WAYFARER: CLAIM THE UNCLAIMABLE

The warning from the communicator stayed with them after the call ended. Caspian lowered the device without putting it away, his attention remaining on the inactive scanner while the examiner withdrew the last of its controls. Fern had stopped studying the equipment as well. Nobody seemed particularly eager to test how serious the older man’s warning had been.

Sio couldn’t blame them. He had spent most of the afternoon waiting for somebody to explain what was happening inside him, and somehow the most knowledgeable person they’d contacted had responded by telling everyone to stop looking.

He was still deciding what to make of that when a quiet metallic click came from the wall near the examination room’s entrance.

A narrow wooden door now occupied a section of wall Sio remembered being completely bare.

Caspian noticed it without surprise. That bothered Sio more than the door itself.

”You know the building already has entrances,” Caspian said, slipping the communicator beneath his coat while the brass handle began to turn. His tone carried the tired familiarity of someone complaining about a habit rather than witnessing anything unusual.

The older man who stepped through wore a dark coat that had been repaired often enough to suggest replacing it had become a matter of principle. Gray had begun working through his hair at the temples, and narrow glasses rested low across his nose. The rough voice Sio remembered from the communicator belonged to him, although in person he carried far less urgency than Sio had expected.

”You called because your people found something they can’t explain.” He gave Caspian a brief look while continuing into the room. ”Somehow you’ve already found time to complain about how I arrived.”

Caspian’s mouth pulled faintly at one corner. ”It’s nice seeing you too.”

The man acknowledged Fern more quietly. Their familiarity was subtler, a small shift in expression and nothing more, before his attention settled completely on Sio.

He stopped beside the examination chair and took in the stiffness of Sio’s shoulder, the bruising across his chest and whatever dried blood Sio had failed to clean from beneath his nose. ”So you’re Sio.”

”Apparently I’m the only person here who keeps meeting people after they’ve already learned my name.”

The older man considered that and seemed to decide the complaint was reasonable. ”Arch.”

”Sio. Properly, this time.”

”I gathered.”

”That introduction could still use some work.”

A slight crease appeared beside Arch’s mouth. He extended one hand, palm upward. ”Give me your wrist and I’ll consider revising it later.”

Sio studied the offered hand. ”You made it almost twenty seconds before asking for part of me. That’s encouraging.”

Behind him, Fern made a quiet sound that might have been amusement. Arch’s expression barely changed, though his eyes suggested Sio hadn’t entirely failed.

”I need your pulse. You can keep the wrist afterward.”

”That distinction helps.”

Sio offered his arm.

Arch’s fingers settled over his pulse and moved slightly higher along the inside of his wrist. The contact was ordinary enough. The examiner had touched him dozens of times already, and the Nexus equipment had reached somewhere far deeper than a pair of fingers could.

Something inside Sio tightened anyway.

His breath caught before he managed to hide it.

The sensation carried none of the pressure he associated with his Claim. Distance didn’t bend strangely around his awareness, and the creature gave him no sense of movement from wherever it waited within that city. His vision remained clear of the faint paths that had appeared during the Vessel attack.

This response came from somewhere he couldn’t identify.

It lasted barely long enough for him to recognize that it had happened. A faint inward pull gathered deep inside him, almost like recognition without memory, then disappeared before he could follow it.

Arch’s fingers tightened at the same moment.

Sio raised his eyes.

Arch had noticed.

The older man’s attention sharpened behind his glasses. He shifted his thumb slightly across the same place and waited, apparently hoping to reproduce whatever had happened. Sio waited too, increasingly aware of his own pulse beneath Arch’s fingers, but the strange response refused to return.

Fern stepped closer to the chair. ”Something happened.”

Arch released Sio’s wrist and spent a moment studying him before answering. ”He reacted. I don’t know enough yet to tell you what caused it.”

The examiner seemed ready to suggest another scan, but Arch’s attention moved toward the dark apparatus before she could speak. ”Leave that off. I want to continue somewhere that isn’t connected to Nexus systems. I have older diagnostic tools at home, and I know their limitations better than I know whatever is interfering with this equipment.”

Caspian leaned back against the console. ”You’ve examined him for about a minute.”

