54 - The Loyalties of Mr Knox

                                    

                                          
 A shower and a hasty breakfast later and the three of them were walking swiftly through the AmpCore halls, and Piper felt a strange sense of excitement. Not about seeing Toran – god, no – but about Casimir, and the prospect of finding anything about her father. She felt lighter too, after sharing it all with Odiye and Arrow.
 	A little less alone with the world.
 	Knowing what they were about to ask, however, she suddenly realised how much she wanted her amplifier back. According to Arrow the carefully crafted personal weapons were under lock and key in one of the Forges, watched over by one of Demir's lackeys at all times.
 	Piper wanted hers back. She felt a tingle in her fingers; felt the voice in her head twist and writhe with approval. Looking at her fingers, she wondered how much damage she might be able to do without the focusing power of the wand. The dangers of doing such things had been drummed into her pretty clearly by the instructors, but she was hardly a normal student. Maybe she could do what others couldn't? She'd already proved she could take control of a wraith. What other powers might be lurking in her bones?
 	Hopefully Toran would be willing to provide some answers.	
 	Toran Knox, however, was not where he was supposed to be. According to the academy datastreams he ought to have been assisting a Combustive combat seminar, but when they slunk into the training area, they only found Senior Mattise, and he looked equally infuriated at Toran's absence.
 	"If you find him, tell him he and I are going to have a very long and unpleasant conversation," the instructor growled angrily between teaching a pair of younger students how to wield the combustive bolts without killing each other. "He's supposed to be helping turn these jangle-boned weaklings into damned operatives! But instead I'm sprinting around this place like I've got a god-damned fire under my arse." He paused his rant long enough to glower at them. "And what the hell are the three of you up to anyway? If you had any sense you'd be keeping a low profile."
 	"We just wanted to speak to him," Odiye said, doing his best to sound innocent.
 	Mattise eyed him balefully for a moment. "About what?"
 	"About seeing if he could help getting our privileges reinstated," Piper lied without skipping a beat. "He's in Skiltron. He's got pull."
 	"I suppose he does." Mattise's amplifier twitched with irritation. "Get out of here, all of you. And for god's sake, try not to do anything else to piss off the board. They were a hairsbreadth from kicking the lot of you out of AmpCore for good."
 	"But for your word?" Arrow enquired.  
 	"I couldn't possibly say." He made a shooing motion. "Now go."
 	Piper retreated with the others, a little surprised by Mattise's words. Granted, he was more understanding than most when it came to the instructors, but he certainly didn't like her. He didn't seem to like anyone down here. Would he really have stuck his neck out for them against AmpCore's board of directors?
 	In the end, she supposed it didn't matter. They were still here, and she had no intention of playing nice with Toran, Mattise, the board, or anybody else. Not until she got some answers.
 	Finding Toran after that took a lot longer than she would have liked, but they eventually traced him through the academy (with some discreet amplifier work from Arrow) until they found themselves in an unobtrusive little office squirrelled away in the academy's administration wing. It was a comparatively drab part of the structure – blazing corporate adverts notwithstanding – and not the sort of place she expected a son of Skiltron to be hanging around.