The bed in Room 413 was too soft.
Rhea lay on her side, eyes open in the dim red glow blinking above the door. Sleep wouldn't come. The sheets smelled like lavender, like some algorithm had decided what comfort meant but comfort was a foreign concept now.
She pressed her hand to her chest, steadying her breath, but the ache only grew. She had spent the day in silence, wandering her quadrant's cold halls, nodding when expected, speaking as little as possible. They hadn't said what would come next. Orientation? Classes? Surveillance drills? It didn't matter. None of it felt real.
But Ava did.
Her little sister's face haunted the inside of her eyelids. Big brown eyes always searching, always waiting for Rhea to come home. Eleven years old and already older than she should've had to be.
The last time Rhea saw her, Ava was half-asleep on the couch, arms wrapped around the ratty stuffed fox she never went anywhere without. Rhea had kissed her forehead and whispered she'd be back soon, that everything was going to be okay. A lie. She hadn't even left a note.
Rhea swallowed hard, throat tight.
She'd thought leaving was the only option. That maybe, just maybe, the Elaris Institute would give her a chance to claw out of the life they were trapped in. That if she could just get through this, whatever this was, she could build something better. Enough money. Enough power. Enough distance from the hellhole foster system that had swallowed them whole.
But tonight, under the vaulted ceilings and electronic eyes of a school that felt more like a prison, Rhea questioned everything.
Her foster parents had never cared. Cold meals, colder silences, and an unspoken rule to stay invisible. The only time Rhea was acknowledged was when a caseworker came. Fake smiles. Forced warmth. The minute the door shut, it was back to surviving.
So she became top of her class. She worked nights. She lied to social workers. She kept Ava out of the system the only way she knew how, by staying. By protecting her.
And now, she was gone.
Ava didn't even know where.
Rhea sat up in bed, her breath fogging the air. The red dot above the door blinked once, slow, deliberate. Watching.
She whispered so low it wouldn't even reach the walls: "I'm sorry, Ava. I'm so, so sorry."
The silence felt like judgment.
She got up, moved to the desk. There was no pen, no paper. Just a screen embedded in the wood, dark and inactive. She touched it, nothing. A machine that decided when she could speak.
Her hand curled into a fist. This wasn't a school. This was a machine, and she was a gear, slotted in by accident… or design.
Someone changed the list.
Julius's words replayed in her mind. You weren't supposed to be here.
Then who was?
She stood at the window. There were no curtains. Just reinforced glass and endless fog curling around the Gothic towers beyond. Somewhere out there, other students were lying awake in identical rooms, wondering who was watching and why they'd been chosen.
But only Rhea, as far as she knew, didn't belong.
And maybe that was her only power.