”And you’ve had him here for hours.” Arch started putting his glove back on. ”You ended with a Scar you can locate but can’t see and a phone call asking me what went wrong. I’m comfortable admitting time hasn’t been particularly helpful today.”

Sio found himself appreciating the argument more than he probably should.

Arch addressed him directly. ”My equipment is less invasive, and nothing at my place reports to a Nexus archive. I would like to examine you there. You can refuse.”

Fern looked at Sio before he answered. ”You don’t have to go because you’re curious about the door.”

Sio felt unfairly understood. ”I was considering the medical advantages.”

”You’ve been looking at the door since he arrived.”

”The two interests can coexist.”

Arch pushed his glasses higher with one finger. ”Whatever your reasons are, I would rather understand why touching you caused a reaction before anyone puts you back inside that scanner.”

That returned the conversation to something Sio couldn’t laugh away.

He eased himself out of the chair, giving the soreness across his chest and shoulder a moment to settle. ”I should warn you that my mother sent me out for a package this morning. I actually managed to collect it, which was probably the most successful part of the day. The Vessel attack happened on the way back, and the package didn’t survive it. Staying gone for the rest of the afternoon may convince her errands are fatal.”

Arch paused while fastening his glove. ”Your mother lives in Luminara?”

”Same house I’ve lived in most of my life.”

”Then we’ll speak with her afterward.”

Sio wasn’t sure Arch understood that his mother couldn’t be handled like another stop on an itinerary, but experience would probably teach him faster than an explanation.

Arch returned to the wooden door, closed it and kept one hand around the brass handle for several seconds. When he opened it again, the Nexus corridor no longer waited beyond the frame. Warm afternoon light fell across a wooden floor instead, with bookshelves visible along one wall and a broad table farther inside.

Sio stared long enough for Fern to catch him.

”Medical advantages,” she reminded him.

”They continue to increase.”

Caspian gave Arch a weary look. ”Bring him back before Fern decides calling you was my mistake.”

”You did call me.”

”That isn’t the part I’m regretting yet.”

Arch’s expression suggested their argument had begun years before Sio entered it. He stepped through the doorway without trying to finish it.

Sio followed.

Arch’s home was quieter than he expected. Books occupied most of the available shelves, interrupted by rolled maps, old cases and a handful of objects that looked collected during journeys rather than bought for decoration. A weathered compass rested near a polished piece of dark stone, while faded routes crossed the large wall map in several different inks.

Sio’s attention settled there almost immediately.

”You travelled these routes?”

Arch had begun clearing space on the broad table. ”Most of them.”

Several lines crossed coastlines Sio knew only from books. Another disappeared through Thalassia, threading between islands before turning toward a region he’d spent years reading about without expecting to see anytime soon.

”All five continents?”

”Over the years.”

Arch said it with such casual indifference that Sio briefly forgot why he’d been brought there.

”You understand that’s not a normal answer.”

”Plenty of people travel.”

”Not like that.”

Arch opened a worn diagnostic case. ”Some of us had poor judgment and enough time to indulge it.”

Sio thought of the destroyed package. ”I may already be developing the correct qualifications.”

That earned him a faint trace of amusement.

Arch pointed toward the chair beside the table. ”Sit down before curiosity becomes the next injury I have to examine.”

Sio obeyed, though his attention still wandered enough to catch a strip of Thalassian weaving hanging from one cabinet and a walking stick with pale seed shells tied around the handle.

Arch noticed exactly where he was looking. ”Viridia.”

Sio immediately leaned toward the stick. ”Those are from Viridia?”

Arch moved the diagnostic case into his line of sight. ”And now I regret telling you.”

”You can’t drop the name of a continent into a room and expect me to ignore it.”

”I was hoping pain might improve your discipline.”

”It hasn’t so far.”

The examination looked almost disappointing after the Nexus machinery. Arch checked Sio’s pupils, tested sensation through both hands and examined the bruising left by the Vessel’s force. His questions came while he worked. He asked where the pressure had struck hardest, whether Sio had lost consciousness and how long the paths had remained visible after the fight. Occasionally he returned to an earlier question from a different direction when Sio gave him an answer that sounded more complete than it actually was.

