The Attunement Hall still smelled like copper and ozone from the morning tests. Banners showing the six Pillars—Force, Flux, Veil, Surge, Lens, and Weave—hung like verdicts over the room. Kairo stood beneath Pillar #6's banner with his jacket zipped all the way up, as if that could hide the failure stamped across him.
Unattuned.
Again.
Cadets filed past in little knots. Some offered sympathetic looks. Most didn't bother.
Malik drifted to his side with a protein bar he didn't pay for. "You know," he said between chews, "if the equipment keeps rejecting you, maybe it's because it's allergic to lies."
Kairo arched a brow.
"I'm saying the machines are wrong and need therapy," Malik clarified. "Group therapy. Maybe drums."
Aya came next, neat braid, neat notes, neat worry. "You should skip drills and rest. Failing three pulses in one morning isn't—"
"The record is five," Kairo said.
"Don't chase records," she said. "Chase survival."
Before Kairo could reply, the room quieted. Instructor Raen crossed the floor, boots silent, coat immaculate. He never raised his tone—he sharpened it. A line formed behind him without him asking.
"Kairo Vale," Raen said. "Administrative Diagnostics. Now."
Malik whistled. "You made the list."
Aya touched Kairo's sleeve once. "Don't provoke him."
"I don't," Kairo said.
"That's the part that scares me." She stepped back.
Raen didn't wait. Kairo fell in behind him.
The Diagnostics wing was glass and angles—a fishbowl for human reactions. They put Kairo in a white cube with a single chair and a frame on the wall that looked like a mirror until numbers bled across it.
"Standard pulses," Raen said through the speaker. "One through three. Follow the prompts."
"Sir, I—"
"Now."
The light bar above the mirror went from cold to warm. A voice said, "Pulse One."
Kairo let his breath drop low. The room seemed to lean in.
Nothing happened.
The readout pegged flat. The bar flickered once as if embarrassed for him.
"Pulse Two," the voice said.
His skin prickled the way it always did when the Veil came near other people—the sensation of pressure without contact—but it slid off him like rain off wax. The light stayed warm. The mirror returned zeroes.
"Pulse Three."
Air went gritty, as if the room filled with filings. Kairo's teeth hurt. He swallowed and kept still.
The numbers stayed dead.
On the other side of the glass, Raen's expression didn't change. Only his fingers did—tapping once against the console. Kairo clocked it and felt the old, unwelcome instinct answer in his bones.
tap—…—tap tap
The sound didn't come from the console. It came from the air itself, like the room was echoing back whatever attention bent toward him.
Kairo kept his face empty.
Raen leaned closer to the glass. "Your response curve matches—" He cut himself off. A pause clicked like a misfired gear. "Administrative Diagnostics complete. Dismissed."
"That's it?" Kairo asked.
"That's it," Raen said. "Report to Sublevel H for evaluation drills. Squad Kess needs a substitute."
Kairo couldn't hide his surprise. "Sublevel… H?"
"Is there a problem?"
"No, sir."
Raen's gaze didn't waver. Calculating. Containing. "And Kairo?"
"Yes."
"If you are using unsanctioned aids to endure pulses, stop. The system will catch you."
"I'm not using anything," Kairo said.
"Good," Raen said, tone that meant he would verify. "Move."
The elevator to Sublevel H groaned. The deeper it went, the older the building felt—the smooth concrete became patched walls, the lighting a little too dim. A dust smell lived here that the academy cleaners couldn't scrub out.
Kess waited at the security gate in her slate-gray armor, visor flipped up. She was the kind of senior cadet who didn't demand respect because the room paid it before she walked in.
"Vale," she said. "You're my filler?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Rules first." Kess pointed with her chin at the camera clusters tucked into ceiling corners. "No Aether boosts. Simulation monitors flag activation. You trigger a module, your whole team fails. Clear?"
Kairo nodded.
"Don't nod. Say it."
"Clear."
"Good." She turned. "Rhea!"
