The arena still stank of copper and rot.Even with the suppressor grid cooling, the air held the residue of broken fragments—ozone sharpness layered over mildew and burnt tar. Every breath clung heavy in the lungs, as though the fight had left smoke behind where there had been no fire. The copper veins still pulsed faintly, their light flickering like an exhausted heartbeat.
The recruits stood in silence. Grey uniforms clung damp to their bodies, sweat soaking into the fabric and leaving dark patches under their arms and down their spines. Boots squeaked faintly against the polished floor, each step smudging the sheen with ash. The smell of scorched fabric, stale fear, and human salt mingled until it was impossible to tell one from the other.
Kahn's pulse still rattled in his ears. His throat burned with the tang of metal, every swallow scraping as though rust coated his tongue. The skin on his right arm itched with phantom static, like a rash crawling just beneath the flesh, as if the fragment inside him hadn't accepted the suppressor's closure.
Selene walked the line of recruits with unhurried steps. Her heels clicked sharp on stone, each strike cutting through the stale air. The sound was too clean, too precise, a reminder that she never broke rhythm. Even her perfume—or perhaps only the sterile scent of ozone that clung to her presence—smelled controlled, precise, designed to erase any trace of humanity.
Her eyes swept across them—first the buzz-cut woman, still steady though her hands trembled faintly, fingers twitching against her thigh; then the two weaker recruits, pale and shaken, one biting his lip hard enough to draw blood that tasted like iron in the air. Finally, Selene's gaze lingered on Kahn and the symmetrical one.
Two halves of a fracture line.
"You tasted collapse today," Selene said. Her voice was low, unhurried, but every syllable carried weight, vibrating faintly against the copper veins. "Containment means discipline. What I saw in this room was not discipline. It was survival by accident. If this had been a live Kernel breach, most of you would be dissolved to ash."
Her words dropped like stones. No one answered. The silence buzzed with the faint hum of the grid and the smell of burnt tar.
Voss exhaled smoke that wasn't there, rolling the unlit cigarette between his fingers. His coat smelled of sweat, ash, and old tobacco, a human scent in the sterile chamber. "She's being polite," he rasped. "Most of you would be begging for death by the halfway mark."
A few recruits flinched, eyes down, shoulders stiff.
Selene stopped in front of Kahn. Her eyes, obsidian and depthless, pinned him in place. "Your fragment nearly broke the suppressor. Again."
Kahn swallowed hard, the taste of copper thick on his tongue. "It… wouldn't stay quiet."
"Fragments never stay quiet," she said, voice flat. "You either silence them or you let them run the field. You tried both. That is not control. That is indulgence."
The fragment twitched at the word indulgence, a hot spark under his skin, like a child provoked. The sensation crawled through his arm like static worms. Kahn fought to keep his face blank.
Selene turned her gaze to the symmetrical recruit.
"And you—"
He straightened, spine aligning with uncanny precision. "I contained them. I imposed order. Until he—" He tilted his chin toward Kahn, the movement exact, measured. "—broke it."
The echo of his words rang too perfectly in the chamber, as if the arena itself wanted to preserve them. The rhythm of his voice was unnatural, every syllable equal, like a metronome.
Selene's lip twitched, the closest she came to disdain. "Order that collapses under stress is not order. It is vanity. You mistook a demonstration for victory. You mistake balance for strength."
The rival's jaw flexed, but his eyes remained steady. Perfectly steady.
Voss chuckled, dry and low, the sound like gravel rolling down a chute. "Two ends of a busted cable. Sparks every time you touch. Guess we'll see which one fries first." His words left a taste of ash in the silence.
The recruits shifted uneasily. The buzz-cut woman's eyes flicked between Kahn and the rival, something like calculation in her stare, as though measuring which force to anchor to. Sweat rolled down her temple, leaving a faint trail through the dust on her skin.
Selene raised a hand. The copper veins along the walls dimmed further, leaving the arena in half-light. "You will learn to stand as a unit, or you will not stand at all. Rivalry has no place in containment. But…" Her gaze lingered on both of them again. "…sometimes rivalry produces survival. Consider which it will be for you."
She stepped back, shadows swallowing her edges. "Dismissed."
The recruits filed out in uneasy silence. Boots squeaked. Ash crunched underfoot, releasing the faint smell of dust that clung to their uniforms.
Kahn lingered a moment too long. He glanced back across the floor. The rival was still there, unmoving, his reflection on the polished stone perfectly aligned with his body. He looked at Kahn, eyes unblinking, voice quiet but cutting.
"You don't understand what you carry," he said. "Asymmetry corrodes. Fracture spreads. You'll tear the field apart—and all of us with it."
Kahn's fragment twitched in agreement, whispering in his head with a jagged grin:He's right. And that's why you'll win.
Kahn didn't answer. He just turned away, throat raw with copper, and left the arena with the others.
Behind him, the rival's footsteps followed at perfect intervals, each one landing with a precision that scraped against Kahn's nerves like glass on stone.