novelraw Chapter 484: Right Word, Wrong Idea
Chapter 484: Right Word, Wrong Idea
Not bothering to risk being seen as weak again, the clerk didn’t bother to say another word.
He motioned to one of the guards escorting him and the man advanced on Sera, only to be met with a wall of resistance. "Either you work or you get kicked out," grunted the guard. His face was cold, but it seemed to soften the moment he briefly looked at Sera before turning his attention to Zubair.
"If you want to protect her, you need to fall in line. I saw your file, you are military. You should know what happens when you go against orders."
Lachlan stretched for a moment, raising his hands over his head even as he chuckled. "Man, we are KAS... if going against orders was really a death sentence, we would have been dead a long time ago. How about you get that gun a bit farther away from our woman and we don’t have to show you how all those bodies ended up the way they did."
He relaxed his arms until he had Sera firmly in them and pressed against his chest. For a moment, he thought she would have fought him, but instead, she seemed to melt.
"KAS?" repeated the soldier, his eyes narrowing. "Not possible."
"Your mistake," shrugged Lachlan. "Kicking ass and smiling while we do it is our speciality."
"We are late for work assignments," snarled the clerk as he clicked his pen and wrote something down on his clipboard. "We are leaving now or you are leaving in body bags."
"By all means," nodded Zubair, waving his hand as if he was indicating for the clerk to go ahead of him. "Please forgive us."
The clerk let out a snort before he raised his chin and marched them out of Commune C with the same brisk efficiency he had used the night before. His clipboard was tucked under his arm, and boots struck concrete like punctuation.
The soldiers flanked the group on either side, rifles present but not raised, their posture communicating that resistance would be inconvenient rather than difficult.
Sera walked in the center of the group.
She looked well rested, her hair was still loose from sleep, her clothes clean enough to pass inspection, her expression mild and unreadable.
Anyone watching without context might have thought she was the least remarkable person among them.
That was the first mistake.
They passed through the waking corridors of Hope Sanctuary as the day began to unfold. Sirens marked shift changes. Doors opened and closed in careful rhythm. People moved with purpose, eyes forward, conversations clipped and quiet.
The city was awake.
Zubair watched it with the eyes of a man assessing terrain. Guard rotations. Sightlines. Choke points. Alexei did the same, though his focus lingered on structural weaknesses instead of people. Lachlan catalogued faces, measuring who looked hungry, who looked mean, and who looked like they would sell someone out for half a meal.
Elias walked with his hands folded, calm as ever.
Sera hummed.
The clerk stopped at the first checkpoint without ceremony.
"This is Guard Training," he announced, gesturing toward a wide concrete yard ringed by fencing and watchtowers. Recruits were already assembled in loose rows, some in uniform scraps, others in civilian clothes that hadn’t yet been stripped away. Instructors moved among them with sharp voices and sharper eyes.
He pointed at Zubair. "You. Fire. High output. You’ll be evaluated here."
Zubair stopped walking. "No," he said evenly. "She stays with me."
The clerk sighed, already bored. "She’s assigned elsewhere."
"She stays with me," Zubair repeated, his tone unchanged.
The soldier who had spoken to them before shifted closer. However, the clerk didn’t even bother to look at Sera. "This is not a discussion."
Zubair glanced down at her.
She gave a small shake of her head. "Go," she said quietly. "I’ll see you later."
Zubair didn’t like it, and he didn’t hide that fact, but he stepped away anyway. His creature snarled in his chest, furious and restrained, already memorizing the path they were being forced down.
The clerk didn’t notice; he was already moving.
They crossed the compound to a second yard, smaller but louder. Lightning cracked against reinforced pylons as trainees struggled to control erratic power surges. The smell of ozone hung heavy in the air.
"Electrical," the clerk said, glancing at Lachlan. "You’ll fit right in."
Lachlan smiled reflexively. "Do I at least get a buddy?"
"No."
"Can she—"
"No," the clerk cut in, sharper this time. "She’s not a guard. She’s not trained. She’s not useful here."
Lachlan’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. "You keep saying that like it’s going to end well for you."
A guard stepped closer.
Lachlan raised his hands in surrender and backed away, throwing Sera a wink that felt more like a promise.
"Save me a seat," he called.
The third stop was quieter.
A cold concrete building with narrow windows and reinforced doors. Inside, men moved with careful precision, ice forming and reforming along reinforced walls, temperature regulated by systems that hummed constantly to keep the structure from fracturing.
Alexei stopped before he was told to.
"This is for containment," the clerk said. "Not experimentation. You follow instructions."
Alexei’s gaze flicked to Sera. "She stays with me."
The clerk’s patience snapped and he gripped his pen so hard that blue ink ran through his fingers. "No. She goes where she’s assigned. You are not in charge here."
Alexei stared at him for a long moment, expression unreadable.
Then he nodded once and stepped inside without another word.
The doors shut behind him with a heavy clang.
They walked again, the remaining three surrounded by guards now instead of merely escorted. The compound shifted as they moved deeper, the structures less polished, the pathways narrower, the people thinner and quieter.
The medical wing came last.
It smelled clean in a way that felt forced and both Sera and Aerenyx wrinkled their noses at the smell. Aerenyx slowed when they reached the doors. "She stays," he said gently.
The clerk laughed, short and humorless. "You’re a healer. She’s waste disposal."
Elias’s eyes softened in a way that made the soldier nearest him uneasy. "Then you are making a mistake."
"Everyone keeps saying that, but yet, I am the one getting my way at the end of the day," the clerk replied. "At least you are smart enough to recognize the authority I hold."
Shaking his head, Aerenyx stepped inside and the doors closed behind him.
Sera was alone now but that didn’t seem to bother her.
The clerk didn’t slow his pace, if anything he sped up now that the guys weren’t around.
He led her through corridors that smelled worse with every step. Down past the main levels. Past places where people laughed and worked and pretended. Down into concrete that remembered what the base had been built for.
Waste reclamation sat at the edge of the compound.
Trenches. Sorting areas. Burn pits. No running water. No privacy. The work no one else wanted, done by the people no one would miss.
The clerk finally stopped walking.
He looked at her properly for the first time.
"They treat you like you’re fragile," he said, almost conversational. "Don’t they know that’s the best way to get you killed in this world?"
Sera looked up at him and smiled. "Right words," she said softly, cocking her head to the side. "Wrong idea. They don’t treat me like I’m fragile like a flower that needs protecting."
Her smile widened just a fraction.
"They treat me like I’m fragile like a bomb that might go off at any moment."