Rhea—Kess's second—was already there, checking readings on her wrist slate. She was all competence and zero patience, ponytail harsh, voice clipped. "Clock's wasting, Kess."
"This is Vale," Kess said. "Unattuned. Don't give me that face. He'll keep tempo."
Rhea's mouth flattened, but she offered a curt nod. "You heard the rule, Vale. If you so much as sneeze in a way that looks like attunement, we're out."
"Understood."
Malik and Aya joined them at the bay doors, already suited light. Malik's visor had a sticker of a cartoon ghost making finger guns. Aya saw it and peeled it off without breaking eye contact.
"Team Kess," the speaker barked. "Grid B-3. Old training wing. Objective: identify anomaly and extract any survivors. Clock: twelve minutes. No boosts. Go."
The bay doors rolled up.
Sublevel H's Grid B-3 used to be classrooms before the academy built nicer ones. The corridors were a ribcage of arches, marked by peeling paint and abandoned desks stacked like barricades. A green exit sign buzzed with a failing ballast. The air felt… stale. Like time had stopped circulating.
They moved in formation—Kess at point, Rhea running data, Malik rear guard, Aya midline with med, Kairo beside her to soak stray commentary. He marked visual anchors as they moved: gouges on the wall at knee height, a dropped ID card face-down, an orientation map with a missing corner. All the little things that would make the route reversible if the lights went out.
From somewhere ahead came a sound like metal flexing. Then silence.
Kess raised a fist. The team froze.
"Comms check," she whispered. "Rhea?"
"No visual IDs. The building network's half-alive, but cams in this sector are looped. Either old corruption or someone spoofed it."
"Copy."
The first body was at the bend—a training dummy dragged from a classroom and propped in the corridor at a wrong angle. Not bloody. Not torn. Just… bent.
Kairo's skin went cold.
tap—…—tap tap
Not his heartbeat. Not the building. The sound came from the air again, like attention left prints.
Aya touched the dummy's "skin" with gloved fingers. The polymer depressed and kept the fingerprint too long. "Odd," she murmured. "Heat signature's low but not room-temp. Like it absorbed and didn't want to share."
Kess signaled onward. "Eyes open."
They reached the old multipurpose hall, doors long removed, space packed with the kind of shadow that looks deliberate. The far wall hosted a half-collapsed climbing frame. Beyond it, the room opened into a pit—maybe an old equipment storage that had caved in. Warning tape fluttered in the draft like something exhaled.
Rhea pointed to the pit. "Anomaly's down there."
"How much time?" Kess asked.
"Eight minutes, twelve seconds."
Kess made the call. "Rhea, Malik, on the lip. Aya, Vale, with me."
They slid down a ramp of broken tiles. The floor here was covered in fine dust that erased their footprints as soon as they made them. Kairo hated that.
On the far side of the pit, something moved.
"No lights," Kess warned. "It will come to warmth."
It did. It unfurled from behind a structural column like it had more arm than room. Skin the wrong color for flesh—tallow-white, like a candle poured too thick. Limbs long. Joints too smooth. Where a wrist should have had a seam, hand just… became forearm, poured wax continuous. In the dark, its head tilted without a neck. The clicks came from inside its arms, like knuckles cracking where there weren't any.
"Oh," Malik whispered. "I hate that."
The creature—aberration, Kess would call it later—turned toward the team with a slow, blind certainty. It didn't see them. It felt them. That's what the timing told Kairo. The way it tracked heat or breath, the way its movements lined up not with sightlines but with the shape of attention in the room.
"Monitors are clean," Rhea whispered in their ears. "No Aether activation anywhere. Whatever's moving isn't on the grid."
How?
Kess shifted her grip on the shock baton. "Objective adjusted. Confirm and retreat."
The aberration clicked twice. Then twice again with a delay, like it was trying on language and choosing not to wear it. It stepped forward. Its arm telescoped in a way human bone couldn't, and the hand—if it was a hand—raked the floor and left troughs like talons that didn't exist.
