Chapter 17 — The Bodies Beneath The Infirmary

The academy infirmary closed officially at midnight.

Unofficially, parts of it never closed at all.

Evelyn discovered that three nights after receiving the burned warning letter, when Rowan Hale appeared outside her dormitory carrying two lanterns and the exhausted expression of someone who had stopped expecting good outcomes hours ago.

“You were right,” he said quietly.

That immediately worsened her mood.

Rowan handed her one of the lanterns before glancing down the empty corridor. “There’s another restricted level beneath the infirmary.”

Evelyn frowned. “Another?”

“At Noctis?” Rowan adjusted the stack of medical files beneath his arm. “The academy has more hidden basements than ethical standards.”

Fair.

Snow fell heavily outside while the two of them crossed the lower cathedral corridors beneath dim emergency lamps and echoing bells somewhere deep in the towers overhead. Most students remained locked inside dormitories now after curfew regulations tightened following the masquerade attack.

Only guards moved openly through the halls.

And even they avoided the infirmary wings after midnight.

The lower medical sector beneath Noctis smelled sharply of antiseptic herbs and wet stone. Lantern light moved faintly across rows of abandoned treatment rooms while old drainage pipes groaned somewhere inside the walls.

Rowan led her through the eastern surgical corridor before stopping beside a sealed iron elevator hidden behind storage shelves.

Evelyn stared at it. “That was there the whole time?”

“The academy likes pretending important horrors don’t exist if you place furniture in front of them.”

He pressed one hand against a concealed mechanism beneath the wall panel.

The elevator groaned downward immediately.

Cold air rushed upward from the darkness below.

Evelyn felt her stomach tighten.

The underground level beneath the infirmary looked older than the academy above it.

The walls changed first.

No polished cathedral stone. No academic architecture. Just reinforced concrete corridors lined with rusted pipes and flickering industrial lights humming softly overhead.

Wartime construction.

The realization arrived instantly.

Rows of numbered doors stretched through the lower level while faded medical insignias peeled from the walls around them. Some sections looked abandoned for decades.

Others didn’t.

Fresh footprints crossed the dust near one of the corridors.

Rowan noticed them too.

“They’re still using this place.”

The sentence hollowed the air around them.

Evelyn tightened her grip around the lantern while they moved deeper underground.

Somewhere farther below, water dripped steadily into metal.

The sound echoed unnaturally through the corridors.

Rowan stopped beside one of the sealed rooms and forced the door open carefully.

The smell hit them immediately.

Chemical preservation.

Decay.

Blood hidden beneath disinfectant.

Evelyn stepped inside slowly.

Metal examination tables lined the room beneath flickering lights while surgical restraints hung from the walls beside old medical instruments stained dark with age. Stacks of research files covered the central counters, many marked with recent academy dates.

Not wartime records.

Current ones.

Rowan crossed immediately toward the nearest cabinet while Evelyn forced herself farther inside.

Then she saw the bodies.

Not corpses exactly.

Students.

Three of them.

Young.

Pale.

Motionless beneath white infirmary sheets attached to magical monitoring systems still glowing faintly blue beside the beds.

One girl couldn’t have been older than sixteen.

Dark veins spread beneath her skin in branching patterns eerily similar to the poison used during the masquerade attack.

Evelyn stopped breathing for a second.

“Oh my God.”

Rowan looked up sharply from the files in his hands.

His face lost what little color remained in it.

“They’re alive,” he said quietly after checking the nearest pulse monitor. “Barely.”

Evelyn crossed toward the nearest bed slowly.

The girl’s eyes remained closed beneath violent tremors moving faintly through her body. Ritual markings had been drawn directly onto her wrists and throat in black surgical ink.

Not medical treatment.

Preparation.

Evelyn looked toward the files spread across the nearby counter.

Subject compatibility remains unstable.

Repeated exposure increases adaptation speed.

Secondary shadow integration trials proceeding under revised protocols.

Her pulse slowed dangerously.

“They’re still experimenting.”

The horror of it settled heavily between them.

Not history.

Not buried crimes.

Ongoing.

Rowan continued scanning the records beside her, hands tightening visibly around the papers now.

“These are student IDs,” he murmured. “First-years. Lower rankings. Students nobody important would notice disappearing.”

Evelyn thought suddenly of the funeral bells.

The missing second-year.

The lower tunnels.

Her stomach turned.

Another file lay partially open beneath the surgical reports.

This one carried imperial military authorization seals.

She unfolded it carefully.

PROJECT VEIL — PHASE II REACTIVATION

AUTHORIZED UNDER NORTHERN COMMAND PREPARATION ACT

The room seemed to tilt slightly around her.

Northern command.

War preparation.

Lucien.

Footsteps echoed suddenly somewhere outside the corridor.

Both of them froze immediately.

Voices.

Guards.

Rowan extinguished the lantern at once.

Darkness swallowed the room except for the faint blue pulse of the medical monitors beside the beds.

The footsteps drew closer.

Evelyn held her breath while Rowan moved silently beside her near the surgical cabinets.

“—records should’ve been transferred already.”

“General inspection arrives next week.”

“The prince knows?”

A pause.

Then:

“He knows enough.”

The words settled cold beneath Evelyn’s ribs.

The guards stopped briefly outside the room before continuing farther down the corridor.

Only after the footsteps disappeared completely did Rowan exhale softly.

Evelyn looked again toward the unconscious students beneath the infirmary lights.

One of them twitched violently in her sleep.

The dark veins beneath his skin spread farther.

Rowan stared at the beds with visible horror now.

“They’re trying to recreate whatever happened to Lucien.”

The realization landed heavily in the silence.

Because of course they were.

Empires never stopped building weapons simply because the first generation survived long enough to become inconvenient.

A sharp sound echoed suddenly from deeper in the corridor.

Metal.

Then shouting.

Evelyn turned instantly toward the doorway.

Someone moved through the underground hall fast enough to blur beneath the emergency lights.

Black coat.

Dark gloves.

Lucien.

He reached the surgical archive room seconds later, silver-gray eyes immediately finding the students unconscious on the beds.

Something in his expression changed.

Not shock.

Recognition.

The terrible kind.

“Get upstairs,” he said quietly.

Evelyn stared at him. “Lucien—”

“Now.”

The softness in his voice made it worse.

Like anger required too much energy for whatever he was feeling instead.

Rowan stepped backward automatically as Lucien crossed toward the records scattered across the surgical tables.

His hands trembled once.

Only once.

Then the shadows moved.

Not violently.

Deliberately.

Darkness spread across the documents in silent waves before igniting them instantly. Flames swallowed the records one section at a time while Lucien stood motionless in the center of the room watching the evidence burn.

Evelyn understood suddenly:

he wasn’t destroying the records to protect the empire.

He was destroying them because he knew exactly what surviving them felt like.