Gabriel
Later that afternoon, I was back inside the Axiom Ward site.
The strange thing about the place was that every day I entered it, something new seemed to exist.
Yesterday, three drones had been suspended above the eastern workstation.
Today there were seven.
A mechanical arm I hadn't seen before was disassembling some rifle behind glass.
Someone had apparently mounted a prototype helmet to some rig and filled the visor with enough warning messages to suggest the helmet actively hated whoever was supposed to wear it.
My current problem was significantly smaller.
A black handle rested in my hand.
Caspian called it an Arcsaber.
Calling it a baton would seem misleading.
When inactive, it was about the size of a heavy flashlight. When I pressed the activation switch, a narrow conductive spine extended from the housing, surrounded by a rigid pale field that formed into something resembling a saber.
It wasn't designed to slice through everything, thankfully.
The field had settings.
Low output turned it into a reinforced impact weapon capable of delivering controlled electrical shock. Medium output could heat and shear through light materials. High output was intended for breaching and couldn't be sustained very long without cooking the power cell.
Because I was holding it personally, the force behind the weapon still originated through my movement. The technology simply helped shape what that movement could accomplish.
I activated it.
Vrmmm.
The pale edge formed.
The thing is, something about it felt familiar. That had been bothering me all afternoon because I had never trained with one.
I'd used knives, firearms, batons, nothing like this. And yet every time I raised it, my wrist seemed to understand where the balance point should be before my mind did.
I adjusted my grip, stepped, cut diagonally, thrust, turned. The movements always came out smoother than they had any right to.
I stopped and stared at the weapon.
Why do I know how to do that?
I tried the sequence again to get the same result.
It wasn't perfect, but it felt disturbingly natural, like remembering something I had never learned.
Across the room, Caspian cursed loudly.
I deactivated the saber.
That was unusual enough to get my attention.
Saph was standing beside him at one of the main workstations, staring down at a prototype glove covered in thin metallic sensor channels.
A small drone hovered about ten feet away.
"Again." Caspian put the glove on.
"Ready." Saph tapped something on the workstation.
Caspian raised his palm, and the drone lifted. He moved his hand right, and the drone started moving right, then immediately shut off. At the same moment, a compact targeting module on another table activated. A red light flashed somewhere else. Then that turned off too. The drone suddenly restarted. And rose upward again.
Caspian hadn't moved, but the drone had. It lifted exactly the way he wanted, drifted to the right for half a second, then suddenly shut itself off while a completely unrelated targeting module across the room flashed alive. A moment later, the drone came back online and repeated the original upward motion as though the system had somehow remembered the wrong part of the command.
Caspian stared at it, then slowly lowered his hand. "Okay… why did it repeat the first command?"
Saph was already leaning toward the diagnostic display, eyes moving over the data. "Cached vector."
"But we cleared it."
"Yeah, and it came back."
"That doesn't mean anything."
Saph glanced sideways at him. "Well, it means it came back."
Caspian let out a long breath through his nose and pulled the prototype glove off. Different indicator lights along the fingers flickered independently, one sensor near the wrist flashed twice, and then the entire glove went dark at once. He stared at it for another second before holding it out toward one of the nearby researchers.
"Alright, get Patel over here. Actually, bring anyone working network control too."
Within a few minutes, one researcher had become four, and all of them were crowded around the same workstation, disagreeing with each other in increasingly technical language. I wandered closer, mostly out of curiosity, but the screen may as well have been written in a different language. There were rows of code, signal diagrams, device identifiers, motion vectors, adaptive-response graphs, and branching network maps layered on top of one another. I understood enough to know that the glove was supposed to let the wearer control nearby equipment through hand movements, but beyond that, I was completely useless.
Caspian pointed at one section of the network map. "Look, the selector is correct. The problem can't be there."
One of the researchers shook her head. "No, it has to be somewhere around target assignment, because it keeps jumping between nodes."
"But that's happening because the drone is dropping."
"No, the drone drops after the reassignment. That's the problem."
Saph tapped another part of the screen with one finger. "Well, then telemetry is feeding back into the command layer."
Caspian looked at her immediately. "We isolated telemetry yesterday."
"Apparently not very well."