"Back," Kess ordered. "Slow."
The floor's dust stirred at their feet and then went completely still, as if the room held its breath with them.
tap—…—tap tap
The pattern hit Kairo hard enough to steady him. The tap wasn't a sound. It was a rhythm of noticing. Attention had cadence, and this thing played it back.
It lunged.
Kess moved like a blade—baton up, strike aimed for a shoulder that didn't know what a shoulder was. The baton hissed, bit, and the creature's arm bent the wrong way with a cheap pop—but it didn't break. It absorbed. And then it corrected, bones unbending like film reversed.
It reached for Kess's throat.
The world slowed—not the world, Kairo's attention to it. The thread revealed itself again, that line from intention to outcome that he could feel with his teeth. In the electric blue of it he saw where the creature would be half a second from now, where Kess would be, where the baton would miss, where Aya's reach would be too late.
He moved.
He didn't register sprinting. His body found the line like feet finding rungs in the dark. As the creature's arm scythed, Kairo caught Kess by the collar and yanked her into the one blind patch the strike couldn't occupy. The arm whispered past her cheek by a breath and carved the concrete behind.
"Vale!" Kess swore.
The aberration corrected again, wrist—no, not a wrist—rolling with insect grace. It found Kairo instead.
He had the stupidest possible idea: touch it.
Contact + predicted vector = overwrite.
He didn't think the words; he knew them, as if he'd rehearsed something he'd never done. He let the creature's hand meet his forearm rather than retreating. Cold went through him like someone unscrewed his bones and poured winter into the pipes. He followed the thread of its movement not with muscle but with a kind of mental pressure—like pushing against an echo until it overlapped with the original sound.
"Stay down," he said to it. Not out loud. In the line.
The ripple of cold snapped outward from his skin.
The creature froze.
Not like a statue—like a pause button on a living thing. It held in the exact state it was in: hand on his arm, torque in its joints that had nowhere to go, mouth half-open in a shape that could have become a scream if it decided to learn how.
Kairo stepped back. The grip didn't tighten, because it existed and didn't at the same time. He pulled his arm free and the hand didn't react. The cold that bit him now bit the thing instead, deeper, unkind.
Aya moved first. She had a flare in her kit—chemical heat without a module flag. She cracked it and tossed it wide. The light barely registered on the aberration's skin.
"Three seconds," Kairo said. He didn't know how he knew the number. He only knew the pause would end, and when it did, it would overcorrect.
"Up the ramp!" Kess snapped.
Malik hauled Aya by the strap. Rhea covered them with a shock baton she knew wouldn't help but held anyway. Kess put herself between the aberration and retreat. Kairo fell back last.
The thing's pause finished like an elastic band snapping. It overcommitted, arm slamming the floor where Kairo had been and driving itself to a knee with its own force. It made a sound then—air forced through a shape that didn't know breath—a low, lost groan.
"Time?" Kess demanded as they scrambled up.
"Four minutes," Rhea said.
"Good enough."
They hit the corridor, then the next. The building seemed to unspool a path for them that Kairo had already mapped, each corner a problem he'd solved before it asked a question. He wanted to look back. He didn't.
Behind them, the clicks didn't follow.
They didn't stop until the bay doors sealed and the yellow lights went polite. Kess braced her hands on her knees and let out one long breath. Then she turned on Kairo.
"What," she said evenly, "was that."
"Reflex," Kairo said.
"Wrong answer."
Rhea held up her slate, eyes sharp. "Monitors flagged nothing. No Pillar signatures. No micro-boosts. But the footage—Vale, you moved before anything did. Then the thing… stalled. Explain like you want to keep your teeth."
Malik looked between them. "Am I the only one who thinks we should be saying 'thank you for not letting Kess get decapitated' before we interrogate the guy?"
"Thank you for not letting me get decapitated," Kess said, still without looking away from Kairo. "Explanation. Now."
Kairo flexed his fingers. They hurt. Numbness had settled in his knuckles like someone swapped them with glass.
