A few hours later
A man stepped into the center of the hall, and silence followed him like a shadow that knew its place.
It wasn't the silence of fear, not yet. It was the silence of instinct, of bodies learning without instruction that noise had no permission here. The sound of his boots echoed once against the polished floor, crisp and deliberate, and the echo seemed to linger longer than it should have, stretching into something heavy.
He didn't need to raise his voice. The air did that for him.
His uniform was black, the kind of black that didn't reflect light but absorbed it. The fabric caught against the pale illumination pouring from the ceiling, sharp and clean, cut to perfect precision. The man himself looked carved from the same design: his posture a blueprint for authority. Every motion was controlled, every breath calculated.
He stopped in front of us, hundreds of recruits lined shoulder to shoulder in rigid rows, our boots pressed against the painted marks on the floor. None of us spoke. None of us even shifted our weight. The hall seemed to hold its breath.
When he began to speak, his tone was low, steady, and so measured it almost felt rehearsed — not a speech, but a ritual.
"Welcome," he said, and even that single word carried the weight of command. "Welcome to the Hunter Academy."
The words didn't sound like a greeting. They sounded like a verdict passed down by something older than him. As if the Academy itself were speaking through him, through every syllable that left his mouth.
"You are here because you survived what others did not," he continued, pacing slowly across the front row. "Because when the world asked for surrender, you refused. From this moment on, refusal is no longer bravery - it is duty. Bravery, loyalty, structure. These are not virtues. They are the only things that will keep you alive."
The cadence of his voice filled the vastness of the hall. He moved with the precision of someone accustomed to being watched, his hands clasped loosely behind his back, his boots falling into perfect rhythm.
"Bravery," he said, "is not the absence of fear — it is obedience in the presence of it. Loyalty is not trust — it is discipline when trust fails. And structure…" he paused then, his eyes lifting toward the ribbed steel beams arching high above our heads, "Structure is what remains when humanity collapses."
His voice dropped on the last word, and the echo of it seemed to vibrate through the air like a pulse. No one dared to breathe. The sound of a single cough somewhere near the back row was swallowed immediately by the weight of the silence that followed.
"This Hunter Academy," he said at last, his gaze sweeping over us like a blade, "will test you. Not your strength, but your purpose. Not your will to live, but your will to serve."
Then, without warning, the lights dimmed.
The massive screen behind him flickered to life — a wall of cold white light spreading across the room. Numbers began to scroll downward in endless columns, each illuminated line casting shifting shadows across our faces.
"Selection begins now," he said.
No one moved.
We stood there, every one of us frozen in place, the sound of the screen's quiet hum filling the space where breathing should have been. For a moment, the only movement was the reflection of the data washing across the crowd — light gliding over eyes wide with waiting.
The voice that replaced his was mechanical, genderless, stripped of all human warmth. Each number rang out like a sentence, echoing against the high metal ceiling before dissolving into air.
The recruits whose numbers were called took a step forward automatically, like machines responding to a command. No hesitation, no words — just the sound of boots meeting the floor in perfect unison.
The rest of us waited.
The screen kept shifting, the rhythm of the selections strangely hypnotic. The glowing lines of data reflected against pale faces, against rigid spines, against the faint tremor of hands locked behind backs.
I waited, too. The sound of my own heartbeat began to sync with the mechanical rhythm of the announcements.
"Seven-one-two - Block Two."
My number.
For a moment, I thought I had misheard. The voice was so calm, so absolute, it erased doubt before it could even form. My eyes found the glowing digits on the screen as they appeared, lingered for a heartbeat, and vanished back into the flow.
That was me. Bill's number came next. Then Julian's. Both in the same block.
All around, other numbers were still being spoken. The sound rolled on without pause, endless, methodical. Someone near me whispered a number that wasn't theirs, as if repeating it could make it change. Someone else swayed slightly, knees softening before they locked again.
We all waited, even those whose numbers had already been called, because no one knew if the system could change its mind.
And when the final number was read, when the last echo of the voice disappeared, the man in black stepped forward again.
His expression hadn't changed. Not once.
"Your placements," he said quietly, "are not rewards. They are truths. The Academy does not make mistakes."
His gaze swept across the room, stopping briefly on me — a flicker of acknowledgment that felt colder than indifference.
"Block Two, follow the red markers on the floor. Block One and Block Three will be escorted. From this moment, you belong to your divisions. Your past has no place here."
He paused, just long enough for the words to sink in.
"Welcome to Hunter Academy."
Then he turned and walked away, his boots echoing down the long steel corridor until the sound vanished completely, leaving only the hum of the machines and the faint collective exhale of hundreds of people who had finally remembered how to breathe.
2 months later
The Academy consumed time the way fire consumes air.
Days blurred.
