They stayed and talked with Unc for a couple of hours, Caeden’s friends getting to know the man and hearing stories about Caeden from when he was younger. Thankfully, no one asked about the obvious questions. Namely, what happened to Caeden’s parents, adoptive or biological, or what happened to his hand. He wasn’t sure he was ready to talk about that with any of them. All three events were things Caeden held close to his heart as turning points in his life, things that made him who he was. Just as Lily wouldn’t discuss the way her family had treated her, Caeden didn’t want to talk about his major defining life events.
After eating a meal with him, Caeden and company left Unc with promises to return as often as possible and keep him updated about their time at the Academy. On the way back, someone finally spoke up. Caeden wasn’t surprised.
“So, about your parents…” Erik showed an uncharacteristic amount of tact, but Caeden could tell he had been itching to ask the entire time.
“I was nine; it sucked. I don’t want to talk about it.” Caeden responded to Erik's unasked question.
“Yeah, ok, fair.” Erik nodded, immediately dropping it.
“Sorry,” Lily offered.
“Not your problem. Plus, you didn’t ask.” Caeden shook his head. “At this point, I’m as over it as anyone can be. It fucked me up a lot when I was younger, but I grew up. Unc helped me get through it, even though he was hurting too. He had no idea how to take care of a kid, but he did his best.”
“He’s a great guy.” Lily smiled, “I’m glad we got to meet him.”
“Now you get why I’m less worried about myself, yeah?” Caeden shot her a look.
“Yeah, I also know he would be pissed if you outed yourself for him,” Lilly didn’t back down an inch.
Caeden deflated. “Yeah, you’re right. I know you’re right. He pretty much said it. Doesn’t make it suck less.”
“We get that it’s hard.” Cat added, “We’re not trying to say he’s not worth it; we just want you to look at the big picture. At least listen to Lily. She’s smarter than the rest of us put together.” Erik was right with her, nodding emphatically.
Caeden chuckled. “I get it. I’m not going to do anything reckless, so you can let it go. Actually, would one of you guys be up for some sparring? I could use the exercise.” He felt the need to destress, and as unlikely as it was, focusing on combat seemed to help the relentless stream of negative thoughts he had been dealing with the past few weeks.
Cat and Erik looked at each other. “We were planning on going back to what we were doing before,” Cat spoke up, “What are you doing, Lily?”
“I was just going to get my babies situated in our room. I didn’t have plans for this afternoon.” Lily squeezed Snowball to her chest. “I could do some sparring after that.”
“Great!” Caeden felt relieved. He was a bit wound up, “In an hour or so, in an IP room?”
“Sounds good.” Lily nodded. “See you then.”
“Well, we’ll see you guys tonight!” Erik danced off in another direction. “We’ve got things to do.”
“Do I want to know?” Caeden couldn’t help asking, even though he had promised himself he wouldn’t.
“Probably not,” Erik admitted.
“I figured.”
{}
Caeden was waiting in the IP room elevator lobby. He had nothing better to do until Lily got here, so he just sat in one of the chairs around the lobby. Caeden assumed they were for people waiting for a free room, when this place got busier. Considering it was an off day, and most people hadn’t caught on to how the school worked, the floor was completely empty. So Caeden leaned back in his chair in the corner of the room and closed his eyes. Lily would be along eventually.
“Are you sure this is fine? Someone could just show up!” An overly loud whisper came from the hallway with the IP rooms.
“Shut up, idiot! Gods, I hate training newbies!” A much louder, gruffer voice snapped back. “This is an off day, see? None of those prissy shrouded brats are going to be doing any work when they can be slacking. We have nothing to worry about. Now hand me the resonance tester.”
“I don’t know, aren’t some of the kids really intense? I’ve noticed a lot of them take this school pretty seriously.” The other voice sounded timid and confused, as well as significantly younger.
“Bahh! That’s all show, I’m telling you. All these kids are here to relax and have fun before they get a cushy military job where they’ll sit on their asses for a few years, then spend the rest of eternity slacking off and doing whatever they want. Rotten, the lot of them.” Old voice scoffed, dismissing young voices’ fears.
“If you say so…” Young voice didn’t sound even slightly reassured.
“I do say so! Listen to your elders, kid. I’ve been infiltrating this stupid school for damn near twenty years. Has anyone noticed? NO! You want to know why? They don’t believe an unshrouded maintenance worker could do dick to them. Every shrouded thinks their invincible, so they don’t bother worrying about us lowly mortals. Now hand me that sequencer.” Old voice ranted as he did some kind of work. Caeden was almost certain he was listening to some revolutionaries that had infiltrated the school and were currently doing something to one or more of the IP rooms.
