POV: Aurora
Dante's email arrives just as I'm packing up to leave.
"Subject: Re: Potential conflict of interest – Vega."
"Received. The situation is being analyzed at a higher level. Precisely because of that connection, I'm interested in your reading of the project. Continue documenting everything. Nothing you see will be used against you if you stick to the facts.
D."
I read the last letter three times.
D.
He could have just signed "General Management." The initial makes his presence creep in where it shouldn't.
"Everything okay?" Lina asks, peeking over the edge of the cubicle.
"Management replied," I say. "They want me to continue with Seraphim, even knowing about the scholarship."
"Obviously," she replies. "Finding people willing to see the shit from the inside isn't that easy."
"I don't know if I want to continue," I confess.
"But you know how to do it," she replies. And if there's something wrong, I'd rather you see it than someone who sells out easily. Go home. We'll continue tomorrow.
I pick up my backpack and turn off the computer. Everything on the floor seems normal, but I feel like my skin is too big for my body. As I head for the elevators, I scan the hallway, looking for a silhouette that I recognize too quickly for how little I've seen it.
It's not there. I don't know if that disappoints me or relieves me.
The rain is waiting for me outside.
I adjust my scarf and walk to the bus stop. The air on the street hits me: smoke, bread, wet trash, leaves, perfumes. Everything comes at once, sharp, as if someone had turned up the volume on my senses.
It wasn't like that before.
The bus is full. I grab the bar and close my eyes. A man smells of old tobacco, a girl of synthetic flowers, the seat of dampness. I try to breathe through my mouth.
My mind, treacherous, searches for a familiar smell to hide among so much noise.
Storm. Amber.
Dante comes back to my mind: his proximity in the aisle, his firm voice telling me to sit down, the absurd feeling that the air falls into order when he speaks. "I don't want anyone collapsing on my floor."
My floor.
I open my eyes before that idea gets stuck in some soft place.
In my room, the silence sounds louder than the bus engine.
I throw my backpack on the chair and collapse onto the bed. The sagging mattress protests. The window lets in a thread of cold air; the stain on the ceiling seems to move if I stare at it too long.
My phone vibrates.
"How was your day, sweetie? Are they treating you well? Are they paying you this month or next?" my mom writes.
"Fine," I reply. "Lots of work, I'm learning. The salary comes at the end of the month. I'll call you on Sunday."
I don't tell her about Seraphim. For her, the scholarship is a pure miracle. I don't know how to explain to her that I just found his name among tables that smell like auditing.
I force myself to go to the bathroom. I look at myself in the mirror.
Nothing special: dark circles under my eyes, tired hair, slightly paler skin. I splash cold water on my face. The steam rises, and suddenly I realize that even that has a smell: damp, metallic, mixed with my soap. My own body smells stronger to me.
"Hormonal evaluations," I remember from the medical clause.
"Report changes in cycle, physical or emotional state."
My cycles have always been ignored chaos. What if now someone decides that chaos has another name?
I go back to bed with my laptop.
I look for the old scholarship admission email. "Congratulations, Aurora: you have been selected for the Aurora Program." The subject line shines as if it were talking about someone else.
I scroll down to the fine print. There's a link I never opened: "Program funding and conditions details."
I click on it.
The PDF talks about donors, partnerships, "human capital." At the end, there's a short table: "Source of funds: Seraphim Project – community and education line. Modality: full scholarships. Cohort: 03."
In the right-hand column, a date.
I don't have the office database here, but my brain remembers the nighttime peaks I marked. The date fits too well with one of them to be an innocent coincidence.
The knot in my stomach tightens.
I slam the laptop shut. Not because I want to stop knowing, but because my hands are starting to shake.
I lie on my side, staring at the peeling wall. Rain beats against the glass.
Noir Tower is far away, but I feel it close, as if invisible cables were coming out of its thirty-first floor and running through my cheap room.
I close my eyes.
For a moment, I swear the smell of storm and amber seeps into the room, mixed with the dampness of the walls. I know it's impossible. He's not here.
Even so, my body reacts as if it were real: my heart races, my skin prickles, something under my chest beats differently.
I don't know if the real danger is Seraphim, the scholarship...
Or what is beginning to change in me every time I think about the man who runs the place where all this began.