On the Path of Eternal Strength.

Chapter 116: Chapter 114 The Fortress They Called Home

The van arrived a few minutes later.

It stopped in front of the institute’s main entrance with an almost silent smoothness, as if even the engine had been designed not to interrupt the order of the place. It was a family van, spacious, light blue in tone, clean to the point of reflecting in its windows the last remains of the afternoon. It had no striking emblems, no visible escorts, no ostentatious presence. Precisely because of that, it seemed more discreet. More prepared.

The driver got out only as much as necessary to open the side door. He was a man in a dark suit, serene face, straight posture and measured movements. He asked nothing. He did not greet with exaggeration. He did not look more than necessary. He only fulfilled a function, and there was something in that absence of curiosity that spoke of a world where obedience could also be a form of trained silence.

Sebastián barely observed him. Then he looked at the others.

—Get in.

Valentina was the first to approach, still excited by the idea of the sleepover. She wore the backpack on her back, well adjusted, and inside it Narka remained reduced, hidden among the fabric, saying nothing. To anyone, she would have seemed like a girl carrying her school things. To those who knew how to look better, she was a girl walking with an ancient presence on her back.

Virka got in after her, helping her settle into the wide seat in the back. Valentina sat beside her, with her seatbelt on, but shortly after she ended up resting her head against Virka’s legs, as if that place were as safe as a closed room. Virka did not correct her. She only placed a hand over the girl’s white hair with brown strands, a minimal gesture, almost motionless.

Zaira got in from the other side and chose the seat by the left window. She sat with her back straight, one leg crossed over the other and her gaze directed outside, as if the city were easier to look at than the people with whom she had just accepted to coexist. Óscar entered last, settling in naturally in one of the central seats, as if the van, the improvised idea and the conflict he had provoked were part of a perfectly reasonable plan.

Sebastián took the front seat, beside the driver. The door closed. The van started without jolts.

For a while, no one spoke.

The institute began to fall behind. The high walls passed by the windows like a succession of clean lines, dark windows and perfectly guarded gardens. In the distance, the external field and the Ring could no longer be seen, but something of them remained inside the vehicle: the blue line they had not crossed, the rod going out in the instructor’s hand, the dry phrase that had denied them the return to the ARMEX.

Valentina, however, breathed with another kind of excitement.

—Do you eat something special at a sleepover? —she suddenly asked, looking up from where she was lying.

Óscar leaned a little toward her.

—It depends on the level of professionalism of the sleepover. Common ones have simple food. Tactical ones should have superior provisions.

Valentina opened her eyes wider.

—Superior provisions?

—Sweets, drinks, food that doesn’t look like it was designed by a sad nutritionist and, if we’re ambitious, something that can be eaten while we plan how not to be defeated by an instructor with a rod.

Zaira let out an exhalation through her nose. It was not a laugh, but it was closer to that than to a complaint.

Sebastián turned his head slightly from the front seat.

—Since it was your grandiose idea —he said, with a dryness where sarcasm entered like a thin blade—, what are you supposed to use to sleep?

Óscar blinked.

—Sleep?

—Sleepover —Sebastián said—. Clothes. You two are only wearing uniforms.

The word fell with such simple logic that, for a second, even Óscar seemed to remember that improvised ideas had material consequences. Then he regained his composure.

—Well, in my case I don’t see a serious problem. I’m quite sure that in your house there must be clothes you don’t use. A wide shirt, comfortable pants, anything that doesn’t make me look like a student abandoned in the middle of a logistical emergency.

Sebastián looked at him sideways.

—That doesn’t answer everything.

Óscar followed the direction of that phrase and ended up looking toward Zaira.

She remained by the window, apparently focused on the movement of the city. But her golden eyes were not as far away as they seemed.

Óscar leaned forward, moving a little closer to the back of the passenger seat, and lowered his voice with a caution that was not usual in him.

—The problem would be Zaira —he whispered—. She’s more physically developed than Virka. I don’t think her clothes would fit her just like that.

The phrase was prudent by his own standards. It had no open mockery, no vulgar tone, nor that playful edge he usually used to provoke. He had measured his words because he knew perfectly well where he was sitting, whom he was talking about and who was in front. Some jokes could cost a look. Others could cost something worse.

Zaira spoke without turning her head.

—I’m not deaf.

Óscar stayed motionless for an instant.

—That, technically, was a hypothesis I had not ruled out, but I appreciate the confirmation.

—And I can sleep in the uniform —she added.