Another researcher leaned closer to the display. "If we hard-lock every device address, the latency nearly doubles."
"Yeah, but if we don't," Caspian replied, rubbing his forehead, "then the wearer points at a drone and accidentally opens a door or activates somebody's baton. I'd rather have delay than equipment developing free will."
I looked from the drone to the glove, then back to the diagnostic display. I understood maybe six words out of the entire discussion, but I knew somebody who would probably understand all of it, or at least annoy everyone until he did.
"Caspian."
He didn't look away from the screen. "Yeah?"
"I think I know somebody who might be able to help."
That finally made him turn. "You know a systems engineer?"
"No."
"A programmer?"
I hesitated. "Uh… not professionally."
Caspian slowly removed his glasses and stared at me. "Cain."
"Cadet Elias Cross."
His expression went completely blank. "Your roommate?"
"Yeah."
"The loud guy?"
I considered defending Elias, but there really wasn't much point. "...Yeah."
"No."
"You haven't even met him."
"I've heard him."
"Okay, but that's not the same thing."
"For him, I think it might be."
Before I could argue further, Saph spoke without taking her eyes off the display. "Bring him."
Caspian immediately turned toward her. "Saph."
"If he's useless, we'll send him back."
"He doesn't have Ward clearance."
"Then give him temporary clearance."
"Saph."
She finally looked up at him. "Caspian, you've been staring at that same error for four hours."
He stared back at her for a second, clearly trying to think of something to say, but eventually he just put his glasses back on.
Saph looked toward me instead. "Bring him tomorrow, you two alone."
"Alright."
"And, well, staying afterward is his choice. Don't drag him into something he doesn't want."
"Understood."
Caspian sighed and turned back toward the workstation. "Fine, but if he touches anything he isn't told to touch, he's gone."
From behind him, Saph added, "You touch things you're not supposed to touch."
Caspian looked over his shoulder. "Yeah, because I work here."
Saph shrugged. "So might he."
The look on Caspian's face told me he immediately regretted continuing that conversation, so I went back to the arcsaber before either of them changed their minds.
***
When I got back to the dorm that evening, Elias was lying sideways across the couch with one leg hanging over the armrest, scrolling through short videos on his phone. Every few seconds he would laugh, swipe, then laugh again like he was conducting some private experiment in wasting time. I sat down beside him and watched for a moment.
He didn't look over. "What'sup?"
"Nothing."
"You're watching me."
"Yeah."
That made him lower his phone slightly. "Okay, why?"
"Well, I have an opportunity for you."
"No."
I blinked. "I haven't even told you what it is."
"Yeah, and I don't want to"
"You might."
"Nope."
"Elias."
He went back to scrolling. "I know how your opportunities work."
"You really don't."
"They involve effort."
"Well… yes."
"Then no."
"You haven't even heard me out."
He sighed dramatically and let the phone rest against his chest. "Does it involve waking up earlier than I already have to?"
"Eight."
"Nooooo."
He stretched the word until I seriously considered throwing his phone across the room.
"You already wake up before eight."
"Not willingly."
"You complain when you wake up at ten."
"Okay, but that's different."
"How?"
"Emotionally."
I stared at him while he went right back to scrolling. After a few seconds, I realized he was genuinely going to make me work for this.
"Fine," he finally said. "What's the thing?"
"There's a division inside the academy called the Axiom Ward."
His thumb stopped moving for maybe half a second, then resumed.
"And?"
"Well, they work with advanced technology, specialized equipment, prototype systems, things like that."
"No."
"You literally build things for fun."
"Yeah, when I feel like it."
"They have a device they can't fix."
"Sounds like a them problem."
"I already told them you probably could."
His head slowly turned toward me. "You volunteered me?"
"I recommended you."
"Without asking?"
"Yes."
"Gabriel."
"You'd be useful."
"I don't want to be useful."
"Yes, you do."
"No, I really don't. I want to pass my classes, graduate, join the resistance, and perform the absolute minimum amount of additional labor required to continue being alive."
I stared at him. "That is the saddest ambition I've ever heard."
"It's peaceful."
I leaned back against the couch. "They have drones."
No response.
"Prototype combat systems."
