The notice came through the next morning.
SECTION SEVEN — VERIFICATION SCHEDULED
Specialist assigned. Squad Seven: report to eastern service route at third bell. Cadet Xander to demonstrate observed anomaly.
Drake read it and handed it to Xander.
"They want you to show them," he said.
Xander read it. "I know."
---
The specialist was waiting at the eastern gate when they arrived. She was older than them — late twenties, maybe — with a plain grey coat and a leather case that she set on the ground beside her. She didn't introduce herself by name. She just said, "You're the one who filed the report?"
"Halden filed it," Xander said. "I noticed it."
"Same thing." She opened the case. Inside were three instruments: a handheld anemometer, a moisture meter, and a small brass-framed device with a glass face that Xander didn't recognize.
"Where's the section?"
"This way."
They walked the route in silence. Halden wasn't with them. The specialist didn't ask questions. She just followed Xander to section seven and stood beside the wall.
"Show me," she said.
---
Xander walked to the base of the wall and held his hand out. Palm up, at chest height. He waited.
Nothing.
He moved his hand slowly to the left. Then to the right. Then crouched and held it closer to the ground.
"Here," he said. "Near the drainage channel."
The specialist crouched beside him. She held up the anemometer and waited for a reading.
The display flickered. Settled.
"Zero point two meters per second," she said. "That's ambient."
"It's not ambient."
She looked at him. "It's the same reading I got at the gate."
"I know."
She set the anemometer down and picked up the moisture meter. She pressed it against the base of the wall. The reading settled.
"Moisture's normal," she said. "No saturation."
"I know."
She picked up the brass-framed device and held it above the grass. She watched it for a moment.
"Pressure's stable," she said.
Xander didn't answer. He was watching the grass. The blades near the drainage channel were leaning east.
"The grass," he said.
She looked at it. "Grass leans."
"Not like that."
She looked again. The blades were leaning east — toward the channel. Consistent. Across a section of about two meters.
"Wind's from the north," she said. "It would lean south."
"I know."
She was quiet for a moment.
"You're saying the grass is leaning against the wind."
"I'm saying it's leaning toward the channel. And the air is moving with it."
She checked the anemometer again. The reading hadn't changed.
"I'm not getting airflow," she said. "I'm getting ambient. Same as everywhere else on this route."
Xander stood up. "I know."
"Then what are you feeling?"
He didn't answer right away. He looked at the wall, then the channel, then the grass.
"It's not velocity," he said. "It's — " He stopped. Tried again. "The air is moving. But not like wind. It's — thinner. It's coming from somewhere and going somewhere, and it's consistent, and it shouldn't be."
"But the instrument says it isn't moving."
"The instrument says the velocity is ambient."
"Same thing."
"It isn't."
She looked at him for a moment. Then she wrote something down.
---
She spent another twenty minutes at the site. She checked the wall with the moisture meter. She checked the drainage flow. She walked the length of section seven with the anemometer, taking readings at five-meter intervals. She crouched at the base of the wall and held the pressure device against the mortar. She even tapped the stone with her knuckles, listening.
Everything came back normal.
She packed her instruments and stood.
"I'll file the verification report," she said. "The observed airflow couldn't be reproduced."
Xander nodded. "I know."
She looked at him. "You're not going to argue?"
"No."
"Why not?"
He thought about it. "Because you measured what you measured. And I felt what I felt."
She was quiet for a moment. Then she picked up her case and walked back toward the gate.
---
The report was filed that afternoon.
SECTION SEVEN — VERIFICATION REPORT
Specialist inspection conducted. Anemometer readings: ambient. Moisture levels: normal. Pressure readings: stable. No structural defects observed. Observed airflow reported by Cadet Xander could not be independently reproduced.
Status: Unverified.
---
Drake read the report and set it on the table.
"Unverified," he said.
"Not false," Xander said. "Just unverified."
"What's the difference?"
"False means it didn't happen. Unverified means they couldn't measure it."
Kara frowned. "So it just sits there?"
"For now."
She looked at the report. "That's stupid."
"Yeah," Xander said.
He picked up the report and read it again. Then he set it down and looked at his hand.
---
That evening, he sat on his bunk with a slate and a stylus. He wasn't writing anything down. He was just holding the stylus, turning it over in his fingers.
He was trying to remember what it had felt like.
Not the direction. Not the strength. Not the relationship between the wall and the channel. Those he could describe.
The thing he couldn't describe was the quality of it. The air hadn't felt like wind. It had felt like something moving through a space that wasn't supposed to be there.
He didn't have a word for it.
He set the stylus down and lay back on the bunk.
The report was in the system now. Unverified. Unresolved.
He didn't know what it meant. But he knew he hadn't imagined it.