Detroit Metro Community College — Alden’s Office, Friday Afternoon
The door clicked shut behind them, the sound soft but final.
Zeke didn’t sit. Not right away. He lingered just inside, a shape in motion without a place to land. His eyes scanned the small, familiar space — books stacked two deep on every surface, a spider plant drooping from lack of attention, a map of Mesopotamia curling at the corners behind glass. The desk was still the same: wood chipped at the edges, one drawer that stuck in summer, always too many papers.
Nothing had changed. And somehow, that made it worse.
Alden dropped his bag beside the desk. No greeting. No question. He lowered himself into the chair with the kind of stillness that didn’t ask for conversation, arms folding across his chest like muscle memory.
Zeke offered a crooked half-smile. “Still hate small talk, huh?”
Alden didn’t blink. “Didn’t think you came for pleasantries.”
Zeke nodded. That was fair.
The silence wasn’t awkward. Just known. Practiced.
He shifted his weight, then reached into his bag — slower than usual, like he was measuring the moment before it changed.
“I need you to look at something,” he said. “And I need you to not freak out.”
Alden didn’t flinch. “You brought something illegal, didn’t you?”
Zeke paused. “No. Probably.”
He pulled out a wrapped bundle — leather worn nearly to suede, edges fraying where fingers had gripped too hard, too often. It looked like it had a story and maybe a body count. He set it down gently on the desk, between a stack of midterms and a cold coffee that hadn’t been drinkable since this morning.
Zeke hesitated, watching him — something unspoken tugging at the space between them.
“You were the first person I ever trusted to tell the truth about something like this,” he said. “Figured I’d start there.”
Alden’s eyes lifted.
Not suspicion.
Something older. Heavier.
Grief in the shape of memory.
“I thought you’d moved past needing my approval.”
“I have,” Zeke said, and meant it. “But this isn’t about approval.”
The pause that followed wasn’t sharp. It was familiar. Like standing in a room that used to belong to both of them.
Zeke inhaled slowly, the way you do when something’s pressing in behind your ribs.
Thirteen Years Ago
Same office. Different world.
Zeke had shown up ten minutes early and still knocked twice on the frame before stepping inside — like the door might vanish if he touched it wrong. He was wearing a canvas backpack that looked military surplus, straps too long, pulling awkwardly at his shoulders. A thrifted blazer with threadbare elbows tried and failed to make him look older. His hair was too long in the front, his sneakers were soaked from a surprise rain, and he had the kind of restless energy that made pens rattle in his bag.
Seventeen, maybe eighteen. Not confident — not yet — but burning.
The room had felt sacred to him then. He remembered the faint smell of old coffee, the worn edge of the map tacked behind the desk, the hum of the radiator that hadn’t worked properly in decades. He remembered seeing Alden Graves for the first time in real life and thinking he looked like a myth — all sharp lines and long sleeves, the kind of man who didn’t need to raise his voice to be heard. He still had a little dirt on his boots. Still wore the field jacket from Ankara, canvas faded from the sun, elbows patched like something earned.
Zeke had taken a seat like he was entering a cathedral.
“You wrote Bones, Memory, Empire,” he’d said, voice low, like saying it too loud would shatter the room. “I read it twice this summer.”
He hadn’t meant to blurt it. But there it was. No way to take it back.
Alden had looked up from whatever he was grading — pen paused mid-air — with a face somewhere between amused and startled. Most freshmen didn’t even buy the assigned textbook, let alone reference a monograph published before they were born.
Zeke fumbled in his bag and pulled out his copy. The spine was cracked, pages bloated from too much highlighter. Post-it notes stuck out like feathers, each with a scribbled date, a quote, a question. He flipped to a page near the center.
“And your paper on Anatolian funerary misattributions — that part changed how I think about collapse narratives. About what gets recorded, and what gets erased. You were twenty-seven when you published that?”
Alden blinked once. Then twice. “Yes,” he’d said. Slowly. Like he wasn’t sure whether to be flattered or concerned.
Zeke shrugged. “That’s why I came here.”
“To DMCC?”
“You teach here,” Zeke said, like it explained everything. And to him, it did.
That had been it.
The spark.
After that, Zeke never really left. He was in Alden’s office every week — sometimes twice. He didn’t just come with questions; he came with theories. With annotated maps. With articles torn from journals and reassembled in wild, hopeful frameworks. Sometimes he didn’t even speak right away — just opened his notebook and started drawing patterns in the margins.
He didn’t want grades. He wanted to know why the world lied to itself. And how history helped it do it.
And Alden — young, brilliant, not yet burned — had seen himself in that.
No, more than that. He’d seen a better version. Someone braver. Someone who might not flinch when the system asked him to play nice. Someone who might go further.
There had been real mentorship. But more than that — a kind of quiet, mutual belief.
Then the Ankara dig collapsed.
And so did Alden’s reputation.