“I believe you.” The conviction in young voice surprised Caeden, considering his previous statements. “I know they don’t suspect us. I’m just worried about someone walking in on us. Won’t they notice?”
“Ha! As if!” Old voice started laughing, “Listen kiddo, what we’re doing right now, is completely undetectable. Even if someone found us, they couldn’t prove a damn thing. We’re maintenance workers. What’s weird about maintenance workers doing maintenance? No, these control sequences are connected to the core operating system, but they aren’t governed by the same power management network. Rerouting the power to the engine is undetectable since we already sabotaged the management system. No one could ever tell.”
Engine? What are they setting up? An engine didn’t sound all that malicious. Maybe these guys were just stealing power from the building for something else? Caeden would expect revolutionaries to be planting bombs or setting up some kind of kill device. But old voice had talked about infiltration like he was sent here by another organization. Plus, they had some pretty strong anti-shrouded sentiments. Caeden wasn't really sure what he was listening to. He was just surprised to hear it.
Before Caeden could decide whether or not to start interrogating the two, the elevator dinged. Both voices instantly hushed, and there was a clatter of tools followed by scurrying feet. Caeden heard the old voice berate the younger in a whisper about jinxing it. Then the elevator opened, and Lily stepped out. She had Sky riding her shoulder, but Snowball was nowhere to be seen.
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“Hey, ready to spar?” She smiled, spotting Caeden immediately.
“Actually, we should probably talk.” Caeden frowned and explained what he had heard. “I think there’s an employee exit. They were gone before I got around to confronting them or using investigative sense.”
Lily looked horrified. “We need to let one of the faculty know!”
“Know what?” Caeden shrugged, “What I overheard was suspicious as hell, but they never identified themselves as revolutionaries, or even what exactly they were doing, beyond rerouting power to somewhere else.”
“We need to let someone know anyway.” Lily’s expression was dead serious.
“Ok.” Caeden wasn’t opposed to it.
So they went to the first person Caeden could think of; Candice, the head of personnel for the Core Seat. The answer they got didn’t surprise Caeden at all, but Lily was outraged.
“Oh, don’t you worry about that; I guarantee they weren’t revolutionaries. None of that riff-raff could sneak into here. You all relax. I’ll look into it, absolutely.” She smiled amicably, “It certainly sounds like they were up to something, but we’ll find it out. It’s too bad you didn’t catch a look at them. The employee elevator and stairwell are in a maintenance closet, so they could easily slip in and out the back.”
Caeden nodded. He had guessed as much. “Thanks for looking into it, c’mon Lily.”
“Are you kidding me! This is serious; we can’t just let it go!” Lily was livid, unwilling to accept such a lackluster response.
“Lily, come on.” Caeden gestured toward the door. “We can talk about it later.”
She looked back and forth between him and Candice, anger not budging an inch. “Fine!” She threw her hands in the air and stormed out.
“Sorry about her,” Caeden gave Candice an apologetic smile. There was no point in antagonizing the head of personnel where they were living.
“Oh, that’s fine, deary. I’m sure that learning some people working in your living space were up to no good can be rather scary.” Candice waved him off.
“Yeah, right.” Caeden nodded. He was pretty sure Lily wasn’t even slightly afraid, but it gave him a clear out, so he was going to take it. When he exited Candice’s office, Lily was right there, glaring at him.
“I’m not afraid.”
Caeden rolled his eyes. “C’mon.”
When they had made their way back to the elevator bank (Candice’s office was on the first floor through a door past the elevators), Lily grabbed Caeden by the arm, her glare even more intense than before. “What the hell was that about?”
“Lily, what exactly were you expecting her to say? ‘Oh my shroud, we need to bring down the hammer on these fools?' Her response was perfectly reasonable, considering the information we gave.” Caeden didn’t understand where Lily’s anger was coming from.
“I don’t know! More than just a pat on the butt before she hurried us out of there! This is serious! People are sabotaging the school! We should do something!” Lily smacked her hand into an open palm, the jolt causing Sky to hop on her shoulder and start chirping angrily. “We’re going to go camp out on the IP floor until they come back! They have to, to finish whatever they were doing. Then we’ll catch them red-handed and the school will have to do something about it!”
“Ok?” Caeden had no idea where this was coming from, but he was willing to humor her. She was probably right about the two men coming back anyway. They didn’t think they’d been caught, after all. So they went back to the IP rooms and sat in the lobby, tucked away in a corner. Lily stewed in her anger the whole time, occasionally looking at Caeden and huffing. He had no idea what he had done to make her upset. Scratch that, he knew what he had done, but he wasn't sure why she was angry at him for it.
