ARC 1:

  Episode 3: Interpretation

  Chapter 7: Residuals

  (Scene 1: The Mechanic’s Hand)

  INT. ACADEMY DORMITORY - MERRICK’S ROOM - MORNING

  Merrick sat on the edge of his bed. The sun was streaming through the high arched window, hitting the dust motes dancing in the air.

  It was a perfect, golden High Rim morning.

  It made him want to vomit.

  In his left hand, he held his silver lighter.

  It was a simple mechanism. Flint wheel. Wick. Fuel reservoir. Physics.

  He had flicked it open a thousand times. It was a nervous tic, a way to keep his hands busy.

  He tried to flick it now.

  His thumb moved.

  The muscle in his forearm spasmed.

  Clatter.

  The lighter slipped from his grip and hit the floor.

  It didn't just fall. In Merrick's mind, the sound was amplified—a metallic CLANG that echoed the Ankou’s scythe hitting the stone.

  Merrick stared at his hand.

  It was vibrating.

  Not a shiver. A frequency.

  He grabbed his wrist with his other hand, squeezing hard, trying to force the bone to stop singing.

  "Stop it," he whispered. His voice sounded thin in the quiet room. "It was just a machine. You just flipped a switch."

  He closed his eyes.

  Behind his eyelids, he saw the Mirror.

  He didn't see the monster. He saw the Mechanism.

  He saw how the gears behind the glass had turned before he touched the switch.

  He saw how the smoke had hugged the floor intentionally.

  It wasn't a machine, his mechanic's brain whispered. It was a mouth. And you fed it.

  He picked up the lighter.

  He put it in his pocket. He didn't light it.

  He didn't think he could handle the smell of smoke today.

  (Scene 2: The Breakfast Assembly)

  INT. THE GREAT HALL - LATER

  The Great Hall of the Royal Academy was a cathedral of logic. High vaulted ceilings, long tables of polished oak, and the low, civilized murmur of five hundred students discussing structural engineering and anatomy.

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  Merrick walked the length of the hall.

  He felt like he was walking underwater. The air felt too thin. The gravity felt suspicious.

  He found himself checking the floorboards. Are they solid? Are they bolted down?

  He spotted them at a table near the back, away from the stained-glass windows.

  They were sitting together, but they weren't together. There was a foot of empty space between each of them.

  Merrick sat down opposite Vance.

  "You look like hell," Merrick said. He tried to make it sound like a joke, like his usual cynical banter. It came out breathless.

  Vance didn't look up.

  He was eating toast.

  Or rather, he was performing surgery on it.

  Vance had cut the crusts off with surgical precision. Now, he was slicing the bread into four perfectly equal squares.

  Slice. (90 degrees).

  Slice. (Perpendicular).

  "Eat your food, Merrick," Vance said softly. He didn't blink. He just watched the knife. "We have a review at 0900. Appearance is mandatory."

  "Review?" Merrick reached for the coffee pot. He had to use two hands to lift it so the spout wouldn't rattle against the cup. "You mean an interrogation. We broke into a sealed ward, Vance. We destroyed equipment."

  "We experienced a boiler malfunction," Vance corrected.

  He finally looked up.

  His eyes were bloodshot, rimmed with dark circles, but his gaze was terrifyingly steady.

  "The carbon monoxide levels in the basement were critical. We were disoriented. We hallucinated."

  Merrick slammed the coffee pot down. Coffee sloshed onto the pristine white tablecloth.

  "Hallucinated?" Merrick hissed. "I felt the heat, Vance. I saw the ash. That wasn't gas."

  "Keep your voice down," Juna whispered.

  She was sitting next to Silas, her face pale. She had a thick medical textbook open in front of her: Pathologies of the Inner Ear.

  She wasn't reading it. She was staring at a diagram of the cochlea, tracing the spiral over and over with her finger.

  "Please, Merrick. Just... not here."

  Merrick looked at the table.

  Silas hadn't moved. He was staring at his spoon.

  He was tilting it back and forth, watching his reflection stretch and distort in the curved metal.

  Stretch. Snap. Stretch. Snap.

  "Silas?" Merrick asked.

  Silas didn't answer. He just flipped the spoon over. Convex. Concave.

  Checking if the reflection lagged.

  "We almost died," Merrick said. The words tasted like copper.

  "No," Elara spoke for the first time.

  She was sitting at the end of the bench, her back to the wall. She was watching the other students in the hall. Listening to the hum of conversation.

  "We almost opened," Elara said.

  Vance dropped his knife. Clatter.

  "Enough."

  Vance stood up, buttoning his frock coat. He smoothed a wrinkle that wasn't there.

  "Dr. Vane has summoned us to the Administration Ring. We are going to go there. We are going to accept the reprimand for the boiler incident. And then we are going to return to our studies."

  Vance leaned over the table, his voice trembling with a desperate, brittle intensity.

  "Because if we don't, Merrick... then the floor isn't flat. And if the floor isn't flat, I don't know how to stand up."

  Vance turned and marched out of the hall.

  Merrick watched him go.

  He looked at his shaking hands.

  He realized Vance was right.

  The lie was the only thing holding the building up.