At first, I tried to count them - scratches in the corner of my notebook, lines I thought would mean something later. But by the second week, I lost track. The light never changed. The temperature never shifted. The schedule never broke.
Every morning began the same way: the low buzz of the wake signal, the cold air pressing against my skin, the smell of metal and disinfectant.
We woke at six. Trained until exhaustion. Ate. Studied. Trained again. Slept, if we could.
In those first months, I learned one thing quickly — the Hunter Academy was not a school. It was a machine that stripped you down to what could be rebuilt.
They called it Block Two — the center of the Hunter Academy. A place built not for soldiers, but for control.
They trained us to think and obey in the same breath.
I failed at the first part.
Every theory test ended the same way: rows of numbers, terms, and systems that evaporated the moment I read them. History of the Colonies. Psychological Response Analysis. Combat Ethics. Behavioral Coordination Theory.
I understood the words individually, but not together. They felt like codes from a language that wasn't meant for me. But on the range, everything made sense. The rifle fit my shoulder like it remembered me. The weight, the rhythm, the recoil — all of it felt natural.I didn't have to think. I just breathed, and the world aligned.
Bang. Target down.
Bang. Bullseye.
Bang. Breath out. Stillness.
Each shot was a heartbeat. Each heartbeat was order.
The instructors said I had focus. Precision. "Perfect control."
But they were wrong. It wasn't control — it was instinct.
If I thought too much, I missed. If I stopped thinking, I never did.
On the range, I was alive. Everywhere else, I was learning how to pretend.
To mimic humanity, not live it.
To nod at the right moments. To smile when someone laughed.
To say "I'm fine" when I wasn't anything at all.
When I wasn't training, I went to the library. I read more than I slept.
It was the only place that didn't demand anything from me — no drills, no orders, no staring eyes.
Just rows of shelves, old screens flickering softly, and the faint hum of recycled air.
At first, I read what I was supposed to: behavioral manuals, social reconstruction guides, communication theory.
Books designed to teach how to speak and when to speak — how to make others believe you were normal.
I memorized sentences like instructions for a machine: Maintain eye contact for precisely two seconds to signal sincerity. Match the tone of your conversational partner. Smile when others smile — do not initiate.
So I tried. I practiced in the mirror at night, learning what kindness looked like.
But my reflection always felt like a stranger wearing my face.
After a while, it started to feel like wearing someone else's skin — the right gestures, the wrong person underneath.
Then one evening, I wandered further back and found a section half-hidden by old partitions.
The sign above it was cracked, but I could still make out the word: Fiction.
Inside, I found fairytales.
Real ones — printed books, the kind that smelled of paper and dust and time.
They didn't belong here, in a place that sterilized everything human.
And maybe that's why I opened one.
It was Snow White.
I read it sitting on the cold floor, my back against the shelf, my knees drawn up.
At first, it felt strange — small sentences, old language, a story that pretended to be gentle.
But the more I read, the heavier it felt.
A girl dies. A man kisses her while she's dead. And everyone calls it love.
I stopped and stared at the page for a long time.
Love, they said. But to me, it sounded like obsession. Like control.
Like the kind of hunger that dresses itself as devotion.
I closed the book and sat there, my thoughts circling like insects around a light.
Why would anyone want to be loved like that?
Why write stories that turn women into objects to be claimed, saved, or touched without permission?
Maybe fairytales weren't about love at all. Maybe they were about ownership.
The more I read, the clearer it became.
Every story had the same spine, the same quiet command beneath the fantasy: Be good. Be silent. Be still. And the prince — the savior — was always the same. A man who arrives only when the woman stops moving.
I began to understand that these stories were never innocent.
They were instructions.And the world had once called them morality.
So I started to see the Academy in those stories.
The same structure, the same discipline, the same insistence on silence.
Different world, same control.
I began reading fairytales obsessively — not because I believed in them, but because I wanted to understand what kind of people once found comfort in such lies.
Sometimes I stayed until the lights dimmed, the glow of the screens fading into dark.
I'd close the book, and for a moment, I could almost hear the whisper of those old stories breathing through the walls.
Two months turned to three
I failed my written exams again.
But on the training field, I was flawless.
My body was efficient. Obedient. Strong.
The instructors called me precise, disciplined, consistent.
They never said what they really meant — that I was empty enough to follow orders without emotion.
I think that's why they stopped watching me the way they watched others. They thought I was safe. Predictable.
But I wasn't.
Because the more I read, the more I began to think about what it meant to live in a story that wasn't mine.
What it meant to wake up and realize that every rule, every word, every lesson was written to keep me quiet.
And I knew one thing with certainty: If the Academy had built me to obey, then somewhere along the way, it had made a mistake.
Because I was beginning to remember how to question.
How to see.
How to want.
And wanting, I was starting to learn, was the first kind of freedom.