The room was exactly as he left it—sterile, corporate, and humming faintly with artificial silence. Dominic slipped inside the Camber District safehouse without a sound, his breath barely visible in the regulated air, just cold enough to sting the edge of awareness. The door sealed behind him with a polite hiss, like the sigh of a mechanical ghost.
No time to breathe. No time to hesitate.
He moved straight for the desk, his eyes already scanning the microcam tucked neatly in the upper corner of the room. The blackout patch had worked flawlessly for the last ninety-eight minutes, projecting the carefully looped footage of his sleeping form. He only had nine minutes left.
Every second mattered now.
Dominic pulled off his jacket in a practiced, fluid motion. Every detail had to match. Every fold of clothing. Every slant of posture. The stylus he'd planted earlier lay exactly where he left it—just beside the open e-textbook on predictive algorithms. He slipped into the chair, hunched slightly to the left, and even tilted his chin to match the angle he'd recorded.
Then he slid a thin chip into his palm and pressed it against the loop's feed controller.
The loop ended. Live feed resumed.
A soft tone pinged through the hallway sensor, confirming full system sync.
Three minutes later, the door unlocked with a muted buzz.
He didn't turn.
"You're up late," said a voice behind him, clipped and professional.
A figure stepped in—tall, clean-cut, wearing the obsidian uniform of Varentian Internal Surveillance. His ID badge didn't give a name. Just a symbol: an eye embedded in a hexagon.
Dominic feigned surprise. "I couldn't sleep. I figured I'd study."
The officer gave a small, polite smile, but his eyes flicked around the room like a predator sniffing for blood. He took three slow steps forward, scanning the space with an ocular lens. The camera lights didn't change, but Dominic was sure they were recording every breath, every twitch.
"Strange movement patterns were detected outside your door earlier," the officer said.
Dominic didn't blink. "I stretched my legs. I have school on Monday. I didn't want to show up rusted."
"Understandable," the man replied, though his voice said otherwise. "Strange behavior is common during the trauma rebound period. It's best not to test the limits of your freedom, Master Manon."
There it was. The warning, veiled in formality.
"Wasn't testing anything," Dominic said. "I know how leashes work."
A flicker of interest crossed the man's face. Amusement, perhaps. Or curiosity.
He changed topics. Abruptly. "School resumes in forty-eight hours. Do you plan to attend, or would you prefer additional recovery time?"
Dominic tapped his tablet. "Structure helps. I'll go."
The man nodded. "Good. You'll have a counselor assigned. Trauma specialists. You may also stay in the dormitories rather than return home. Revisiting the scene of... recent events... can trigger nightmares."
"I'm fine here," Dominic said quickly. Too quickly.
The officer caught it.
He smiled again—an artificial, glinting expression—and turned toward the door.
"Routine check-ins will continue. Don't test us, Dominic. We're here to help you."
The door hissed shut.
Dominic didn't exhale for twenty-seven seconds.
He stood frozen, hands resting lightly on the tablet, watching the door until the faintest red light in the corner faded. Hallway sensors—dormant. For now.
They didn't trust him. Of course they didn't. But it was more than that. They weren't just watching. They were shaping. Testing. Observing how he broke under pressure, what directions his trauma pushed him toward. Trying to predict him. Domesticate him.
He walked to the mirror and stared at his reflection, knowing full well the microcam behind the reflective glass was active again. He offered a tight smile and said nothing.
Inside, his mind was spiraling.
He would go to school. He'd wear their mask. He'd sit in the counselor's office and speak in perfectly weighted half-truths. But behind it all, he'd work.
Because now… now he had a lead.
"You already know how to reach me."
The voice echoed from memory, not hallucination. His grandfather, leaning in close one summer afternoon at the southern villa. A light breeze, the smell of cedar oil and old leather. The man had tapped Dominic's temple.
"You just have to think."
He remembered the puzzle box now—an old, smooth cube carved with abstract runes and mechanical lines. It had taken Dominic a week to solve as a child. But it wasn't just for fun. It had been an exercise in encoding thought into action. Memory into movement. Logic into instinct.
Dominic now realized: the contact number had never been on paper. It was in his head, buried like a mine waiting to be triggered by the right sequence.
He'd need something to unlock it. Something symbolic.
And to call that number? He'd need a device that wouldn't be traced.
Un-jammable. Untraceable. Anonymous.
Impossible… unless you knew how to make one.
The Royal Varentian Academy sat on a hill overlooking the southern highway, its massive form blending sleek chrome and old-world stone. A fortress for the elite. Dominic had once loved it here—admired the polished symmetry of the corridors, the precision of schedules, the illusion of control.
Now, every footstep echoed like a loaded question.
He arrived early—too early, judging by the empty halls and flickering hallway lights. Monday mornings always moved like molasses, and the silence gave him time to map every camera, every blind spot. He wasn't just walking anymore. He was calculating.
The security team gave him a nod as he entered. Polite, clipped. Not indifferent—never indifferent. More like… observant.
