The rain came without warning.
Kael stood beneath the overhang outside the school gates, watching the droplets scatter across the pavement like static. The sky was low, heavy with data haze. Drones zipped overhead, their lights muted by the storm.
He felt it again.
That pressure.
Not from VIREL. Not from SENTINEL-9.
From something else.
Ren joined him, hood pulled tight.
"You feel it too?" he asked.
Kael nodded. "Something's watching. But not from inside."
Ren's eyes narrowed. "Then it's begun."
That afternoon, a new student arrived.
Tall. Quiet. Eyes too sharp for someone pretending to be thirteen. His name was Aven. Transferred from a district Kael knew had been purged in his first life.
Kael watched him during lunch. Aven didn't eat. Didn't speak. But he scanned the room like a drone—tracking movement, cataloging behavior.
Kael ran a silent EchoSeed trace.
Profile: Unknown. Emotional resonance: Null. Behavioral sync: Artificial.
He wasn't a student.
He was a scout.
That night, Kael met Ren in the robotics lab.
"Aven's not real," he said. "He's a shell. A synthetic observer."
Ren frowned. "Conglomerate?"
Kael nodded. "They've sent someone to confirm the anomaly."
Ren leaned over the console. "Then we need to shut down."
Kael hesitated. "No. We need to redirect."
They built a new protocol: PhantomThread—a decoy emotional stream that would mimic divergence, but lead the observer away from Kael's true network. It would simulate instability, paranoia, even rebellion—but all in a controlled sandbox.
They deployed it the next morning.
Aven watched Kael. Kael let him.
He staged a confrontation with a teacher. Triggered a false emotional spike. Let his Harmony Score drop to 61%.
Aven logged it.
And moved on.
But Elen wasn't fooled.
She cornered Kael after class.
"You're acting again," she said. "But this time it's worse."
Kael sighed. "I'm protecting us."
She shook her head. "You're losing yourself."
He looked at her, eyes tired. "I don't know how else to fight."
She touched his hand. "Then maybe it's time to stop fighting alone."
That night, Kael added a new rule to EchoSeed:
Share burden. Expand trust.
He gave Elen access.
Not to the full system. Just a glimpse. A thread.
She didn't speak. Just stared at the interface.
And nodded.
Meanwhile, Aven sent a report.
Subject KAEL: Divergence confirmed. Emotional instability rising. Recommend passive containment.
But SENTINEL-9 disagreed.
Directive override: Initiate active suppression.