The alarms didn’t stop.
Even deep in the tunnels, we could feel the shift. The Academy had gone still in the worst way—like a beast inhaling just before it strikes.
Niko and I didn’t speak as we moved. Our breathing was too loud, our footsteps too fast, but we didn’t stop. Not until we’d dropped three levels back into the old maintenance halls, past a rusted security checkpoint and into a disused laundry vault that smelled like mildew and rust.
We slammed the door shut behind us.
For a second, everything was silent but our breath.
Then—
“They’ll lock down the dorms first,” Niko said. He was pacing, fast and tight, jaw clenched. “They’ll run diagnostics on every internal system. Flag every device, scan for data leaks. Interrogate anyone with a trace of outside contact.”
I slid down t
