The hallway of Verna Academy overflowed with people on this morning. In the midst of that noise, Carter Jason stared at his terminal without changing his expression. Or rather, it would be more accurate to say he couldn't change it. The communication device behind his right ear glowed quietly. The monitoring device's readings had been creeping upward steadily over the past thirty minutes. (Passive scan. Chrono-signature search.) Jason raised his gaze from the terminal screen. The hallway bulletin board, the glass display case installed there. The curved surface reflected the hallway. If he adjusted the angle—— There. A middle-aged man. Wearing the maintenance uniform of Verna Academy. However, that face didn't appear in the staff registry database Jason had accessed last night. His build, gait, the direction of his gaze——everything moved in a way that wasn't "just a maintenance worker." And the man was definitely closing the distance toward Mortenson Clara's classroom. "[serious]Clara" Mortenson Clara stopped in the middle of the hallway. Her deep crimson ponytail swayed. Amber eyes turned toward Jason's terminal screen. "[serious]Look in the mirror. The right end of the display case" One second. Clara's face changed. "[serious]What's the escape route?" "[serious]There isn't one. He'll cut us off from the classroom and library both" Inside her pocket, Clara's fingers moved. A pocket watch. The cold sensation of metal. The thing Jason had kept telling her not to use. But there were no other options. The man ahead turned around, his eyes about to meet Clara's—— Time stopped. Sound vanished. Laughter, footsteps, the voice of someone reading announcements in the distance——all of it was cut away in an instant, and the hallway became a silent painting. But——this time was different. There was a shadow. In the center of the hallway. Between Clara and the frozen operative. Standing among the rows of frozen students, that shadow stood. A darkness like a pillar. The light around it seemed to warp and be drawn in only there. Last time it had been at the edge of her vision. The time before that, it had been only a presence. Now——it was directly in front. The shadow opened. Clara couldn't put into words what the motion of "opening" precisely meant. But in the moment something deep was born within the shadow, she felt a pulling sensation. Gravity. A vortex. Something within her flowed toward it—— Clara released the watch. Time returned. Noise returned. The hallway's clamor rushed in all at once. The operative was running away. In the single second Clara had frozen, he had seen something that drove him away. Clara's knees buckled. Jason caught her in time. He grabbed both her shoulders, stopping her from falling to the floor. Nearby students called out "Are you okay?" Jason answered curtly, "Just a dizzy spell." Clara looked up. She looked at Jason. "[sad]……I can't hear Grandmother's voice anymore" Jason's grip tightened. "[sad]I can't remember it. Her voice. Her face. The feeling of her hand" The crowd in the hallway flowed around the two of them, avoiding them. No one paid attention. The world was as it always was. Jason said nothing. He stayed like that for ten seconds. --- In the basement of the academy, the boiler room. A space that had fallen into disuse when the buildings in the 3rd District underwent nearly complete renovation in 2039, when they switched to the chrono-element thermal source system. A place Jason had found during his nighttime academy network investigation——no surveillance terminals, no network connection, not even on the official maps. Rusted pipes ran across the ceiling. The smell of old metal hung in the air. Dimly lit. Two maintenance containers sat facing each other, just large enough for two people to sit. Clara sat on one and placed the pocket watch on her lap. She wasn't touching it. Just looking at it. "[whispers]I remember the name. Magda Mortenson. Haskel Alley, number 12. A blue coat. The pocket watch under the floorboards" Jason sat down on the other container and opened his notebook. "[whispers]I also remember that she used to call my name a lot in the hallway. But what her voice sounded like when she called it——" Her words trailed off. Jason's pen moved. He wrote down everything Clara had said. The name. The address. The blue coat. The floorboards. Everything Clara said she "remembered." Clara watched silently. After a while, Jason began reading from the first line. Slowly, as if confirming. One item at a time. Evidence that Clara's grandmother Magda had existed, spoken aloud. When he read the last line——"She hid the pocket watch under the floorboards. There was a reason"——Clara's jaw lifted slightly. She placed one hand over her mouth and breathed in through her nose. Her eyes reddened, but nothing spilled over. Jason quietly closed his notebook. He said nothing. He was simply there. That weight of "simply being there" reached Clara in a way that felt almost strange. In the dimness of the boiler room, she looked at him for a moment——realized she'd looked too long, and looked away first. --- The hatch opened forty minutes later. Both of them stood up simultaneously. A figure descending the ladder. Their hands held nothing. They came down with both hands open. Silver, long hair. Frost Laelia. Not in uniform. Not in Horologion equipment. Ordinary, unremarkable civilian clothes. That very incongruity spoke eloquently about her usual state. She might have barely owned "normal clothes" at all. "[cold]Ninety minutes. I can only talk during that time. After that, my assigned monitor will notice my GPS gap and send a retrieval team" Jason's hand moved——reaching for a weapon. Laelia saw it and shook her head. She sat on the floor. Not on a container, but on the floor. Deliberately lower than the two of them. "[serious]I am Project Seminarium, test subject number VII. All the others are dead" Her voice was flat. As if