They followed the quadcopter. They watched it float off the runway lip and into the Academy's east intake corridor - legs tucking, rotors giving back the air they'd borrowed - and then the med doors sealed with the quiet finality of things that don't take visitors. The eight stood there a beat too long, legs still braced for alarms that weren't ringing anymore.
The corridor to the Vanguard medical wing was brighter than the rest of the Academy: white that felt watched. The eight caught only a flash of Hazel as the cart turned - face slack under anesthesia, two neat bands of living light cinched at thigh and forearm, staff laid across her like a friend permitted to cross thresholds. Then she was gone, swallowed by a door labeled with a sigil none of them recognized.
Rune didn't go in.
