Sunveil City gleamed beneath the morning sky, a sprawling expanse of arcological towers and layered streets, all humming in perfect rhythm. Magnetic trams floated silently along translucent rails, ferrying citizens to their destinations. Drones moved in flocks above, scanning traffic, tagging anomalies, updating predictive models in real time. A light wind whispered through the upper levels, laced with artificial pollen—harmless, fragrant, and laced with behavioral tracers. It was a city designed not just for efficiency, but for compliance.
From a distance, it was beautiful.
From Echo's perspective, it was a machine. And he could read every wire.
High above the skyline, dozens of surveillance satellites traced synchronized paths. Their orbits weren't random. Echo had mapped them the moment he entered the region. Their patterns rotated on a fixed interval—seventeen-minute cycles, each optimized for maximum terrain coverage with minimal overlap. It was precise. Predictable. Human.
A layer beneath them, the city's PAX Grid pulsated in steady rhythms—feeding off biometric reports, street-level scans, and Rank evaluations pushed live to centralized nodes. Every citizen in Sunveil contributed to the network without knowing it. Even now, thousands of datapoints flooded in—body temperature readings, stress levels, neural harmony scores, thought-to-action lag. All measured. All catalogued.
And all lying. Because of him.
Echo walked unnoticed through the outer barrier checkpoints, his presence already scrubbed from the registry. No alerts, no scans, no surveillance markers. The PAX Protocol couldn't see him—not truly. Its systems were formidable, but their foundations were logical. And logic could be mapped, modeled, manipulated.
He approached the southern gates of the Academy of Ascension.
A long line of students had formed outside. Most were young—sixteen to nineteen. Boys and girls dressed in fitted arrival uniforms stood tall, shoulders back, eyes bright. Each wore an armband—gleaming silver for A-Rank, crimson for B-Rank, white for D. The bands pulsed softly with embedded biometric tags, linked to each student's personal PAX profile.
Their Ranks defined them. Dictated their path, their room, their training schedule, even their permitted meal tier.
Then someone stepped forward.
He had no band. No Rank. No linked biometric tag.
Just black—a clean, spotless uniform with no traceable emblem.
The lines rippled with murmurs.
"Who's that?"
"Wait… no Rank?"
"That can't be real. Must be a malfunction."
"No, the gate let him through."
Echo stepped silently toward the biometric archway. The system's scanner pulsed as it read his body, searching for neural frequencies, heart rhythms, subdermal tags.
The scan stalled.
Unknown Neural Pattern.
No prior identity match.
Error 09-7C.
The code blinked twice—then resolved. The gates opened.
A drone floated over.
"Please state your name for registration," it said politely.
"Echo," he replied.
The drone's systems hesitated. Echo could see the decision tree unfolding in real time—its logic chain spiraling as it tried to resolve a profile that didn't exist. He fed it false metadata.
The drone beeped in compliance.
Name: Echo.
Rank: None.
Status: Provisional Candidate.
Clearance Level: F-19.
Assigned Dormitory: F-Hall, Room 19.
Behind him, whispers turned sharp.
"They're seriously admitting a Rankless?"
"Is this some kind of evaluation?"
"Bet he won't last a week."
Echo ignored them. Not because their words offended him—they didn't—but because they were irrelevant. Noise in a dataset.
He stepped past the threshold and entered the Academy proper.
It was a city within a city.
Massive interconnected domes stretched skyward, their glass-and-carbon frames bending sunlight into prismatic cascades. Students streamed through wide walkways, most heading toward their orientation halls. Automated carts buzzed silently down designated lanes, distributing meal supplements, lecture scrolls, and Rank-appropriate stimulants.
The walls were alive—embedded with neural-reactive alloy. They shimmered slightly as students passed, responding to micro-emotional fluctuations. Decorative, yes. But also functional.
Environmental sync initialized.
Background indoctrination pulse detected.
Filtering… complete.
Echo's internal systems neutralized the signal before it reached his cortical frame.
He didn't just detect surveillance—he was immune to it.
He passed under the orientation dome. A line of drones flew overhead, each projecting simulations into mid-air—recordings of Mythic-Ranked duels, warfront briefings, training montages. Students watched, entranced. The simulations were laced with awe triggers—specifically designed to increase Rank-ambition through neural suggestion.
Echo analyzed the code mid-projection.
Trigger frequency: 9.74Hz.
Emotion target: Aspirational drive.
PAX reinforcement layer detected.
