Forty-seven hours and fifty-eight minutes.
Chaliya had two slate terminals docked on her steel bench, typing at eighty words per minute while cross-referencing Conservatory statute thirty-four with civic slander codes. Her stylus carved vicious scratches into the haptic pad.
"Article nine allows preemptive seizure of flora only under declared blights," she muttered, not looking up. "If I draft a twelve-hundred-page injunction proving botanical negligence on the Dean's part, followed by an immediate countersuit demanding Kamon submit her marrow for public assay—"
A broad hand settled over her knuckles. The warmth seeped through her wrist wraps.
Chaliya froze. Her mind cataloged the physical contact: no weapon, no venomous ring, zero offensive trajectory. Just Tawan, smelling faintly of toasted cardamom and copper grease, leaning over her shoulder.
"Darling," he murmured, his tone honeyed and lethal. "Put the stylus down."
"I need forty-six pages of precedent before dawn, Tawan. The legal perimeter is breached."
"You're treating a garden pest like an invading army," he said softly. He pulled the stylus from her grip, set it aside, and reached into his coat for his own comm-slate—a heavy, polished gold unit embossed with the crest of House Varamet, the lineage that owned six of Vimarn City’s eight luminescent conduit grids.
Chaliya adjusted her spectacles. "Lawfare is standard protocol against state-level propaganda."
"It’s slow." Tawan tapped an emergency contact line. "Let me show you how my family deals with parasites."
The comm connected on the second ring. A gravelly voice answered: *"Young master Varamet?"*
"Elder Kovit. Cancel the lease on the fourth-tier synthesis bays at the North Canopy." Tawan didn't raise his voice, yet the chill in it made Chaliya's posture stiffen in absolute appreciation. "Specifically bay fourteen. Ms. Kamon's pet projects. Evict her culture dishes by sunrise, seal her credentials, and revoke her credit line across all guild vendors."
*"Understood, heir Tawan. And the guild fee rebate?"*
"Forfeit it. Next." Tawan cut the connection before the man could finish bowing through the ether. He swiped to a second frequency. "Director Sorin? Kamon's patron pass to the Orchid Pavilion and the High Canopy Club. Terminate both. Inform security that if she steps past the brass gates, she is to be cited for vagrancy. No appeals."
*"Right away, Lord Tawan."*
Click.
Tawan dialed a third number. His thumb rested against Chaliya’s thumb, anchoring her to the desk while he ended a social existence. "Chief Supplier Chai? The Varamet family will nullify our annual timber-sap contract if your firm sells so much as a single vial of nutrient base to Kamon. Pass that warning down through the lower markets."
*"Consider it done, young lord! May we ask—"*
Tawan severed the line.
He pocketed the gold slate, smoothed his lapels, and offered her a lazy, crooked grin. "There. She has no workspace, no social platform, and cannot buy so much as agar jelly within fifty leagues. Now she can make tearful videos in the gutter."
Chaliya stared at him. Her analytical framework suffered a momentary restart. Her chest felt hot, her ribs tightening with a peculiar, violent thrill.
*He just executed an economic decapitation strike in ninety seconds.*
"That was..." She swallowed, adjusting the collar of her tunic. "A completely disproportionate mobilization of capital against an individual agitator."
"Did you like it?" Tawan leaned in, his amber eyes bright with playful mischief.
"It was structurally magnificent," she admitted, her voice dropping an octave. "The logistical efficiency was almost indecent."
Tawan chuckled, leaning down until his forehead brushed hers. "Good. Because no one threatens my partner's life's work and keeps their status in this city."
Before Chaliya could logically process the word *partner* without overheating, the glass pane of the roof vent rattled violently.
A chirp echoed through the dome.
Krit squeezed his plump, velvet-furred body through the half-inch brass gap, his six tiny claws scrabbling frantically against the trellis. His translucent wings buzzed like an angry wasp. He held something clamped tightly in his lower pair of paws.
"Krit?" Chaliya stepped back, instantly shifting to combat readiness. "Scout report. Did you encounter hostile resistance?"
The sun-glider plummeted, flared his wings at the last second, and landed squarely on the glass desk with an arrogant thud. He shook his fur, puffed out his belly, and dropped his prize.
It clattered against the slate.
A handheld datapad. Bright pink, encrusted with cheap faux-crystal trim, and smelling aggressively of artificial honeysuckle.
"He raided her locker," Tawan said, incredulous. "That little beast snuck into the women's athletics wing?"
Krit chirped proudly, nudged the sparkling slate toward Chaliya with his snout, and promptly stole a dried mango strip from her pouch.
"Good boy," Chaliya murmured, reaching for her diagnostic cable. "Asset retrieval successful. Commencing decryption protocol."
The lockscreen lit up with a glowing image of Tawan—clearly cropped from an old university yearbook, with Kamon’s face crudely edited over the person next to him. A six-digit numeric prompt hovered beneath.
Chaliya prepared a brute-force cipher. "This could take twenty minutes if she uses twenty-eight-bit quantum rotation—"
"Try 'TawanIsMine123'," Tawan suggested flatly, his expression curdling into pure disgust.
Chaliya typed the characters.
The screen flashed green. *Access Granted.*
"Amateur," Chaliya scoffed, though her stomach twitched with quiet revulsion. "Her operational security is an insult to espionage."
"Look at the cache history," Tawan pointed, leaning close enough that his breath stirred her hair.
Chaliya scrolled past fifty unsent draft messages filled with whining declarations to Tawan, navigating straight to the local web browser queries. The search logs from three hours ago burned in luminescent font across the screen.
*Vimarn General Hospital isolation ward procedures.*
*Symptoms of Level-Five bio-hazards.*
*How to fake pustules with blister-lily paste.*
*Penalty for biological sabotage during campus probation.*
Chaliya’s eyes swept the entries, her mind assembling the puzzle with cold precision. "She realized her video wouldn't hold under a formal botanical tribunal. My data logs prove my Crimson Blossom project is sterile and safe. So she needs physical evidence of harm."
"She wouldn't dare," Tawan said, his voice dropping into dangerous gravity. "She’s desperate, Chaliya, but she’s not insane."
A citywide civic notification chimed from the main terminal overhead, cutting through the silence like an air-raid klaxon.
The screen in the center of the lab blinked, flashing the amber reserved for catastrophic municipal health alerts.
A live news ticker scrolled beneath a seal bearing the caduceus of Vimarn General Hospital:
`BREAKING: PATIENT ADMITTED UNDER CODE-BLACK PROTOCOL. FORMER CONSERVATORY SCHOLAR KAMON HOSPITALIZED WITH ADVANCED SPORE-ROT, ALLEGEDLY CONTRACTED FROM DR. CHALIYA’S UNREGULATED RESEARCH SANCTUARY.`