Valentina suddenly sat up on Virka’s legs, alarmed as if she had just heard a serious offense against a fundamental law.

—You can’t.

Zaira finally looked at her.

—You can’t what?

—Sleep in a uniform at a sleepover. A sleepover has to be with pajamas. Everyone has to have pajamas.

She said it with such serious conviction that the discussion stopped belonging to logistics and entered the sacred territory of children’s rules. For Valentina, a sleepover without pajamas was not a practical variant. It was a contradiction.

The girl lifted her face toward Virka.

—Right, Mom?

Virka lowered her gaze toward her. There was a brief moment, almost invisible, where she evaluated the scene: Zaira uncomfortable, Óscar restrained for the first time in several minutes, Sebastián waiting for an answer from the front, Valentina clinging to a simple idea with all the purity of someone who had not had enough normal things in life to allow one of them to be distorted.

Virka barely stroked the girl’s hair.

—Yes —she said—. It has to be with pajamas.

Valentina nodded firmly, as if the final authority had spoken.

Zaira closed her eyes for a second.

—This is absurd.

—Probably —Óscar said—, but now it has maternal backing. That changes the legal balance of the conversation.

Sebastián did not comment on the joke.

He put his hand into his pocket naturally. The gesture seemed like anyone looking for their cell phone, but between his fingers the storage ring responded with a minimal glow, so brief that it was lost under the shadow of his palm. When he pulled his hand out, the device was already there, cold and black, as if it had always been stored in the fabric of his uniform.

He unlocked the screen.

—Then clothes are ordered —he said—. For everyone.

Óscar settled back in the seat.

—That sounds dangerously efficient.

Sebastián did not answer him. He searched for a contact and made the call. On the screen appeared the registered name: Warehouse Administrator.

The tone sounded twice. Then they answered.

—Prepare a shipment for the house —Sebastián said, without preamble—. Comfortable clothes for men and women. Several sizes. Pajamas, new underwear, backup casual clothes and house footwear. Everything new. Have it arrive today.

There was a brief pause on the other side. Sebastián listened without changing expression.

—Five people —he specified—. Two men, two women and one girl. Include extra options. I don’t want pending adjustments when we arrive.

Valentina looked at him with silent admiration, as if ordering pajamas in that way were a strange and adult ability.

Sebastián listened again.

—Yes. To the house. Coordinate with reception. And notify the kitchen that there will be guests.

Another pause.

—Simple food. Not formal.

Óscar raised a finger from behind.

—Superior provisions.

Sebastián did not turn around.

—And something sweet —he added, dryly.

Valentina smiled immediately. Óscar lowered his finger with satisfaction.

—Successful diplomatic representation.

Sebastián ended the call a few minutes later. There was no long farewell, only a final order and the clean cut of the communication. He put the cell phone back into his pocket, and the device disappeared with the same naturalness with which it had come out, hidden by the common gesture, returned to the space where no one else had any reason to look.

The conversation gradually went out.

The van moved through the wide avenues near the institute. Outside, the city kept breathing with its late-afternoon rhythm: vehicles stopped at traffic lights, students walking in groups, advertising screens changing color over glass facades, vendors closing small stands beside secondary streets. Everything seemed normal from inside the vehicle. Normal enough for the violence of the world, that other deeper and less presentable truth, to be able to hide behind every corner without effort.

Zaira looked out the window again. Her reflection appeared on the glass: golden eyes, firm face, red hair lit by the light entering from the side. She did not seem regretful for having accepted, but neither comfortable. It was as if she had allowed a step toward a territory she did not control and now was measuring how much ground she had to yield without losing herself.

Óscar stopped talking for a while. He rested an elbow on the backrest and looked at the roof of the van, perhaps calculating what part of his plan had been improvisation and what part had worked because everyone was too tired to resist strongly.

Virka remained beside Valentina. The girl had leaned back again, calmer now that the pajama problem had been solved. Her fingers distractedly touched a strap of the backpack, as if remembering that Narka was still there. From inside, the beast’s presence was silent, but not asleep.

Sebastián looked forward. The driver asked nothing. He only drove.

The van left the school area behind, crossed several avenues and took a wider road. The buildings began to separate. Traffic arranged itself into long lanes. The city lights became lines over the windows. Little by little, the landscape changed. The institute was left far behind. The city began to open toward the highway, and for a few minutes no one said anything.

Only the engine kept moving forward, firm and discreet, carrying five students toward a house that for Valentina was still simply home, even though the world around them began to prepare itself, without them knowing it yet, to remind them that calm was never a promise.

