Chapter 7: The Unseen Invitation

Ariana stood up from the carpet, her muscles stiff and protesting after hours of forced physical submission, and she looked down at the inert phone lying on her desk. The empty signal bars remained exactly where they had been, a stark white gap against the dark background. The forced silence was total, confirming her isolation was successful. She picked the device up, needing to verify the extent of the blackout. She navigated through the settings, opening the U-Net status page. The internal campus network protocol reported 'Disconnected,' listing no available network access points in the vicinity. The status was definitive, proving the communication silence was indeed isolated to her device. It wasn't a campus-wide outage, which meant her problem was specific, calculated, and entirely engineered by Lucas and Jordan to enforce the aftermath of the unsanctioned session.

She returned to the main screen, about to set the phone down, when the device suddenly vibrated, nearly startling her out of her skin. The vibration was soft, yet insistent, demanding immediate attention. Ariana gripped the device tighter, staring at the screen. A single, full-screen notification had entirely replaced her wallpaper and app grid. It was not a text message or a normal app alert. The interface belonged to an unlisted, secure video app that she definitely did not recognize. It was fully installed on her phone, which was a horrifying realization. They had accessed her device remotely before cutting the network, forcing the installation of a communication tool that bypassed U-Net entirely.

The screen gave her only one option: a glowing 'Connect' button. She couldn't ignore the demand. They had spent the last hours drilling obedience into her bones. Refusal now meant immediate, escalated consequences. Her hand, trembling slightly, moved to tap the screen. The connection was instantaneous.

The screen immediately split into two panels. Her own face, pale and exhausted, occupied the bottom half. The top half displayed the faces of Lucas and Jordan, both watching her with an unnerving, detached intensity that made her gut twist. Jordan was in profile, looking at some off-screen document, while Lucas was staring directly into the camera, giving her no escape from his gaze. They appeared to be in a shared space, dimly lit, suggesting they were still waiting for her somewhere on campus.

"Well, Vesper," Lucas said, his voice flat and perfectly modulated through the small speaker. He didn't waste any time with preambles, getting straight to the point that mattered to him. "It seems you found our gift."

Ariana knew he meant the installation and the forced connection. She swallowed hard, struggling to keep her composure under his scrutiny. "The signal is cut," she stated, confirming the obvious technical condition as if it were a complaint.

Lucas gave a slow, minimal nod, confirming her observation. "Precisely. The U-Net deprivation was entirely intentional. A controlled measure to ensure compliance following the unsanctioned session." He paused, letting the clinical weight of his words settle on her. "You needed time for introspection and remediation, unburdened by outside distractions such as your friend Chloe. We managed that. We needed to guarantee isolation meant silence, not just privacy."

The confirmation was chilling. They hadn't just interrupted her life; they had managed the narrative of her absence and the time immediately following its conclusion. Lucas was emphasizing the total, calculated nature of their control, making it a point of data rather than a punitive action. This wasn't just about making her obey, but about managing the external consequences of her obedience.

Jordan shifted on the screen, finally looking into the camera. His expression was harder than Lucas's, less inclined toward analytical observation and more toward immediate demand.

"We have utilized the past three hours for our own planning," Jordan said, his tone clinical and aggressive. He demanded instant response, eliminating the possibility of hesitation. "Professor Elias expects flawlessness Tuesday morning. The ten-second pause you demonstrated must be eliminated. You have had ample time to reflect on the requirements. Verbally confirm your renewed absolute commitment to the required Tuesday 7 AM practice session performance. Now."

Ariana felt the familiar pressure of the demand. It wasn't about the content of the words, but the fact of the immediate execution. She had spent hours drilling the Dogeza to eliminate the physical hesitation, but Jordan was testing the mental commitment now.

"I confirm my absolute commitment to the required Tuesday 7 AM practice session performance," Ariana recited the words, the phrases feeling unnatural and forced on her tongue. It was a mechanical response, stripped of all personal will, precisely what Jordan seemed to want.

