Chapter 7 7

Sofia's POV

Professor Esteban Mora introduced himself on a Monday, which was day ten, at the door of the Heritage Studies classroom before the session started, which meant he had waited exactly long enough for me to have established a basic routine and not long enough for me to feel settled in it. I noted this. I also noted that he had not introduced himself to any other student at the door before a session, because I had been watching how professors moved through the campus for ten days and Mora did not typically approach students in corridor spaces.

He extended his hand with both of his and shook mine the way that people shake hands when they want you to feel held rather than simply greeted.

"Sofia Vega," he said, with the warm specificity of someone who has been looking forward to saying a name in person. "I've been meaning to find a moment. I'm Esteban Mora, Heritage Studies head. I understand you've been in Professor Garza's sessions."

"Since day one," I confirmed.

"She's excellent," he said. "Rigorous. I hope it hasn't been too fast-paced in the first two weeks."

"It's been manageable," I said. "The pre-reading helps."

He smiled, warm and settled. "Prepared student. Good." He tilted his head slightly, the way people do when they're about to say something they've been building toward. "I wanted to reach out directly because I run an independent assessment programme for students whose ability profiles fall outside the standard classification brackets. When I saw your admissions file, specifically the UNCLASSIFIED notation, I was very interested. I'd love to sit with you this week and run a proper Heritage Studies baseline."

"What does a Heritage Studies baseline involve?" I asked.

"A resonance mapping session," he said. "About thirty minutes. I use a heritage instrument, a bone-compass, which is much more sensitive than the standard monitoring equipment. It maps the full frequency range of your wolf expression without trying to force it into an existing classification category. Just data. Just understanding what you're working with."

He said it with the ease of someone who had explained it many times and found a language for it that was calming rather than clinical. I watched him say it and I thought about Paco's library reference and about three historical UNCLASSIFIED cases resolved through independent study with this man, and I thought about what Val had said about holding patterns and not drawing attention in the second week, and I thought about what my chest was doing, which was the Abuela Carmen alertness, still and specific.

"Sure," I said. "That sounds helpful."

"Wonderful," he said, with the warmth of someone genuinely pleased. "Thursday afternoon, four o'clock? My Heritage Studies office is on the third tier, east wing."

"I'll be there," I said.

He gave my hand one more warm press and went to the front of the room, and I went to my seat and looked at nothing in particular for a moment.

"That was Mora," Val said quietly, beside me.

"I know," I said.

"What did he say?" she murmured.

"He wants to run a Heritage Studies baseline on my ability," I murmured back. "Resonance mapping. Thursday at four."

She did not react visibly, because Val was very good at not reacting visibly when she had decided a situation required that. "And you said?"

"Yes," I said. "Because if I say no he knows I'm already cautious, and if he knows I'm cautious he moves whatever he's doing before we have enough information to understand it."

"Smart," she said.

"Or it's fine and he's exactly what he presents as," I said.

"Also possible," she said. "We'll know more by Thursday."

Paco had found three things by Tuesday evening.

He put them on the library table in his notes with the economy of a person who had done the research and did not need to dramatise the conclusions. "First," he said. "The four historical UNCLASSIFIED cases I mentioned. Three were resolved through Mora's independent study. The third student, the one resolved in year eleven, submitted a formal ability reclassification petition to the pack governance council after leaving the Academy. The petition was rejected."

"Why?" I said.

"The reason given was: ability profile inconsistent with documented reclassification type. Which means," he said, tapping his pen on the page, "that whatever classification Mora assigned her during their sessions was not consistent with what the governance council's independent assessment found when she petitioned."

The library hummed with its Saturday-morning quiet. Val, beside me, was very still.

"What's the second thing?" I asked.

"The bone-compass instrument," he said. "I found three references to it in the heritage archive reading list from last year. It's a Heritage Studies assessment tool with a documented use history. It's also, in two of the three references, mentioned in the context of an ability type called Extraction, which is a suppressed or forbidden classification in the pack governance record." He looked up. "An Extraction ability allows the user to draw and absorb Sparked wolf ability from another wolf during close-contact sessions. It requires proximity, consent or tacit cooperation, and a sustained period of access. The bone-compass, in the references, is described as a tool that can be used either as a genuine resonance mapping instrument or as an extraction conductor."

