Four minutes remained when the registration bell rang early.
It did not sound like a normal bell. It sounded like a spoon hitting a glass inside everyone’s skull. Room 12 froze: Holly with one pale Bone Key, Orla with the black one, Leo’s glowing lines reaching between them like angry maths.
Mr Tafadar checked his watch. "That bell is three minutes and forty-eight seconds ahead of schedule, which is frankly rude."
The tannoy crackled. "Registration for 9C will now begin."
Jasper, one of the popular boys, lifted both hands. "Sir, I’d like it noted I am emotionally absent."
The bell ignored him.
"Holly Rivers: hides fear by making jokes first."
Holly’s face burned. Around her, nobody laughed. Orla’s fingers tightened around the burnt-black key.
The tannoy continued, sweeter and nastier. "Orla Quinn: remembers more than she admits."
"Oi," Orla said, but her voice wobbled. "That is private brain business."
"Leo Marwick: did not choose the mark."
Leo looked so relieved he nearly sat down on the floor. Bea, still guarding Tamsin like a tiny furious bouncer, narrowed her eyes anyway.
"Bea Kaur: is scared that being kind makes people leave."
Bea went silent. Tamsin slipped her hand into Bea’s, and Bea pretended to examine the ceiling tiles.
Then came the nerds. "Nikhil Shah: named his calculator Penelope."
"That was in confidence!" Nikhil shouted, clutching it.
The room burst into nervous laughter, and for half a second it felt like normal 9C again: loud boys, nice girls, mean girls pretending they were above it, Mr Tafadar looking as if the universe had failed to bring the correct equipment.
Then the radios said, "Four."
⁂
The two Bone Keys snapped towards each other across the aisle. Holly and Orla both yelped, hanging on as the keys dragged their hands together.
On the whiteboard, the question changed.
Register the missing name.
Mara’s cracked radio hissed on the front desk. She stood beside it, small and rigid, as if the whole classroom had suddenly tilted under her feet.
"Mara," Holly said. "What’s your surname?"
Mara opened her mouth.
The bell screamed over her.
"Name unavailable."
Every ceiling camera in Room 12 swivelled at once.
That was when Nyla Venn smiled.
She was the new girl who had arrived on Monday with perfect plaits, silent trainers and a pencil case organised by shade. She had sat with the super nice girls, laughed at the popular boys’ impressions of Mr Tafadar, and somehow never answered a single question about where she had come from.
Now she looked straight up at the cameras and whispered, "I’m in position."
Holly heard her. So did Orla.
"Nyla?" Orla said.
Nyla’s smile stayed lovely and wrong. "I was sent to make sure one name is never registered at all."
Mara stepped back. Leo moved in front of her, map-lines blazing. "Who sent you?"
Nyla tapped the side of her neck. A tiny silver number glowed there: 8:13.
"Correction did," she said.
The clock above the board crashed forward. Three minutes vanished in one tick.
The radios whispered, "One."
Mr Tafadar blew his whistle so hard everyone flinched. "Nobody erases a child during my registration."
Holly jammed her Bone Key into Orla’s. The two keys formed a circle, black and white, and the floor under Mara’s shoes lit up with a blank square.
Nyla raised her hand to the cameras.
"Begin deletion," she whispered.