emotion had been stripped away. "[serious]Between 2020 and 2028, Horologion's genetic engineering division conducted experiments on twelve children. Chrono-element antibodies——a genetic trait that allows free movement even during time stops——were artificially grafted. Starting with subject I through XII" Jason pulled out his notebook. "[serious]Some died during surgery. Some died from immune rejection within two years of the procedure. Subject IV succeeded in acquiring the antibodies. However, she lost higher cognitive function. At age nine——she was euthanized" Only the moment before the word "four" did Laelia's voice change for an instant. When speaking of subject III. That alone was something mixed into the flatness. After that, it returned immediately. "[serious]I am the only complete success. As a chrono-element antibody bearer, I am recorded as the only one on this entire planet" Clara opened her mouth. "[surprised]You've been carrying all of that this whole time——" "[cold]I believed it. Until eighteen months ago" Laelia continued. Eighteen months ago, she had gained access to the Seminarium archive. She read the records of all test subjects. Names, ages, causes of death. As long as those records existed, the word "purpose" that Horologion spoke of began to look like something different to Laelia. "[serious]I will explain the outline of Project Fixa——the Fixed Trajectory Plan. Mortenson Clara's pocket watch is referred to in Horologion's internal documents as the Zero Key, the Key of Zero Hour. Not a localized time stop. If brought into contact with the central device of the Fixa Chamber——the Fixed Trajectory Experimental Chamber——and fully activated, it will fix the entire human timeline's branching point into a single deterministic route. All possibilities close. Free will becomes——not metaphorically, but physically impossible" Silence. Jason's pen stopped. "[serious]Who chose it. That single route" "[cold]The Grandmaster. The current supreme leader. I don't know their identity. I don't know the content of the chosen future either. All I know is that no document contains a reversal procedure" Clara looked at the pocket watch. The cold metal on her lap. This was——this was the Zero Key. Her grandmother had hidden it under the floorboards. There was a reason. "[serious]There's one more thing" Laelia's gaze turned toward Jason. Jason had already been looking at her. Taking notes. But now, with the shift in Laelia's eyes, he knew something was coming. "[serious]The data drive from your father that you were trying to decrypt. The fragment of the operative designation list that remained before Gear-7 deleted it——Elias Carter was included in it. Codename Gear-9. Assigned mission——recovery of the Zero Key. Track down Magda Mortenson, who disappeared from records in the late '90s, and determine her location" Jason stopped writing. "[serious]Elias Carter carried out that mission for three years. After that, he accessed the Seminarium archive through a backchannel. He read the test subject records. And then——he deleted all his mission files himself and encrypted everything onto a personal drive before disappearing. The last log is the deletion of his own mission data and the sealing of all information onto the drive" Jason didn't move. "[serious]He wasn't a hero from the beginning. He started on the enemy side and chose differently" The boiler room was quiet. A pipe hummed low somewhere beyond the wall, that alone filling the space. Jason's grip on the pen was so tight the skin on the back of his hand turned white. His face didn't move. His eyes didn't move. Only that grip spoke to what was inside him. "[serious]……Where did you get that" "[cold]The Seminarium archive contains detailed dossiers for all Gear-class operatives. I made a copy of Elias Carter's before I left" A small encryption chip was placed on the floor. Between the two of them. Jason looked at it. He didn't pick it up. Clara watched his profile. She said nothing. She didn't touch him. But——she moved slightly closer to him. Just enough that Jason would know "someone is here." After a while, Jason picked up the chip. He put it in his pocket. "[serious]……Tell me the retrieval team's entry route. Where will they come in" His voice was flat. It had taken a moment to make it flat. --- As Laelia began to answer that question, Jason's terminal vibrated. The terminal screen displayed a map showing Horologion's chrono-element field. From the upper floors, a chrono-lock spread outward. Local time-stop fields were being placed on each exit——sealing all the academy's exits. "[serious]They're here" Fast. Thirty minutes earlier than the ninety minutes Laelia had said. Jason calculated the field's progression on his terminal. "[serious]Only one's still open. From the boiler room down through the maintenance shaft. It connects to the foundation of the adjacent Voss Memorial Research Institute. Narrow. Dark. Twelve minutes of silent movement" Clara put the pocket watch in her pocket. She stood up and looked between Jason and Laelia alternately. "[serious]I can't use it. If that shadow comes again, there's nothing left to stop it. So I won't use it. But I can't hand it over either. I can't let it be used as the Zero Key" Three sentences. Three facts. That was all she said. In a voice that didn't sound like it came from where she'd been crying. Laelia looked at Clara for a moment. With an unreadable expression. "[cold]I know the access code to the external maintenance panel of the Fixa Chamber. The retrieval team doesn't. If that's usable, the options change" Jason opened the shaft hatch. It was dark. Deep, narrow, descending downward. The three of them went down. One by one, the chrono-locks closed from above. Click, click, small and certain. Clara descended while watching Jason's back. He faced forward, confirming his footing in the darkness with the light from his terminal. She noticed that