is that a miracle or should I be asking a different question?"
"Sort of a miracle." She said it easily, a small smile tugging at her lips. Then something shifted in her face—a brief hesitation, her fingers twitching at her side. "Actually, there’s something I want to tell you."
I didn’t answer right away.
"I’m telling you because you’re the only person here I trust, Bram."
I’d heard that sentence four times since crossing the life layer. Every single time it had come with weight attached, and I was already carrying more than I could safely hold.
I stopped walking. Becky stopped with me. I turned to face her fully, the corridor lights casting soft shadows across her features.
"Please. Not now."
"It’s life and death." She stepped closer, keeping her voice low, her eyes searching mine with urgent intensity. "Real danger. Inside the walls, Bram. Right now."
I put my hand on her cheek, thumb brushing lightly across her skin, and held her gaze.
"My head isn’t in a good place at the moment," I said quietly. "Give me a few hours. Then tell me everything."
She searched my face for a long second, her expression tightening, then nodded once.
"Okay. Later."
We started walking again, side by side. I felt it settle between us like a stone—whatever she’d been carrying, she’d brought it to me and I’d handed it back to her and told her to hold it a little longer.
Life and death. Real danger.
I thought about Ernesto. About Becky asking me to find him yesterday and stopping halfway through whatever she’d actually come to say. About Max watching us from across the mission room with a face that gave nothing away.
She’s been trying to tell me for two days.
My watch buzzed against my wrist.
Sinn.
I looked at Becky walking beside me, at the words still sitting behind her teeth, and answered the call.