"Power is quiet. It doesn't scream. It watches."
[Three Days Before Transfer – Adewale Estate, Sovereign Heights]
The walls were soundproof. The guards were silent. The sky outside was blue and irrelevant.
Naomi sat at a long, white conference table inside a glass-walled room forty floors above the real world. Her father was across from her, sipping ginger tea like every word he said wasn't measured in stock prices and body counts.
"You'll be transferring to Kingsvale Institute," he said without preamble.
She raised an eyebrow. "The pleb school?"
He didn't smile.
"You're not going there to compete. You're going to confirm a theory."
Naomi leaned back. "What theory?"
"There's a ghost in their system. A 'student' that doesn't exist in any military, government, or corporate records. But he's there. Cameras see him. People interact with him. Yet no trace of him appears in the surveillance grid."
Naomi's fingers tensed.
"Someone who bypasses the Ascendant Network?" she asked.
Her father nodded.
"If that's true, he's either an experimental prototype, a rogue AI projection, or a system error. All of which are dangerous."
Naomi's pulse quickened—but her expression didn't flinch.
"Name?"
"Elijah Cole."
[Present Day – Kingsvale Institute, Naomi's Dorm, 2:11 AM]
Naomi couldn't sleep.
Elijah's face haunted her—but not for the reasons people usually haunted her.
He wasn't just strong.
He was wrong.
She pulled up the local surveillance log from earlier that afternoon. The gym fight. Her sparring match with him. He'd dodged her feints perfectly one second… and sluggishly the next. Like he was recalibrating. Rewriting.
She paused the feed. Rewound it. Zoomed in.
In one frame—just one—his iris changed color.
Only for a millisecond.
Then it was back to normal.
No human does that.
Not without augmentation.
She sent a ping to her private network.
"Begin full scrape on Elijah Cole. Kingsvale records. Local hospital logs. Biometric traces. DroneNode backups. Find his original file."
The response came ten seconds later:
"Confirmed. Subject 'Elijah Cole' was registered two months ago. Before that—no national ID, no med history, no net trace. Like he dropped out of the sky."
Naomi exhaled slowly.
"So you're not just a fighter. You're a glitch."
[Flashback – Naomi, Age 10]
She'd watched her older brother die.
Not in war. Not in battle.
But in the Selection Arena, trying to qualify for the Ascendant Program.
He'd bled out in front of a laughing crowd while the cameras zoomed in on his twitching body.
He had strength. Discipline. Honor.
None of it mattered.
He wasn't exceptional enough.
That day, Naomi stopped believing in fairness.
Only dominance mattered.
And only anomalies won.
[Present – Naomi's Thoughts on Elijah]
Elijah Cole was an anomaly.
He didn't climb the ladder. He appeared halfway up it.
The way people followed him in the halls. How he seemed to manipulate presence itself. The fact that even the school's reputation metric couldn't fully analyze him.
He was what her father called a "Black Cage Variable"—something that doesn't obey the rules but reshapes them.
And she didn't fear variables.
She studied them.
Then she controlled them.
[Message to Father – Confidential]
FROM: Naomi Adewale
TO: Adewale Security Node
SUBJECT: Elijah Cole
Update: Subject confirmed as non-normal. Unregistered origin. Combat potential ranks between A- and S-tier depending on behavioral state. No consistent weakness yet identified.
Recommendation: DO NOT ENGAGE WITH FORCE. Observe and isolate. Consider grooming for acquisition.
Personal Analysis: He is a mirror—broken on purpose. But mirrors reflect the truth. And I want to know what he sees when he looks at me.
[ – Naomi, Alone in Her Dorm]
She stood in front of her mirror, eyes narrowing at her reflection.
Elijah Cole.You're not from this world.
But you're in my world now.
And in here, only two things survive—gods and monsters.
And she wasn't planning on being either.
She was planning on becoming both.