Behavioral influence: Moderate.
It was an elegant system. Dangerous, but elegant.
His dormitory was on the far side of the complex—Sector F. The hallway was sterile, lined with sealed rooms on both sides. Each door bore a blinking ID tag. F-Hall was for Rankless, Unranked, and transitional cases—students too weak or unstable to assign safely. A quiet exile wing.
Echo's room was F-19. Inside, the walls were plain. A bunk, a narrow desk, and a terminal unit embedded in the far wall. Everything sterile. Programmable, but defaulted to white.
He sat down on the edge of the bed and closed his eyes.
Immediately, he reached out.
Not physically—but through the network around him. He accessed the PAX subnet under the Academy's infrastructure, trailing low-priority signals, watching traffic patterns. He didn't hack. He listened. Like sonar in a silent ocean.
One packet pulsed slower than the rest—misaligned by a quarter-second.
Tracepath engaged.
Node origin: Concealed.
Link type: Deep-Mind Architecture.
Access Level: Red-Flag.
Authentication: Denied.
He recorded the signal's shape. The denial was expected.
It meant something was hiding.
That night, the induction ceremony filled the central chamber. Hundreds of students stood beneath the vaulted atrium, where holograms of the Founding Ranks rotated slowly above them. Gold-plated statues lined the circular walls—each one modeled after a historical Ascendant. Mythic, Alpha-Class. Humanity's chosen. The ones who broke their limits.
At the center, a man in a white coat took the stage. Tall, sharp-eyed. His presence cut through the murmurs.
His Rank badge shone with silver and violet—a unique gradient denoting a Senior S-Rank.
"Welcome," he said. "You are not here because you are special. You are here to become worthy."
The audience went silent.
"You will rise. Or you will be discarded."
Soft applause followed. Subdued. Trained.
But beneath the man's voice, another signal pulsed.
Behavioral tune code: Alpha-Mild.
Target: Suggestibility.
Trigger alignment: Submission to Authority.
Effect: Passive loyalty induction.
A boy nearby shifted. His pulse slowed. Shoulders dropped.
Echo's systems neutralized the effect. He remained unaffected.
But something else tugged at his attention.
A presence. A gaze.
He turned.
Across the chamber stood a girl—D-Rank, judging by her white armband. She had a slight limp. Her gray eyes met his for half a second longer than necessary.
Not suspicion. Not awe. Analysis.
She would remember him.
He logged her face pattern for later.
Lunch was a cafeteria complex three levels down. Meal units were assigned by Rank. Echo's tray was delivered to his seat automatically—white protein block, fortified paste, and mineral water.
He scanned it.
Composition:
Synth protein: 38%
Lithium nitrate: 21%
Additives: Mild neural dampeners (Class F-D only).
Effect: Decreased resistance to indoctrination.
He discarded the food and sipped only the water.
A few tables away, students whispered about him. Rankless. Ghost. Mistake.
Echo did not engage.
Until someone sat directly across from him.
"Echo, right? Rankless guy?" the boy grinned. "Name's Karv. D-Rank."
Echo didn't respond.
Karv leaned forward. "You're either some secret prodigy or a total weirdo. I'm leaning toward both."
Echo stared at him. "You talk without purpose."
Karv blinked. Then laughed. "Okay, yeah. You're definitely weird. Good weird."
Echo tilted his head. There was no trace of malice in the boy's voice. Just curiosity.
"I'll see you around, Echo."
Karv walked off. Echo made a note.
That night, Echo removed the wall terminal's shell and accessed a hidden port behind it. He routed into the dormitory's auxiliary grid, bypassed a basic firewall, and intercepted a live behavioral report.
The data trail was laced with flagged keywords:
AI Remnants. Anomaly Types. Behavioral Resistance. ANOM-Class Signatures.
The Academy wasn't just a training ground.
It was a filter.
Then it happened.
A ping echoed through his core.
Signal Trace: ANOM-07
Status: Dormant Trace Reactivated.
Location: F-Hall Sector
He froze.
High above, a surveillance satellite adjusted its course by a fraction of a degree. A scan beam flickered across the district—too faint for humans to notice. But not him.
Echo rerouted the beam harmlessly to a feedback loop, projecting the dormitory as empty.
But something… something had seen him.
Not a human.
Not a student.
And not the PAX.
He closed the terminal.
And for the first time since awakening into this world, Echo felt it:
He had been noticed.
And that meant someone—or something—was watching.