Eventually, Arch reached for his wrist again.

This time the response began before his fingers fully settled.

Something deep inside Sio drew tight.

His hand twitched.

Arch caught the movement but didn’t let go. ”You felt that before I had your pulse.”

Sio stared down at his arm. The sensation had already withdrawn, leaving nothing he could point to. ”Yeah. That’s the same thing.”

Arch waited instead of supplying an interpretation.

Sio flexed his fingers slowly while he tried to describe something he barely understood. ”The Claim feels different. There’s pressure when I use it, and sometimes distance itself feels strange before an opening forms. The creature has its own reactions too. When the Vessel was following me, I could tell something had made it angry before I understood what.”

Arch’s attention moved from the wrist to Sio’s face. ”You can distinguish the creature’s reactions from the Claim itself?”

”Not perfectly. They’ve been connected since yesterday, and I haven’t exactly had time to build a reference manual.” Sio hesitated. Talking about the creature always forced him to decide how much truth could leave his mouth without dragging the rest behind it. ”But it has... moods, I suppose. Strong ones.”

Arch’s thumb remained lightly against his pulse. ”You told the Nexus your relationship with it has room for improvement. Give me something more useful than that.”

Sio breathed out through his nose. ”The first time I properly encountered it after the Claim formed, we couldn’t understand each other. That would already have made communication difficult. It also spent most of the encounter trying to kill me, which made introductions considerably worse.”

Arch’s concentration deepened. His hand remained steady, but Sio could feel the small change in pressure where his fingers rested.

”It hasn’t tried again,” Sio continued, unwilling to let the statement become more dramatic than he meant it to be. ”I don’t know whether the Claim prevents it, whether it learned something, or whether it simply hasn’t had another opportunity. We aren’t friends. I can tell you that much without guessing.”

Arch studied him for several seconds. ”When that creature becomes agitated, you recognize the sensation clearly enough to separate it from what happened when I touched you?”

”Yesterday it was hard to miss.” Sio looked down at the place Arch had been holding. ”This was quieter. It felt closer somehow, like whatever reacted was already inside me rather than somewhere I could reach through the Claim. That’s about as precise as I can be.”

Something in Arch’s expression changed at the last part, though he kept the thought to himself.

He finally released Sio and began putting away the instruments. ”Good.”

Sio watched him close one compartment. ”That’s usually a disappointing word when the person saying it has just learned something disturbing.”

Arch looked over his glasses. ”Would you prefer inaccurate reassurance?”

”Not particularly.”

”Then good means you gave me useful information. I haven’t decided what it means yet.”

Sio could live with that answer. He had spent most of the afternoon being careful not to turn theories into facts himself.

Arch pulled a notebook closer. ”Start from your birth examination. Tell me what you personally remember, what your mother told you later and what came from Nexus records. Keep those separate wherever you can.”

Sio went through the history again. He had been classified Veyr at birth with no Scar and no Passage damage. Six years later, after still failing to make a single Claim, Mira had taken him back to the Nexus. The result remained unchanged. Three empty slots, no Scar, nothing apparently wrong except that the ability everyone expected him to possess refused to work.

Arch’s questions gradually moved away from the examinations themselves. He wanted to know where Sio had been born, whether either parent had been a Wayfarer and whether unusual abilities or Passage injuries had ever appeared elsewhere in the family.

”Mum’s ordinary,” Sio explained. ”My father was the Wayfarer. I don’t know enough about his ability to compare anything properly. He died before I was born, so most of what I know came from Mum whenever I asked. She told me plenty about him as a person. The Wayfarer details were never exactly dinner-table conversation.”

Arch had been writing while Sio spoke. The tip of his pen remained pressed to the page for a moment too long after the mention of Sio’s father, leaving a dark pool of ink around the final letter he’d written.

He noticed it eventually and lifted the pen, though his attention no longer seemed interested in the notes.

”Your father had a name I might recognize?”

The phrasing caught Sio’s attention. Arch wasn’t asking the way the examiner had asked about family history. There was caution in it now, as though he had already begun suspecting the answer.

”Silas Eloran.”

Arch looked up.