Still nothing.
"Specialized armor."
His eyes shifted.
I caught it immediately.
"You're interested."
"No."
"But you reacted."
"My eye itched."
"Elias."
He groaned and threw his head back. "Do I have to?"
"No."
"Good."
"But I think you'd regret not seeing it."
He dropped the phone onto his chest again and stared at the ceiling. "Whyyyyyy?"
"Well, because you're good at technology."
"Yeah, I know."
"Now that sounded arrogant."
"It's only arrogance if I'm wrong."
I hated when he accidentally made good points, so I tried another approach. "They specifically said staying would be your choice."
Elias turned his head toward me. "So I can go there, look around, and leave?"
"That is if they don't throw you out first."
"Okay, now that sounds more attractive."
"So, come tomorrow?"
"No."
I stared at him, and he stared back for a good five seconds before the silence stretched closer to ten. He wasn't joking. He was actually going to refuse because it sounded like extra work.
I sighed. "I'll cook for you afterward."
His entire posture changed.
"What?"
"I'll make dinner."
"What kind?"
"Whatever you want."
His phone disappeared into his pocket so quickly it was almost insulting. "You should've opened with that."
I narrowed my eyes. "What do you want?"
He immediately listed something involving chicken, noodles, fried rice, vegetables, and a sauce I had never heard of.
I stared at him. "Elias, that's three different meals."
"Well, then I'm not going."
"You're blackmailing me."
"You initiated negotiations."
"You are awful."
He held out his hand with the most innocent smile possible. "Eight o'clock?"
I looked at his hand, then at him. "Eight."
We shook on it.
I had just purchased an engineer with dinner.
***
The following morning, Elias stood beside me outside the Axiom Ward blast doors, looking much less enthusiastic than he had the night before when food was part of the deal. He stared up at the reinforced entrance and frowned.
"So this is where you disappear every day?"
"Sometimes."
"Why does the door look like it can survive a missile?"
"I haven't asked."
"Well, you should."
The doors opened, and the second we stepped inside, Elias stopped talking.
That was how I knew I had won.
His eyes moved from one side of the Ward to the other, taking in the suspended drones, the suit frames, mechanical testing rigs, armor components, transparent displays, weapon benches, fabrication stations, and half-finished prototypes scattered throughout the space. The whole place looked like somebody had taken technology from thirty years in the future and hidden it beneath a school.
I let him stare for a few seconds before saying, "You're quiet."
He blinked. "...You didn't tell me it looked like this."
"You said you weren't interested."
"Yeah, well, I was lying."
"I know."
Saph appeared beside us so quietly that Elias nearly jumped.
She looked him up and down. "Cross?"
"Uh, yeah."
"Come."
That was it. No greeting, no introduction, just one word before she turned and started walking away.
Elias watched her for a second, then looked at me. "...Is everybody here like that?"
"No."
"Good."
"This guy Caspian is worse."
"Oh."
We followed.
Caspian was already standing beside yesterday's workstation, with the glove on the table, the drone beside it, and the diagnostic display running. He looked at Elias first, then at me.
"Cadet Cain says you're useful."
Elias immediately looked offended. "You said useful?"
I shrugged. "Would you prefer gifted?"
He thought about it for a second. "...Continue."
Caspian pointed toward the entire setup. "Alright, tell me what's wrong."
Elias stared at the glove, then at the drone, then at the screen. "With what?"
"This."
"What is 'this'?"
"The problem."
"Well, what is the device supposed to do?"
Caspian folded his arms. "Figure that out first."
Elias looked at me. I shrugged again.
"You wanted to leave."
"Yeah, and I still might."
For the first ten minutes, Elias looked completely lost, which made me more nervous than I wanted to admit. He rotated the glove in his hands, inspected the sensors, asked what half the components did, activated the drone once and watched it move before immediately shutting itself off, then reset the whole system and tried again repetitively. This time another nearby device responded instead. Elias frowned, asked for the command log, and the second Caspian handed it over, he stopped joking.
That was when I knew he had actually started thinking.
He pulled a chair closer and began scrolling through the log, fast at first, then slower as he doubled back through certain sections. After a minute, he pointed at one line and looked to Caspian, who was sitting beside him with his legs crossed and propped on the desk.
