We didn't speak much on the drive back.
The silence wasn't empty—it was loaded. Packed tight with questions neither of us wanted to say out loud. That video of Wilburt had broken something. Shaken the ground beneath what little we thought we knew.
I glanced at Hana.
She was still watching the video on loop, pausing it at frames that seemed random to me but probably screamed clue to her.
"Trust no one. Especially the ones closest to you."
That line replayed in my head like an audio hallucination. Like it was meant to lodge there and rot.
Was it meant for me?
Was it meant for Hana?
Was it about us?
By the time we arrived back at the edge of campus, the skies had turned the color of bruises. Sergeant Kane parked near a row of construction barriers, his hand resting lightly on the pistol under his jacket.
"Want me on standby?" he asked.
Hana didn't look up. "Not yet. But keep your comms open."
He gave a curt nod and vanished into the shadows like he was one.
We took the long path around the dorms. Less surveillance. Less chance of anyone asking why we weren't dressed like students on a lazy weekend. And that's when the first text came in.
Unknown NumberYou're getting warm, Lucas.
I stopped walking. "Hana."
She looked over. I showed her the phone.
A second message buzzed in.
Check your mail.
We sprinted.
At the student mailroom, tucked into the corner of the campus post office, my box was already open.
Inside was a folded sheet of paper. No envelope. No name.
Just another line:
"You were never just an observer. You're a blueprint."
I showed it to Hana. Her brow furrowed instantly. "That phrase… doesn't sound random."
It wasn't.
She pulled up her notes on Project Aeon, scrolling through old decrypted files, coded forum posts, and recovered documents. One PDF file had a reference she hadn't noticed before.
Subject Classifications – Tier IV: Blueprints.
She clicked it.
There were five bullet points:
High adaptability
Untraceable lineage
Creative cognitive patterns
Empathic irregularities
Eyes conditioned for signal reception
"What the hell does that mean?" I asked, staring at the last line.
Hana didn't answer right away.
But she looked straight at my right eye—the one behind the custom lens. The one that had never been normal.
She had that face again. The one she wore when she was thinking two steps ahead of the world.
"Lucas," she said slowly, "this might go deeper than Wilburt, or the academy. This... could be about you."
Silence fell between us like a trapdoor.
Outside, the university's bell tower chimed four times.
The sound echoed through the walls, and for a second, I swore it didn't sound like bells at all.
It sounded like a signal.
Like someone was watching.