The details had never made the papers. Just whispers. Mistranslations. Lost documentation. Funding politics. A blurred photo in a defunct archive and too many professional enemies who’d been waiting for a reason to pull the trigger.
Overnight, Alden had gone from keynote speaker to cautionary tale.
Zeke had asked what really happened. Alden hadn’t told him.
But Zeke hadn’t stopped coming. Not then. Not even when the faculty whispered about Graves behind closed doors. Not even when the department quietly pulled his name from upcoming panels.
Alden stopped being a rising star.
Zeke didn’t stop showing up.
Even after he transferred to Knoxmere. Even after he got his own fieldwork. Even after his name started trending for reasons Alden wouldn’t have approved of.
He still sent articles. Still called. Still said you should see this. Still wanted Alden to be proud.
And maybe, even now, he still did.
Now
“I think I’m being followed.”
That changed Alden’s posture — subtly, but there. A shift of the eyes. A longer breath.
Still composed. Still unreadable. But listening.
“Start at the beginning.”
Zeke glanced down at the codex again. His fingers were tapping now — just barely — against the strap of his bag, a rhythm of nerves trying to stay invisible.
“I’ve had the codex for a little over a week. Since Prague. Since the auction. The guy who tipped me off to it—disappeared within forty-eight hours. Gone. No posts, no check-ins, no trace.”
He rubbed his thumb against his palm, grounding himself.
“Since I landed? My phone’s pinged from places I haven’t been. I found a tracker in my gear bag. Last night, someone broke into my Airbnb. Didn’t take anything. Just moved things. Slightly. Like they were signing their name without ink.”
Alden’s posture shifted, almost imperceptibly.
“How sure are you?”
Zeke looked up. All trace of bravado gone.
“They moved my coffee mug,” he said. “Half an inch to the left. I measure my shots every morning — I know where it sits. Everything else in the apartment was just slightly wrong. Not messy. Just… wrong.”
Alden stared at him. Then the codex.
“You haven’t shown this to anyone?”
Zeke shook his head. “Not online. Not to my team. Not even to my editor.”
“You still have an editor?”
Zeke almost smiled. “Yeah. Poor bastard.”
The moment breathed. Then Alden reached for the bundle.
The twine unwrapped with a quiet whisper. The leather cover peeled back like something exhaling after too long underground.
The first page looked older than anything had the right to. Not fragile — but still aged in a way that felt organic and unnatural at the same time. Ink pressed deep into parchment, refusing to fade. Symbols laid out like instructions. Glyphs. Calculations. Geometry that felt closer to liturgy than science.
Alden flipped another page.
Then another.
Then stopped.
The spiral.
Drawn with impossible precision and none at all. Asymmetrical. Unsettling. Ink pooled in a solid black center that didn’t reflect the overhead light — it just absorbed it. Swallowed it.
Zeke didn’t speak. He didn’t need to.
“This isn’t a fake,” Alden said, voice low.
“No.”
“This isn’t a forgery.”
“No.”
Alden looked up. His expression unreadable.
“This isn’t something you should’ve brought here.”
Zeke let out a breath. “But I had to.”
A moment passed between them. Not cold. Not tense. Just full.
Then Zeke sat forward, elbows on his knees.
“I’ve got a lecture tomorrow night,” he said. “Fordham Museum. Guest speaker slot. Public event.”
“I know.”
“I’m going to show one diagram. Just the image. Nothing else.”
Alden’s gaze sharpened. “As bait.”
Zeke nodded. “If someone’s following me — if they’re watching — they’ll be there. I want to see who reacts. I want to know what they think they’re seeing.”
“Or you’ll light a match you can’t put out.”
Zeke leaned back in his chair, head against the wall.
“Maybe. But I’m already past the point of subtle.”
A long pause.
“Leave it with me.”
Zeke hesitated. His hand hovered near the desk, fingers brushing the edge of the leather like it might change its mind about being here.
Then he pulled back.
“Thank you.”
He turned to go, but paused with his hand on the doorknob.
Zeke offered him a nod — and something close to a real smile. Smaller than it used to be. But still there.
“I missed this, you know.”
Alden’s voice was softer than before. “Me too.”
Zeke hesitated one more time at the door.
“You should come tomorrow night.”
Alden arched a brow. “To your circus act?”
Zeke half-laughed. “To watch the crowd.”
Alden didn’t move.
“I’m not a field agent.”
“No,” Zeke said, “but you’re still the guy I’d want in the room if the air changed.”
Another pause. The kind that weighed more than a full conversation.
“I’ll leave you a seat. Left aisle. Third row. You’ll see everything from there.”
Alden didn’t answer.
Zeke gave a final nod — part invitation, part goodbye — and slipped out into the hallway, footsteps soft.
The door clicked shut.
The codex sat on the desk like a closed eye. The air didn’t change — not exactly. But the room felt more still.
Alden didn’t open the book again.
But he didn’t take his eyes off it either.