Silas had heard nothing from the Order Headquarters for the past two weeks. No summons to meet and update someone on recent findings, no other orders, nothing but radio silence. Whenever he went more than a week without even so much as passing by a contact, he couldn’t help but feel uneasy. In these dire times, any anomaly could indicate a turn for the worse. He was certainly feeling anxious, and while normally he was very good at keeping a brave face (it was how he had managed to make it through the past years after the losses of his sisters), it was starting to leak out in little ways. He knew he had instructed a rowdy student to sit down a bit too loudly, graded a lackluster paper a bit too harshly, and was generally feeling highly uncomfortable and paranoid. It wasn’t like this was the first time HQ had been silent to him, but something about this time felt different.

He couldn’t put his finger on what exactly made this instance of silence different from the others. It was just a subtle charged feeling in the air. Some errant gossip from the students hinted at Negaverse activities in the shadows, but that still didn’t seem unusual enough to merit excessive concern. He had no real basis for mindless paranoia. It stood to reason that he should just wait it out. Surely a message would come to him soon.

He looked at the next day’s lesson plans. Subjects like science and math were relatively inoffensive, but Negaverse propaganda was creeping into the English curriculum, and the history curriculum was absolutely rife with pro-Negaverse slants. Both of them made him cringe. He did not want to raise the next generation of Negaverse officers. It felt so strange to think that, only five years ago, there was nothing to do with either faction in any history lesson, much less anything about the magic that had come to the fore as the war escalated. Why did his students have to have their futures constrained to a fate that involved the Negaverse? Before the escalation, they could literally have been anything. Now, the Negaverse’s influence ensured that they would only keep to certain paths within “reason.”

A series of knocks on his apartment door jarred Silas out of his reverie. After a pause, the knocks came again. “I’m coming,” he called out, then went to answer the door. Only after he had spoken did he realize that maybe he should have just kept silent and pretended not to be there. At least one of his neighbors was supposed to be away from the weekend, or so he had heard, and remembering that made him suspicious of the knocks. Well, it was too late to not answer the door at this point. He had already said he was coming. It was probably just one of the other neighbors.

He opened his door to two black trenchcoat-clad men, and his heart plummeted into his stomach. “Can I help you?” he asked, the slightest hint of a nervous stutter on the “can.”

“You are Mr. Silas Bright, correct?” said the man on the left, who was holding a clipboard.

“Yes, that’s right,” Silas replied, nodding.

“Please come with us.” The man with the clipboard stepped to the side and gestured for Silas to follow. “The Negaverse is conducting some preliminary investigations. We’re not saying that you have done anything suspicious, Mr. Bright, but we would still like to take you back to the headquarters for questioning.”

Silas switched into calculation mode. On the surface, the request seemed unremarkable. They hadn’t explicitly said that they suspected Silas of anything. The fact that he had to come to headquarters for questioning, however, sent up the red flags in Silas’s mind. If he set foot into the headquarters, he would officially lose all control over his fate by virtue of being on the Negaverse’s turf. The risk was too great. He would have to at least try to shake them off. “I’m sorry. Can we do this another time? I’m a teacher. I need to grade things for my students and work on my lesson plan.”

“If necessary, we can easily arrange for a substitute at your school, though I doubt such a thing will be an issue,” said the man on the right.

Several more red flags shot up for Silas. Of course they can easily arrange for a substitute, and of course it won’t be an issue, because they will pick my permanent replacement themselves. “Please, I’ve got a lot of work to do. My students have been waiting on these for a while.”

“Mr. Bright, if you don’t come with us, you will be reported as resisting. You might as well come with us.” The man with the clipboard lowered it slightly.

Dammit, he’s right. This is a lose-lose situation. If didn’t go, he would be reported, which would cast highly dangerous suspicion on him. If he did go, it was possible they would want him for more than just questioning. No matter what decision he made, he would be in danger. “All right,” he said at last. “I’ll come with. Please try to keep it as short as possible, though.”

“We’re not the ones in charge of how long it takes, but we’ll see what we can do.” As Silas stepped out of his apartment, the two officers stood on either side of him and led him out of the building.

When they had gotten some paces away from the building, Silas turned around and punched the officer behind him square in the nose. Summoning up every ounce of strength in his body, he hit the ground running, speeding away from his potential captors as fast as he could. As he ran down a side street, he reached his arm out and focused, and for the first time in years, Glitnir existed in Destiny City, the chain of the scales forming around his hand and his uniform shimmering into solidity. The buildings blurred by, and soon he leapt to the rooftops, performing adrenaline-fueled parkour to throw off his pursuers. He felt free in this chase, like for just a brief moment he had broken the Negaverse’s chains on him, and he could do the same for others. He just kept running, running, running, advancing to a point unknown.

No matter what, he would cross the finish line a free man!