Jordan accepted the confirmation with a small tightening of his lips, a sign of minimal satisfaction. He immediately shifted the focus, indicating the conversation was moving on to the terms of her continued obedience. "Good. The second phase of your preparation involves addressing the environment of subjection. Elias's lessons are about the historical context of submission. That context, Vesper, requires a certain presentation, an immediate visual alignment with the subject matter."

Lucas remained silent, letting Jordan take the lead on this new complication, but his eyes never left Ariana's face, reading the involuntary micro-expressions of shock and fatigue.

"For the session on Tuesday, you are forbidden to wear your standard academic clothing," Jordan continued, his voice taking on a new, specific cutting edge. "The required presentation standard is non-negotiable and must reflect the historical nature of the class curriculum. You will acquire the appropriate garment tonight."

Ariana’s exhaustion vanished, replaced by a sudden wave of confusion and alarm. Acquire what garment? Where? She had nothing in her dorm room that would meet any "historical" standard she could imagine.

Jordan seemed to anticipate her unspoken question. He was already scrolling through whatever document he had been reviewing.

"You need to retrieve a specific 18th-century silk garment," Jordan stated, delivering the instruction with the same casual tone he might use to order dinner. "It is archived within the university’s locked Costume Department. You will find the location and security specifics attached to this stream."

A small overlay graphic appeared on her half of the screen, listing a building name and a room number that ended with the suffix 'Archives.'

The request was instantly impossible and deeply alarming. Retrieving a historical artifact from a locked, specialized university department at this late hour—she instinctively checked the laptop clock, which read just past 10 PM—was nothing short of a directive to commit institutional trespass and theft. She was being ordered to violate university rules on a completely different scale than simply attending an unsanctioned meeting.

"That's… the Costume Department is secured," Ariana forced the words out, trying to introduce rational thought into the demand. "I don't have access to the archives."

Jordan offered a cold, dismissive sniff of amusement. "Naturally, you do not. That is the point, Vesper: the effort. Obedience is often defined by the price of its execution. We have provided details regarding the auxiliary office door access. The archive room key is located inside the main office under the 'H' section of the key rack. You will locate and retrieve the required article: a cream-and-gold Rococo-style silk gown, labeled CR-1704. It should be on a mannequin display near the environmental controls."

She was meant to break into a locked, highly specialized department to steal a priceless historical garment for a college elective's arbitrary dress code. The sheer arrogance of the demand left her speechless.

Jordan was still talking, delivering the logistics with crisp, frightening precision. "You will leave your standard academic ID at your desk. You will not carry your cell phone past the building entrance. The only thing you will take is the garment. You will return immediately after acquisition. There is a two-hour window for extraction and return to your dorm."

Ariana’s mind scrambled to process the logistical nightmare. The physical location itself was the worst part, and the realization hit her just as she looked at the building code the overlay provided.

The university’s Costume Department was located in the oldest wing of the Arts and Humanities building. She knew the layout. She mentally calculated the shortest path from her dorm room. The journey would require her to immediately leave her current location, traverse the desolate, late-night campus, and navigate to that specific, remote university building. The campus emptied out after 9 PM, leaving only a few central areas with active security presence. The Arts and Humanities wing was outside that core zone.

Then came the secondary, terrifying realization. The Costume Department office and archives were located on the third floor. Elias’s restricted faculty office was on the second floor, directly below the archives. The faculty office floor was perpetually quiet, locked after hours, and notorious for being the professor’s private, inviolable domain. Any late-night movement, even on the floor above, maximized the risk of her being seen by Elias. The sound of her forced entry, even the quiet traffic of her movements, could easily draw his attention if he were working late.

Lucas, who had been silent for several minutes, finally broke his observation with a quiet statement that cut through her immediate panic.

