Valmont Series - Inheritance Code

Chapter 5.7 - Tier: Zeroth

Aiden looked up. He didn't interrupt.

She didn't look at him.

Her voice stayed flat, but her knuckles were pale against the edge of her fork.

"But it stuck," she added. "Like something shifted, and no one told me."

Aiden didn't respond.

But the timestamp locked itself in his mind — 12:12.

Same as his.

Same as the glitch the system refused to admit.

He didn't need to record it.

He already had.

They finished eating in silence.

But the system didn't.

Luc lit the signal flare.

But Aria walked through it without flinching.

And in Avalon, that's what made her dangerous.

* * *

Location: Logic Lab 2B – Echelon Wing
Time: 21:03 Avalon Standard Time

Most students didn't return to the labs after dinner.

Not unless they were behind, or obsessed, or chasing something they couldn't quite explain.

Aiden Lancaster wasn't behind.

He walked the corridor in silence. The hallway lights adjusted with every step — dimming slightly as he passed, like the system understood he preferred fewer variables after dark.

Logic Lab 2B unlocked before he even reached for it.

Tier II access. No biometric delay.

The door sealed behind him with a weightless click.

Perfect.

His ONYX synced to the lab core in under two seconds.

Diagnostics spiraled — normal.

Server drift: stable.

No flags. No inconsistencies.

He'd walked away from it that morning — not because it wasn't there, but because it was too clean.

Too symmetrical to grab.

Too silent to follow.

And all day, it had haunted the back of his mind like a code he wasn't supposed to debug.

But Aria had felt it too.

That was enough to bring him back.

Which, of course, meant something was wrong.

Not broken.

Just... hidden.

He thought back to what Aria had said at dinner.

"I felt like I missed something — except I hadn't."

That phrasing stuck.

Because that's exactly how a perfect system hides what it can't delete.

Not by blocking access.

By correcting too fast.

Not absence.

Overcompensation.

He hadn't come back looking for errors.

He came back looking for what the system had buried.