The Scholar Council meets in a building on Victoria Island that looks deliberately forgettable. No sign. No marble entrance. No secret symbol carved into the gate. Just an office building with tinted windows and air-conditioning cold enough to preserve meat. Saoirse is waiting in reception.
“You came.”
“You sound surprised.”
“I’m learning not to predict you.”
“That seems wise.”
A woman approaches us. Dr Miriam Vale. She is taller than I expected, silver threaded through her hair, posture so straight it feels intentional.
“Mr Osei-Kaya.”
“Emre.”
She takes that in.
“Emre.”
The room upstairs has twelve chairs around a long table. Every one is occupied. Four countries. Twelve scholars. Twenty-six years of my life arranged in folders in front of them. I remain standing. Dr Vale indicates the empty chair.
“I’m comfortable.”
A man at the far end studies me. I know his face. Not personally. From childhood. Dr Idris Kareem. He was younger then, obviously, but I remember him because he was the only scholar who ever spoke to me instead of around me.
“You have grown,” he says.
“That tends to happen over nineteen years.”
His mouth almost moves. Dr Vale begins. They show me my original chart. Then the recalculations. Then the records from every year after. My chart has never changed. No designation. No alignment. No celestial mark.
“So nothing,” I say.
“No,” Kareem answers.
He turns one page around. It is the Royal Mile event. Nine lines converge toward a blank centre. Then my office event. Five lines. Same centre. Dr Vale speaks carefully.
“We spent years assuming the absence in your chart meant the system could not read you.”
“And now?”
“We believe it has been reading you perfectly.”
I look at the diagram.
“It says nothing.”
“It says you do not carry an alignment.”
Kareem leans forward.
“You affect the alignments around you.”
I laugh once. Nobody joins me.
“You brought me from Edinburgh for that?”
Dr Vale slides another file across the table. Projects. My projects. Buildings I designed. Competition entries. University work. Each one marked with red lines over circulation routes. Open centres. Meeting points. Connections. My stomach tightens.
“You have been watching my work?”
“We have been watching the phenomenon.”
“You mean me.”
Silence. There are moments when anger arrives hot. This one is cold. I look around the table.
“You could have contacted me at any point.”
Kareem answers.
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because your mother asked us not to.”
That stops me.
“And you listened?”
“For a while.”
I look at the files again. Apparently listened has a flexible definition. Dr Vale folds her hands.
“We are not asking you to accept an identity, Emre. We are asking you to help us understand a function that is already happening.”
I think of Helen catching a tray from twenty feet away. James feeling pain four floors below him. Saoirse staring at my building. I finally sit.
“Start at the beginning.”