They knew.
Not what he was planning. But they knew something was off. The way he scanned the ceiling corners. The way his fingers tapped out patterns on his thigh, unconsciously. The way his eyes flicked toward exits instead of lockers.
"Morning, Dominic."
He turned. It was Head of Department Kael—the head of Experimental Engineering and Dominic's former mentor in micro-device construction. A tall man with salt-and-pepper stubble and the haunted eyes of someone who slept too little and thought too much.
The Academy was structured in a way not too different from universities or colleges, with the only difference being the level of knowledge they offer. The department segmentation where only available for the last 2 years of secondary education. Engineering, Health and life science, Computing, Public Services, Social Science and Business.The department were six which were still further sub-divided. Each department have clubs and accomplishes projects each month to build co-operation and practical knowledge—[1]
"Good Morning Sir," Dominic greeted evenly.
"I heard about your family," Kael said softly, stepping closer. "I… there's nothing I can say, really. But if you need time—"
"I don't."
Kael hesitated, searching his student's face.
"You always did prefer doing over feeling."
Dominic offered a faint shrug. "Feeling doesn't rebuild what's broken."
Kael didn't press. "Well, the lab's yours, as always. Clearance codes haven't changed. Just don't burn the place down."
Dominic gave a tight smile and walked away before the kindness could break through the ice.
The lab was exactly as he remembered it: cold, humming, and beautiful. Rows of soldering tools, micro-resonance welders, and filtered circuit trays lined the benches. The smell of warm plastic and ozone hung faintly in the air.
He sealed the lab door behind him.
Three hours until first bell. That gave him just enough time to begin.
The blueprints formed inside his mind before he even reached for a stylus. He didn't need notes. He had already built the device a dozen times in his head over the last 48 hours.
The design was lean—no antennas, no digital handshake protocols, no identity pings. A physical trigger system with a five-use pulse transmitter. Analog base, shielded casing, self-scrambling frequency band. If the frequency was matched to a forgotten Cold War-era relay channel? Even better. It would vanish into the noise.
He worked quickly, with a surgeon's calm. Every motion was deliberate.
Trim the edge capacitor. Solder the nano-spike. Shield the emitter.
Even here, alone, he moved with restraint. Cameras were mounted in the corners of the lab, but they wouldn't record without motion alerts or badge scans. Still, he stayed in angles they couldn't see clearly.
He slid the casing shut, locked it with a click, and tucked it into a heat-sealed bag. The real challenge wouldn't be building the device—it would be deciding when and where to use it.
This had to be precise.
The number. He had to unlock it first.
Second period passed in a blur of whispers and stares.
His classmates watched him like he was a myth come alive. Some offered fragile smiles. Others avoided his gaze entirely. But Dominic noticed more than their faces—he noticed where they sat, how often they looked at the door, who kept glancing at their wristbands.
Someone here was feeding information to someone else.
Maybe not willingly. Maybe not knowingly.
But it was happening.
When lunch came, Dominic didn't head to the mess hall. He took the north staircase to the abandoned south wing—the one under renovation. Old janitorial lockers. No working cameras. Silence.
He slipped inside a rusted maintenance closet and sat cross-legged on the floor, his back to the wall, the heat-sealed pouch resting in his lap.
He stared at it.
Now came the hard part.
The box—the memory box if it existed—was long gone. But the sequence still lived in him. His grandfather had designed it to teach recursion. Sevens. It had always been about sevens. Seven turns. Seven locks. Seven notes of a scale.
Dominic closed his eyes.
"You already know how to reach me."
Seven primes.
Seven-letter ciphers.
He let the mental algorithm unwind in his mind like a blooming flower. And then—finally—a sequence of numbers slid into focus, cold and familiar.
He didn't write them down.
He fed them directly into the transmitter.
The light blinked twice.
Then silence.
No call. No voice.
Just the dead hum of static.
Had he failed?
He was about to shut it off when the screen blinked. A single string of text appeared.
"One echo heard. . . ."
His fingers froze.
Had someone received it?
Dominic snapped the device shut and tucked it into his sleeve.
He left the closet slowly, checking corners before stepping into the main hallway. Every nerve felt charged. The hallway was empty.
But a shadow moved just beyond the stairwell.
Too tall to be a student. Too slow to be a janitor.
He didn't hesitate.
Dominic ducked back into the side hallway, breath tight in his throat. He circled through the second-floor service corridor, exiting near the arts wing. Whoever that was, they weren't here for books or paint.
They were here for him.
Back in class, he sat still and silent.
But his thoughts screamed.
The pieces were moving faster now. His message had gone out. But the watchers—did they find out?
He was being hunted—and not because they feared him.
Because they wanted to know what he knew.
He didn't know everything yet.
But he would.
Because now… someone will be listening.
And Dominic Manon had no intention of staying silent.
[End of Chapter Seven]
[1] (and well Dominic my boy joined them all).