I'm glad you mentioned the inadvertent spelling change to Taq's name... I'm so tired by this point that I thought I was hallucinating. Also, I'm not going back and changing the spelling in my crit, because I'm lazy.
'When the Academy had first been built... Tak’s office was on the second floor..." The beginning of the paragraph I quoted seems a bit infodumpy, but it's a pretty minor infraction as far as infodumps go. You cuold probably smooth out this transition simply by switching parts of this paragraph around; describing the revelent bits of the Academy's engineering after you've established that Tak's office is on the second floor and that he's going there, etc.
"The more he saw of this woman, the more he finally understood Meles’ need to prove himself." Tak's thought, but I'm not sure it really needs to be said.
"But the interview with Meles’ mother, his realization of an ingrained distaste for questioning authority, the Council’s reaction to the information that the Junction might be active, as well as their total disregard for the health of his students, the shock that Tolan had collaborated with the Council to keep the Boundary up- taken individually these things would have had little effect on him, but combined they irrevocably changed his worldview." A couple of things here; I had a bit of trouble keeping up with all the clauses in this sentence, and the last bit, where Tak comes right out and says that his worldview has been irrevocably changed, seems a bit off.
Brita leaves the room with this line: "'Mothers,' and left it at that." You have a scene break after it. I don't think you need one.
Juana says, "I made them promise to at least leave us a note with basic information- where they had gone..." The "basic information" part sounds stilted and awkward. The rest of ths line is fine, though.
"...he said hastily as [Juana] began to sway against her support..." Her support? Is she leaning against something? Or did you mean to say “his” support, meaning Tolan’s, and I missed it?
Since I'm out of things to say (miracles do happen) I'm just going to go through the other comments and quote them so it looks like I'm actually doing my job.
I think ApocRK is right--there could be a greater sense of urgency in this chapter. And helplessness, maybe. It's fine that Tolan and Taq don't know how to help the others--at least for now--but there should be a great deal of frustration and fear that comes with that.
Frog quoted this line, "I am pleased to meet you, madam...Meles is an excellent student, I’m very…", saying that it seemed off, and that he would more likely say something about Meles's condition. I disagree. It's an awkward, uncomfortable situation, one that he's not going to know how to deal with, so I can't blame him for beating around the bush. Aside from which, it's not exactly a good way to greet someone when you don't know them, don't know what they know, and have no way of guessing what their reaction will be.
Frog also brought up whether we need two "mother freakout scenes", and my answer is, well... maybe. What the two different scenes do so far as I'm concerned, is not just show us the family freakout scene, since the families ought freak out, but it establishes two very different characters. I would argue that we
need to see Meles's mother, as we need to see what's driving him (though you can probably take out some of the lines talking about how horrible she is, or how she obviously drives Meles to be the way he is; we get it). And the contrast between Meles's mother and Juana is nice. But... do we need it? The contrast is already kind of implied, since we know that Juana makes the twins leave her a note. (Um, that was in this version somewhere, wasn't it?)
My instinct is still to keep it. I think it's nice to see the contrast made explicit (though again, you could probably cut some details here--we already know that Juana makes her sons leave a note) and the details you included in this scene were nice. More than that, you're taking her to be with the boys. I don't know if this is going to be plot-important--right now, I actually have the sense that it's not--but since I don't know yet, I'm reserving judgement. Besides, even if it doesn't end up hugely impacting the plot, having the mother there could do a lot to add the urgency and the tension that people are missing. Of course, then you have to be careful that you're not just using her as a cheap device to maintain tension; she'd have to have some sort of purpose, even a minor one.
Then again, if you particularly want her in the infirmary I suppose you could just have Tolan drag her there after she's collapsed or whatever. Decisions, decisions...