"Okay, why does this value keep changing every time the glove moves?"
Caspian leaned over. "Adaptive calibration."
"Yeah, but why?"
"Different users move differently."
"Okay, sure." Elias scrolled farther. "Then why is the drone talking back through the same route?"
"Telemetry."
"Why?"
"Because we need telemetry."
Elias looked up at him. "Yeah, but not there, you don't."
Caspian's expression shifted slightly. "What do you mean?"
Elias pointed between two sections of the code. "The glove gives a movement command, the network picks a target, then the target reports movement data back, right?"
"Yes."
"And your adaptive system sees that movement report."
"Yes."
"And then it learns from it."
Caspian paused.
Elias tapped the screen with one finger. "So your network is listening to itself."
One of the nearby researchers stopped what she was doing and looked over.
Elias kept going. "And your device IDs aren't permanent either."
"They're dynamically assigned."
"Yeah, that's horrible."
Caspian frowned. "No, it isn't."
"It is when the same system deciding what my hand means is also deciding which machine exists where."
"It reduces network congestion."
"Sure, and occasionally makes your saber think it's a drone."
Caspian opened his mouth, seemed to reconsider whatever he was about to say, then closed it again.
Elias gave him a small smile. "Yeah. That's what I thought."
He got to work after that, and about twenty minutes later, half the interface looked different. I still had no idea what he had actually changed, but from listening to him argue with Caspian, I gathered that he had separated telemetry from gesture input, locked controller identity before allowing device assignment, and prevented the adaptive classifier from rewriting active gesture definitions in the middle of a command sequence.
Caspian put the glove on and raised his palm. The drone rose smoothly. He swiped, and this time it moved without turning off or accidentally activating something else. He made another gesture, and the drone stopped exactly where it was supposed to.
Elias crossed his arms. "Fixed."
Caspian tried another gesture, then another, and both worked perfectly. "You actually fixed it."
"Did you expect me not to?"
"Yes."
Elias nodded. "Fair."
Then he held out his hand. "Okay, can I try?"
Caspian hesitated before pulling the glove off. "Don't break anything."
"No promises."
"Then no."
"Okay, okay, I promise."
Caspian handed it over.
Elias slipped the glove on, and thin lines along the material lit as the system recognized him. He raised his hand and the drone lifted, rolled his wrist, and it rolled with him, then pushed forward, and he watched it move across the room. When he lowered his arm, the drone stayed suspended exactly where he left it.
"Oh, that's sick," Elias said.
He made another gesture, and the drone darted sideways before stopping, rotating, then making a complete circle around him.
Caspian watched the movement carefully. "Alright, you've established control."
Elias wasn't listening anymore.
His eyes had moved toward me, or more specifically, toward the arcsaber in my hand.
I frowned. "No."
His grin widened.
"Elias."
"Relax."
"Don't."
He raised his hand.
I felt the saber tug.
"What—"
It ripped out of my fingers and flew across the room.
"Hey!"
Elias caught it cleanly, and his eyes widened with absolute delight. "Oh, that's sick!"
"Give that back."
He laughed. "Did you see that?"
"Yes, Elias, I was holding it."
Saph had stopped watching the weapon and started watching him instead.
Elias eventually handed the saber back and pulled the glove off. "Okay, okay, I'm done."
He set the glove on the table, but while still looking at the saber in my hand, he repeated the pulling gesture without thinking.
The saber twitched, and the room went quiet. I looked down at it.
Elias looked at his bare hand.
Caspian slowly turned toward the glove sitting on the table. "...Do that again."
Elias raised two fingers, and the saber lifted slightly. Caspian's expression went completely blank.
Elias slowly turned toward the drone and moved his hand. The drone followed. No glove, or controller, and no physical interface at all.
"What did you do?" Caspian asked.
Elias looked genuinely confused. "I fixed it?"
"That is not fixing it."
"Well, it works."
"It shouldn't work through you."
Saph walked closer and activated a scanner, and streams of information rolled across the display as she watched the readings. After a few seconds, she looked at Elias, then pointed toward the network visualization.
"Current signature."
Caspian looked over her shoulder.