The highway opened between strips of dark vegetation.

In the distance, the mountains began to mark the horizon with a heavy line, bluish from the afternoon. There was forest on the slopes, shadows accumulated among tall trees and secondary roads that seemed to lose themselves toward hidden properties. The noise of the city became a distant memory behind the armored glass. Inside the van, the silence grew deeper.

Valentina looked out the window naturally.

For her, that road had no mystery. It was the route back. The distance did not seem strange to her. The curves between trees, the stretches where the road moved away from any inhabited area, the way the world became larger and emptier as they advanced, all of that belonged to a simple word.

Home.

Óscar, on the other hand, began to look with more attention.

—An administrative question —he said, without taking his eyes off the outside—. When you said the house was big... were you using “big” in the normal sense of the word or in a dialect of people with too much land?

Sebastián did not answer immediately. Neither did Virka.

Zaira, sitting by the left window, watched the trees pass like long shadows. She said nothing, but her gaze had changed. She was no longer looking just to look. She was measuring the distance, the isolation, the absence of nearby houses, the kind of road that was not taken by accident.

The van left the highway and entered a private road.

The asphalt became darker, cleaner, flanked by black stones placed with precision and low lights almost hidden among the grass. The forest did not invade the road; it accompanied it. On both sides, small cameras turned without noise among discreet metal structures, so integrated into the landscape that they could seem like simple decorations if someone did not know what to look for.

Then the walls appeared.

They rose in the distance like a dark gray line cutting across the terrain. They were not decorative walls. They were six meters high, with a sober surface, without excessive ornaments, built with that kind of elegant brutality that did not need to show weapons to make clear that nothing entered without permission. On them, sensors and surveillance cameras were distributed with precision, following the van from before it reached the gate.

Óscar stopped reclining. Zaira also straightened a little.

The main gate appeared at the end of the road: dark steel, tungsten reinforcements, discreet emblems in relief, clean lines and a visual weight that made it seem less like an entrance and more like a warning.

The van stopped in front of it.

There were no visible guards approaching. Only a pause. A silent reading. The system recognized the vehicle, the driver and those inside. Afterward, the gate began to open with a slow, deep, almost ceremonial movement.

Óscar looked at Valentina.

—When you said big house, I thought of a big house.

Valentina looked back at him, confused.

—Yes. It’s big.

—I already noticed that. The detail is that this looks like a fortress with a garden.

Zaira murmured, almost to herself:

—I didn’t expect you to be that rich.

She did not say it with envy. Nor with simple admiration. She said it like someone silently reorganizing the image she had of someone. Sebastián, Virka and Valentina no longer fit into the category of strange students with a spacious house. There was something else behind them. Land, security, logistics, resources. An entire world they had not shown inside the institute.

Sebastián kept looking forward.

—It’s not important.

Óscar let out a low laugh.

—That phrase can only be said by someone for whom it is clearly important not to say that it is important.

The van crossed the gate.

Inside, the property opened like a private villa.

The main road advanced between sober gardens, perfectly maintained grass, minimalist fountains of dark stone and side paths of black slab. Farther beyond, patios, annexes and some small auxiliary houses could be seen, separated from the main structure, almost hidden among trees and low walls. In the distance, over a rear esplanade, the clean shape of a helipad could be distinguished. Closer, in open areas, there were outdoor training fields with platforms, targets and obstacles still beneath the afternoon light.

Everything was cared for, but it was not fragile. There was no unnecessary extravagance. There were no golden statues, no absurd columns, no fountains designed to flaunt wealth. The place conveyed something else: control. Function. Power contained behind elegant lines.

Then the mansion appeared.

It rose at the end of the road with three visible floors, dark stone, armored glass mirrored outward, matte steel and sloped roofs of black tile. The modern lines of the structure mixed with sober classic details, as if someone had taken a high-society residence and built it with the thinking of a fortress. The afternoon light reflected in the windows without revealing anything of the interior.

Óscar remained silent for a few seconds.

That, coming from him, was almost a confession.

—Well —he said at last—. Now I understand why he ordered clothes like someone ordering water.

Zaira did not answer. She kept looking at the mansion.

Something in her expression had become more closed. Not intimidated, exactly. Zaira was not one of those who made themselves smaller just because a wall was tall. But she was calculating. Calculating the difference between her small house, barely enough for her and her older brother, and that property capable of swallowing several houses inside its gardens without losing symmetry.