Lily obviously wanted the Academy to be more concerned about these possible revolutionaries, and she wanted Caeden to be more worried. He just didn’t know why. Nothing she had said indicated she had had encounters with the Revolution before, so Caeden doubted her anger came from a hate for the Revolution. He just couldn’t come up with a plausible alternative.
It was only half an hour before they heard voices coming from the back of the hall.
“Ugh, you are such a worrywart, kid. I’m telling you, it's been about an hour or so. I checked the power draw, and no one is using these rooms. Whoever was here before left already. We’re wearing protection now, so stop your bitching.” Old voice was back, and just as cranky.
“But I was right! Someone did come in here! I don’t know why this couldn’t wait for tomorrow.” Young voice was just as afraid as before.
“Idiot! After today these rooms are going to see a lot more use. It’ll only get harder and harder to do our work from here on out. It’s either now or never, and we need this power. Working around it would be a massive pain. The central element of the engine needs a lot of power, and these rooms passively draw a lot of it. We can sneak away more than what we need easily. It’ll be missed more in other systems. We need to do this here, and we need to do it now.” Old voice’s anger dropped off and shifted into more of a teaching tone as Caeden heard the sound of metal clinking. No doubt a sign of tools being jostled.
Lily nearly leapt to her feet before stopping herself and sitting back down quietly. She had some pent-up energy from sitting around and waiting. Caeden did what he assumed Lily was doing, and reached out through his aura to get a better look at these two. That didn’t pan out. Caeden’s aura sense got within a foot of the two, and then it was like there was a blank spot in his sense spanning two feet around the men in every direction. This wasn’t like concealment, which obfuscated what was present; it was like a hole of nothingness. It couldn’t be more blatantly obvious that something was there, but Caeden couldn’t see what exactly it was. He had never felt anything like it.
“What is this supposed to do anyway? Why make the engine when we could just plant explosives all over the school and blow it up? This is way too complicated. Every other mission I’ve had since I joined the revolution has been simple.” Young voice started complaining even as the sound of work continued. Caeden’s eyes flew open, and he sat bolt upright. They had direct confirmation. This was a revolution plot.
Lily jumped to her feet and burst around the corner. Caeden followed as fast as he could, but he could tell from the cursing around the corner that Lily had been spotted almost immediately. Following up, Caeden saw their targets for the first time. Both of them were wearing thick cloaks that covered them completely, even their faces. Caeden wasn’t sure how they could see. One figure was crouched over an open section of the ether encrusted wall with various tools around him, though he was halfway to his feet.
With a sharp kick, the second figure closed the open wall panel and grabbed the arm of the other, hauling him to his feet. Then he threw something on the ground that exploded into a brilliant light. Caeden was stunned for a moment, but tried to follow up with his aura sense before his eyes recovered. However, the device the revolutionary had thrown on the ground also created some kind of field that acted as a wall to Caeden’s aura. He could feel it breaking down in moments, only a temporary measure. It still bought the pair enough time to make it to the employee elevator, wherever that was. They were nowhere to be found.
“We need to go after them!” Lily shouted, charging forward.
“Wait, wait! We should report this!" Caeden grabbed her arm, only for her to formshift into a cloud and pass right through his hand. She still stopped, which was what Caeden wanted anyway.
"Fine, she’ll have to listen to us this time.” Lily still looked pissed. Caeden thought she would have been happy now that they had proper proof, but that didn’t seem to be the case.
Lily's prediction didn’t pan out.
“Listen, I understand you kids think this is funny and all, but you can’t go around falsely reporting that the revolution is in Central City!” Candice was no longer smiling. She looked annoyed and absolutely done with them.
“They weren’t just in the city. They were here! In the Academy!” Lily exclaimed. “We heard them! We saw them!”
“I’ve had quite enough of this nonsense! The both of you will leave right now! I better not hear another peep of this ever again!” Candice huffed, “The nerve of you kids, thinking you can tell wild stories, having the staff running all over after nothing. Ridiculous!”
“But!” Lily protested.
“Enough,” Caeden laid a hand on her shoulder. “Enough, Lily. We tried. Come on.”
Lily looked like she was about to pop a blood vessel; her face was so red. Whipping around, she slammed the door open and marched out.
“I know you’re going to look into it anyway, but did you have to do that?” Caeden asked Candice, knowing he wouldn’t get a real response. He followed after Lily, who was marching toward the elevators. He had to jog to catch up with her before the door closed.
A few seconds into their ride, Lily turned toward him, fire in her grey eyes.
“What the hell is wrong with you?!”