The prototype glove had been calibrated while Elias was naturally manipulating the electrical and electromagnetic currents passing through it. Somewhere in the process, the system had started tying itself to his bioelectric rhythm, spiritual-current signature, and the electromagnetic disturbances his body produced, until the local network no longer treated the glove as the true controller, but treated Elias himself as the authentication source.
Caspian stared at the display. "So instead of teaching the glove how to control the devices…"
Saph finished the thought for him. "He taught the devices to recognize him."
Elias looked down at his hand and slowly smiled. "So, theoretically—"
Caspian pointed at him immediately. "No."
"I didn't even say anything."
"No."
"But theoretically—"
"Still no."
Saph glanced at Caspian. "He stays?"
Caspian rubbed his forehead. "He chooses whether he stays."
Then he looked directly at Elias. "Look, this isn't recreational. If you stay, it means additional training, additional hours, confidentiality, technical assessments, and failure standards."
Elias had been smiling until one phrase reached him.
"Wait, additional hours?"
"Yes."
"How many?"
"Depends."
Elias slowly turned toward me. "You owe me dinner for the rest of the semester."
"Hey, that was not the agreement."
"But I have become one with the building because of you."
"You've only been here thirty minutes."
"Exactly."
Caspian sighed and looked between us. "Okay, do you want access or not?"
Elias glanced around the Ward again, at the drones, the equipment, then at his own bare hand. He tried very hard to look undecided, but the answer was painfully obvious.
"...Yeah."
Caspian nodded. "Alright, then congratulations. Temporary auxiliary access to the Axiom Ward. We decide later whether you keep it."
Elias immediately looked toward one of the suspended drones. "So, can I—"
"No."
He turned toward Saph instead.
She considered it for a second. "Later."
Elias smiled.
I had definitely created a problem.
***
By the time we reached combat class later that day, both of us had agreed that nobody needed to know where we had been. Nadia still noticed the moment we arrived together.
"Where were you two?"
"Studying," I said.
She narrowed her eyes. "Together?"
"Yes."
Elias nodded solemnly. "Yeah, and he taught me absolutely nothing."
Nadia looked at me, then back at him. "That part I don't believe."
Before she could ask anything else, our instructor stepped into the middle of the training floor, and conversations around the room gradually died down. There were 32 cadets in this particular combat block, most of whom I barely knew. A handful of faces were familiar from orientation or passing periods, one or two I recognized from the banquet crowd, and the rest were just names I hadn't bothered learning yet.
The instructor tucked his tablet beneath one arm. "Alright, that's enough fundamentals. You've already received your institutional Echelon placements, and those rankings tell us how prepared you are overall across physical, academic, and spiritual categories."
My mood sank immediately.
Cinder I. Wonderful.
A large digital board activated behind him, displaying thirty empty slots with numbers descending the side.
"But this ranking is different," he continued. "This ladder belongs only to this combat block, and it measures what you can actually do when the playing field is stripped down."
Several cadets leaned forward.
"Today, there will be no spiritual reinforcement, and no external augmentation. You'll be judged on technique, physical conditioning, reaction, judgment, adaptability, pain resistance, and how well you perform once someone starts hitting back."
Now he had my attention.
Names began populating the board, including mine.
The instructor looked around the room as the final slots loaded. "By the end of this evaluation, every cadet here will have a position, and those positions will determine who starts advanced drills first, who gets demonstration privileges, and which matchups I use going forward."
A few people started exchanging looks.
Then the instructor turned toward the center mat and tapped the screen on his tablet.
The board shuffled.
One name dropped into the lowest slot.
Then another name appeared beside it under the heading CHALLENGER.
The instructor looked toward both cadets.
"Well? Get up. We're building the ladder from the bottom."
Around the room, people immediately started shifting in their seats, suddenly much more scared than they had been thirty seconds earlier.
I glanced at my own name farther up the waiting list and flexed my fingers.
No spirit energy meant nobody here could hide behind raw output or reinforcement, but it also meant I couldn't use any excuse when my turn came.
The first challenger stepped onto the mat, the timer above the board lit up, and the instructor raised one hand.
"Three minutes. Winner moves up."
Then he dropped it.