Leveling Up by Seducing Milfs-Chapter 296. Seven Minutes, and She Changed What the Room Was About
Councillor Dav from the Punisher faction said, "After four days of proving that the motions we passed were rigged, you’re asking for cooperation on a Council motion."
"Yes," Rick said. "Annnddd... I’m still asking, though, because the mechanism runs on a timer, and the timer doesn’t care about how much trust the Council has right now."
’Who the fuck is this guy... why are there so many randoms got introduced so fast...?’ Rick thought. ’I know that it’s a councillor, but still... everything moves so fast and unnatural...’
"And what happens to the people in this room who passed those motions after the mechanism is stopped?"
"That question gets all the time it needs after the mechanism is stopped." He looked straight at Dav. "Today is not that day..."
"We’re going to stop the clock today, and everything else has to wait until it stops."
"That’s very helpful for Thornfield’s position."
"It’s good for everyone’s position, even the three members who are still deciding what they think." Rick looked at the group that was still undecided. "If you want time to think, you’ll have it once the mechanism is suspended."
"But if you want to use the next seven days as thinking time while the succession architecture runs without supervision, that’s exactly the kind of parallel operation that got us here."
"The motion has my vote," said Councillor Veth, who is part of the Reformer faction. "The mechanism needs to stop, no matter what comes next."
Zephyra stood up and gave the analysis in seven minutes. Not six and not nine.
She went through all four pages without repeating herself or wasting words. She only gave a short explanation of the pre-coalition notation system and a conversion reference that two Council members started using right away to keep up.
The stabilization framework she found in the archive, the design logic for the succession mechanism, the seven position identifiers, and the motion language needed to carry out the override.
She read the pre-coalition designation code aloud at the end, slowly and clearly, so the record crystal would capture it without ambiguity.
At the end, she said, "I suggest checking the designation code against the primary implementation record before writing the override motion..."
"This will take about two hours."
From the side of the room, Natasha said, "I’ll take care of the verification."
Dav stared at her. "And who exactly are you?"
Natasha said, "The person who found the mechanism in the first place."
Dav looked at Natasha, then Zephyra, then Rick, and then he voted for the motion. Thirteen to zero.
The override will happen tomorrow morning, but only after Natasha checks it.
The room was empty, and Rick stayed until the last person left. Then he sat in one of the empty chairs and enjoyed the peace of a room that had just finished something that needed to be done.
Zephyra was at the other end of the table, putting her notes together.
Rick said, "Seven minutes."
She raised her head.
"The presentation... You had Dav ready to make the session about accountability and Fredrich and four days of institutional damage, and you put the timer on the table in the first thirty seconds."
"That changed what the room was about."
"That was the point," she said as she closed the folio case.
"I know." He looked at her. "It was well done."
She held the look for a moment, the one she used when something had more weight than she had thought it would. "Thank you," she said.
Just two words, and they were flat, with no extra information. She really meant them.
She took the folio case and went out of the room.
Sebastian showed up next to Rick in the empty room. "She said thank you without adding anything."
"Yeah, I heard that, jackass."
"In Zephyra’s emotional language—"
Rick said, "You don’t need to repeat again... I already fucking knew."
’And Sebastian here... he talks and appears a lot, which is weird...’
"Anyway..." He got up. "Let’s go check that Natasha’s verification is working."
...
Heinz was on the floor in the east wing with Sophia and the things she had collected since the temple: a garden stone, a wooden ring from somewhere on the temple grounds, a folded piece of paper she had found, and a leaf from the outer garden that she had been looking at closely for most of the day.
Rick came in and sat on the floor with them. Sometimes it was the right thing to do to sit on the floor.
Sophia looked at him with the same careful attention she gave to everything new: the button on his coat, the fabric of his sleeve, and the way he was standing. She felt the Natasha crystal in his coat pocket through the fabric and pressed both of her hands flat against it.
Heinz said, "She likes the cold."
"Temperature regulation," Rick said. "It runs a little cool."
Sophia put her hands on the pocket and held them there. The light came out of nowhere.
It was very soft and amber-blue, and it wasn’t from the crystal. It came from her hands.
At the same time, Rick and Heinz both stopped moving.
The light was steady, small, and not getting bigger. It wasn’t scary because it was just there.
Sophia looked at her hands with the same intense curiosity she had for new things. She examined the glow like she had the lichen stone, carefully and without worry.
After that, she turned to Rick. Then she looked at her hands again.
After six seconds, the light went out. She looked at the leaf she had set aside to press her palms against the crystal.
She was sure it was still there and still interesting, so she went back to it.
Heinz said in a low voice, "Was that...?"
"Grand Sorceress resonance." Rick said, "First expression..."
"A week early, but Zephyra said the stabilization framework showed that the window opened between nine and ten months, and Sophia has been ahead of developmental milestones by six weeks since she was born."
"Should we let her know?"
"Yes," Rick said. "She’ll want to know."
They looked at each other, both knowing how important the news was. As they got ready to call Zephyra, everyone in the room felt excited because they knew this news could change everything for Sophia and how they saw her abilities.
...
When Zephyra heard the news, she set down the folio case, picked up Sophia, and held her for four seconds, just as she had done in the outer grounds of the Golden Temple.
In the afternoon light of the mansion, she embraced her daughter for those four seconds, stepping away from her roles as the Grand Sorceress, the analyst, and the woman who had spent the past week in a grief construct’s domain.
Afterward, she gently placed Sophia on the floor and opened the archivist’s folio case to the section regarding the stabilization framework.
"Day four of eleven," she said as she read. "Not quite on time, but within acceptable limits."
She wrote this down in the margin. "I have what I need."
Rick stood in the doorway, observing her as she immersed herself in the text. She possessed everything she needed.
She was confident she would find it when she uncovered the main source in the temple archive. She had been working toward this moment since she sat in the archive room at dawn, examining the document that transformed fifteen years of secondary scholarship into something she could amend rather than merely reference.
When she glanced up, she noticed him watching. Her expression conveyed that she was providing him with accurate information without putting on a performance.
"I’m fine," she said.
Rick replied, "I know."