"Jordan has provided the full logistics, Vesper. We know where Elias is currently based. We know the key placement in the auxiliary office. Your immediate, panicked reaction to the logistics confirms the seriousness of the requirement." Lucas spoke with an undertone of satisfaction. "This confirms your willingness to risk campus security and Elias's scrutiny. That risk is the true measure of your obedience, far more than simply kneeling on command. Go now."

He terminated the video connection instantly. The screen snapped back to black, displaying only the inert, dead signal bars.

The communication was over, leaving her trembling in the sudden quiet of her dorm room. They had demanded a felony, essentially, and framed it as a measure of her compliance. Elias's office, directly below the target, meant this was not just a required task but an enormous gamble meant to test the limits of her self-preservation instinct against the fear of Professor Elias's retribution. They wanted her to fear him more than the university security, and certainly more than her own conscience.

Ariana didn't allow herself the luxury of debating the ethics or the impossibility of the task. Lucas was right; her panicked internal calculation of the risk was exactly what they were measuring. The cost of failure—being reported to Elias not only for a ten-second hesitation but for total insubordination to his two silent enforcers—was far too high. This was the only way to minimize the consequences of her last transgression. She had to eliminate all justification for control. Maximum compliance meant taking the risk.

She moved quickly, operating on the mechanical efficiency she had just spent hours drilling into her muscles. The exhaustion was secondary now to the urgency of the task. Failure to complete the mission within the two-hour window Jordan stipulated would be fatal.

The first step was removing the chair barricading the door. She pushed the heavy wooden chair back, the legs scraping loudly across the thin carpet. The metal door handle snapped up as the pressure released. She stood still for a moment, listening to the hallway outside. It was silent, confirming the late hour.

She needed to leave the room, and she needed to explain her sudden absence to Chloe, even without communication. The isolation was still complete; her phone remained useless for actual contact. Lucas had forbidden her from taking the device anyway, limiting her ability to seek help or even use it as a light source.

Ariana quickly located a small, yellow sticky note and a purple ballpoint pen on her desk, pushed under a massive History 101 textbook. She scribbled a message that was deliberately non-specific, cryptic enough to raise alarms but not explicitly reveal her current predicament to anyone who might find it first. She wrote: Chloe—URGENT historical retrieval mission. Cannot explain. Back by 12. DO NOT wait. ARIANA.

The note was a lie, a thin veil over a desperate situation, but it served two purposes. It provided a minimal, vague justification for her absence to her friend, and the term 'historical retrieval mission' was the closest approximation she could manage without explicitly admitting to criminal trespass.

She smoothed the sticky note and pressed it prominently onto the very face of her laptop screen, making it impossible to miss. She knew Chloe would find it unsettling, maybe even strange, but it would prevent Chloe from immediately reporting her missing to the RA or the university security should she attempt to check in later tonight.

She quickly changed out of the sweat-damp clothes she had been training in, pulling on dark, non-descript running clothes: black leggings, a dark gray long-sleeved shirt, and her thickest sneakers. Stealth mattered as much as speed now. The clothes were meant for athletics, not for formal trespass, which was probably a mistake, but she didn’t have any other options. She tucked a spare key for her dorm room into the waistband of the leggings. Jordan explicitly forbade the phone, and she understood why. The inability to communicate was another enforcement layer on the total compliance they expected.

Ariana looked around the room one last time, checking the floor where she had just spent hours drilling obedience into herself. The room felt foreign now, a temporary shelter before her next forced act of submission.

She took a deep, shaky breath, pushing the last vestiges of fear away, replacing it with the cold focus Lucas had demanded. Her task was simple: retrieve a silk gown from a building several hundred meters away, located directly above the most dangerous man on campus. She had a two-hour window.

She stepped toward the door, turning the handle silently. The hallway was dark, the emergency lights casting long, eerie shadows down the corridors. She glanced back at the desk, confirming the cryptic note was visible.

Ariana silently slipped out of her dorm room, pulling the door closed with agonizing slowness to prevent the heavy internal lock from clicking loudly. She set out immediately into the campus night to steal the required historical garment.