Valentina, unaware of the social weight of the comparison, pointed forward.

—We’re here.

The van stopped in front of the main entrance.

The driver got out first and opened the side door. Valentina got out quickly, adjusting the backpack over her shoulders. Virka got out afterward and placed herself at her side. Sebastián got out of the front seat without looking too much at the facade, as if the immensity of the place did not belong to him in an emotional way, but a practical one. Óscar got out more slowly. Zaira was the last.

The double doors of the entrance were enormous, made of tungsten covered with dark wood. They did not seem made to receive visitors, but to decide who deserved to enter. As Sebastián approached, the internal systems responded. Hidden locks released pressure. The doors opened inward with a smoothness that contradicted their weight.

The vestibule received them with a height of two floors.

The floor was black marble with golden veins, polished until it reflected the modern tempered-glass lamps that descended from above. The walls combined dark stone, matte stainless steel and panels of noble wood. The light was warm, but not soft. Everything had a heavy, silent elegance, as if the place did not need to raise its voice to impose itself.

Óscar looked up.

—This is no longer a sleepover. This is a diplomatic summit with an option for blankets.

Valentina smiled.

—It’s my house.

—Yes —Óscar said—. That is precisely the philosophical problem.

Zaira entered without speaking. Her steps on the marble sounded clearer than she expected. She looked toward the reception room, wide, open toward windows that faced the garden. She saw discreet metallic details on the walls, sober furniture, enough space for an entire class to gather without touching shoulders.

Then a female voice came from one side of the vestibule.

—Hello, boss.

The warehouse administrator appeared from the corridor that connected with the internal service and storage areas.

She was a young woman, with a marked hipster aesthetic, without glasses. She wore her long hair gathered in a thick braid that fell over one shoulder. She had small earrings, several layered necklaces and metallic accessories on her wrists. Her clothes did not try to look formal: a wide shirt of dark fabric, pants with controlled rips and comfortable boots. Even so, there was no carelessness in her. She moved with the security of someone who knew exactly what had arrived, where it was stored and how long it would take her to solve any shortage.

She did not look like a servant. She looked like logistics with a human pulse.

Sebastián looked at her.

—Is everything ready?

—Yes, boss —she answered—. The support staff has already withdrawn. They left the food prepared, the drinks cold, the sweets in the leisure room and several light options in case you want to eat later.

Óscar turned slightly toward Sebastián.

—Support staff?

The administrator looked at him with kind naturalness.

—Temporary. They were called for an urgent order. Kitchen, arrangement and delivery. Nothing invasive.

—I like that word —Óscar said—. Temporary. It makes all of this sound less like we just entered a novel about dangerous heirs.

Zaira gave him a look.

—You’re not helping.

—Sometimes it is not my function to help. Sometimes I am ambiance.

The administrator continued without losing rhythm.

—The clothes also arrived. Pajamas, new underwear, casual garments, house footwear and backup sizes. I left everything organized by type and size in the secondary room of the east wing. I also prepared options for Valentina.

Valentina opened her eyes.

—Pajamas?

The administrator smiled a little.

—Yes. Several. So you can choose.

The girl looked at Virka with a silent happiness, as if the world had just confirmed that the sleepover was real.

Sebastián nodded.

—Good.

—I also notified internal reception so that the visitor protocol does not activate while you are here —the administrator added—. The secondary accesses remain closed. Only this wing, the leisure room, dining room, guest bathrooms and prepared rooms are enabled.

Óscar lowered his voice toward Zaira.

—Definitely a diplomatic summit.

Zaira did not answer. Her gaze kept moving through the vestibule, over the marble, over the doors, over the impossible height of the ceiling. Something in her seemed to resist showing surprise, but the surprise was there, contained behind the golden eyes.

The administrator looked at the whole group.

—Welcome. You can leave your things wherever you want for now. The house is prepared.

House.

Again that word.

In Valentina’s mouth, it was simple. In the administrator’s mouth, it was function. In Óscar’s and Zaira’s eyes, it was still too large to fit inside such a common word.

Sebastián took a step inside. Virka followed with Valentina. Óscar and Zaira advanced behind them.

The double doors began to close slowly behind their backs, and the deep sound of the metal sealing the entrance traveled through the vestibule like a discreet promise. Outside remained the road, the institute, the Ring and the blue line they had not crossed. Inside, another kind of test awaited them: a house too large, a sleepover born from a defeat and a team that still did not know how to coexist without feeling strange.

__________________________________________

END OF Chapter 114

The path continues...

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