The silence at the table lasted about five seconds.

"The third thing?" I said.

"Mora has had seven low-blood-classification students in independent assessment sessions over fifteen years," he said. "Which I found in the session registry, which is a Heritage Studies administrative document that isn't restricted because nobody thought to restrict it. Seven students, all low-blood, all UNCLASSIFIED or unusual-presentation, across fifteen years. Four of the seven withdrew before completing their terms."

"Withdrew," Val said.

"Withdrew," Paco said.

I looked at my hands on the table and thought, carefully, about Thursday at four o'clock.

"I'm still going," I said.

"Sofia," Val started.

"I'm going," I said, "and I'm paying attention to everything I feel during the session, and if what Paco's found is what I think it is, then I need firsthand evidence, not secondhand archive references. An ability reclassification that conflicts with the governance council's independent assessment is a discrepancy. A bone-compass used in an Extraction context is a reference in old documents. Me walking out of a session feeling something specific is evidence."

"It's also you being in a room with someone who may be doing something dangerous," Val said.

"Thirty minutes," I said. "In a faculty office on the third tier east wing, which is a corridor that has professor offices on both sides and is not an isolated space. He can't do anything significant in thirty minutes in a populated corridor without it being noticeable."

"How do you know?" she said.

"Because he's been doing this for fifteen years and he hasn't been caught," I said. "Which means he's careful. Careful people don't do large things in observable spaces on the first contact. The first session is reconnaissance. He maps me. He sees what's there."

"And you map him," Paco said.

"And I map him," I said. "And we go from there."

Val looked at Paco. He looked at his notes. She looked at me.

"One session," she said. "Then we decide together."

"One session," I agreed.

Thursday came with the specific mountain weather that the Sierra Nevada produced in late September, which was a cold front coming off the high peaks that dropped the campus temperature by eight degrees and turned the morning light sharp and clear in the way that made the stone walls of the older buildings look like they had been cut yesterday. I wore my warmer uniform layer and went to all my classes and ate lunch and did not think about four o'clock more than was productive, which was approximately constantly but with good posture.

Mora's office was exactly where he said it was, third tier, east wing, a corner office with two windows and a desk that was organised with the considered disorder of someone who wanted to appear approachable, papers stacked in intentional-looking piles, books out at accessible angles, the bone-compass instrument in a leather case beside the desk lamp. He was at the desk when I arrived and he stood when I knocked, warm and present, and the office smelled of old paper and something faintly metallic that I couldn't name.

"Sofia," he said. "Sit down, sit down. I was glad you agreed to come. Can I get you anything? Water, tea?"

"I'm fine," I said, settling in the chair across the desk from him.

"Good. Good." He opened the leather case and took out the bone-compass, which was polished and smooth and roughly the size of a paperback book, with markings on its face that were not numbers or standard notation but something older, and he held it with the ease of long familiarity. "So. I'm going to hold this near your sternum and ask you to hold your wolf at attention, just present, not exerting, just aware. The instrument maps the full frequency of what's there without the standard classification filters. It's very gentle, you won't feel it."

"What will you see?" I asked.

"The shape of your wolf's frequency signature," he said. "The whole picture, not the filtered version the admissions assessment equipment gives you. We'll know much more about what your ability actually is after this." He leaned forward slightly. "The UNCLASSIFIED reading you got in the monitoring session isn't a failure of your ability. It's a failure of the system's vocabulary. We're going to find the vocabulary."

He said it with such warm certainty that I understood, in the specific way that you understand things that you have already half-known, why seven students had sat in this chair before me.

I settled my wolf at attention. He held the bone-compass at my sternum and moved it in a slow measured arc, and he wrote notes in the open file beside him, and I kept my expression even and cooperative and paid attention to every sensation in my body with the concentrated focus of someone who has decided that this thirty minutes is the most important data-collection exercise of their first two weeks at this school.

There was something.