Page 79 of Legacy Ascended

"It was tagged," Freya says. "Somebody took the tag off."

Voss looks at it for a moment longer.

"Bag it," he says. "Both of you sign the seal."

They take it away, and then they take my bedroom for the afternoon, and I sit in the kitchen of my own suite like a visitor.

I call Cassel at four.

It rings long enough that I start putting the phone down, and then she has it, and her voice comes through with more air in it than it used to have.

"Miller."

"Hi."

"You're calling me, so somebody's done something."

"How are you?"

"I have a hole in me that whistles when I laugh and a physical therapist who has never liked anybody. Ask me the real question."

So I ask her.

I tell her about the drawer and the watch and the residue where a tag was. I don't tell her it's hers. I describe it and I let her say it.

She's quiet for a while. There's a television on somewhere behind her, and somebody walks past her and says something about a door.

"Three links out," she says. "Scratch across the glass. That sounds like mine."

"I think so too."

"It came off me in the road. They took it off me and somebody put it in a bag. It's supposed to be in a box with my coat and my boots and everything else that got cut off me, in the Council storage." A breath that catches on something.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't do that."

"Cassel—"

"Don't. I'm not the one it was left for." The television goes off. "Miller, listen to me. Whoever put that in your room wants you to think about that day.”

The notice goes out to the whole academy at six.

Practical placements suspended, all cohorts, pending review.

Renzo reads it off his phone twice, and then out loud a third time for the room, and Sophia says a word that makes Declan laugh into his sleeve.

"Two nights out," Renzo says. "I was going to be so good at it. I had a system."

"You had a bag of sweets."

"That was the system."

Declan takes the phone and reads it himself, and then he looks over at me across the table, and he doesn't say any of the unkind things he's thinking.

For one evening, at least, I'm not the only one missing something. Everybody's grounded, and everybody's annoyed.

Ander comes in the evening and doesn't look at my bedroom.