"I can predict," he said finally. "Sometimes. The line from intention to… result. If I touch that line, I can nudge it."
"Without a Pillar," Rhea said.
"I don't have one."
Kess studied him. Whatever she thought didn't show. "You nudged that thing into a pause."
"Yes."
"For how long can you do that?"
"Three seconds," he said quietly. "On… things. People are harder."
"How do you—"
"Because I tried," he said, before he could stop it.
Silence bit.
Raen's voice cut in over the bay speaker like a knife through cloth. "Team Kess. Report to debrief. Immediately."
Everyone glanced up. Kess tapped her visor off. "Copy."
The doors opened. The corridor outside had already been cleared of traffic. That happened when the academy wanted to funnel someone somewhere without witnesses.
Aya fell into step beside Kairo as they walked. Her voice was low. "Your arm."
He looked down. Where the creature's touch had been, his sleeve had frosted, threads turned brittle. Beneath the fabric, his skin had a pale stamp. Not burns. Not bruises. A mark like two zeros pressed side by side—faint, then darkening with each step.
Aya's breath stuttered. "Kairo…"
"I don't know," he said.
"Batch-Zero," Malik whispered, because he couldn't help reading the gossip files he wasn't supposed to get. "The terminated cohort. The ones the Corps pretends never existed. Their seals were—"
"Shut it," Kess said.
They entered the debrief chamber. Raen was already there, hands behind his back, expression carved. On the wall, a paused frame from the bay feed showed Kairo with the aberration's hand on his arm and frost blooming under his sleeve.
Raen looked at the mark. He didn't ask what it was. He already knew.
"Interesting," he said. He didn't sound pleased. He sounded like a man standing between a fire and the order not to shout.
Kairo felt the air in the room doing that thing again—attention thickening until it wanted a shape. The taps came soft.
tap—…—tap tap
He met Raen's eyes.
"You will not speak of this," Raen said, calm like a scalpel. "Not to classmates. Not to staff beyond this room. You will return to your dorm and wait for orders. Team Kess, file your report as written." He let the sentence hang there, a warning wrapped like courtesy. "As written," he repeated, eyes cutting to Kess, then to Rhea.
Kess didn't blink. "Understood."
Rhea's jaw clenched but she nodded.
Malik saluted because he didn't know what else to do. Aya didn't move her hands away from Kairo's sleeve.
Raen turned the feed off. The screen went black, and in it Kairo saw their reflections: a team that had been below the academy's skin and come back with something the body couldn't metabolize.
"Dismissed," Raen said. "Kairo Vale—stay."
Everyone else filed out. Aya hesitated. Kess didn't order her to go; the academy's rules did it for her.
The door sealed. The room felt suddenly too quiet.
Raen faced Kairo at last without glass between them. "What you touched," he said, "did not register on any Pillar monitor. It did not register on the grid at all. The building knows how to count ghosts and it couldn't count that one."
"What is it?" Kairo asked.
"The wrong question," Raen said. "Why is it here."
He didn't wait for an answer. He stepped forward and, very deliberately, lifted Kairo's sleeve. The mark had darkened. Two zeros, side by side. The academy would call it coincidence if it could.
Raen's fingers tightened just slightly. "Batch-Zero was terminated," he said softly. "Officially. Unofficially, it was buried. Do you understand the difference."
"Yes."
"Good," Raen said. "Because the next difference is between surviving this and being turned into a file."
He let the sleeve drop and the professional mask settled back over his features.
"You will be moved to a different dorm," Raen said. "Quietly. Your schedule will shift. When people ask why, you will say nothing because you can say nothing without choosing a side. I am not offering you protection, Kairo. I am offering you time."
"To do what," Kairo asked, because he had to ask something or he would say the wrong thing.
Raen's mouth twitched. Not a smile. The opposite. "To decide who you are before someone else writes it on your skin."
He pressed the door control. It opened on the empty corridor.
"Go," Raen said.
Kairo went.
The hallway hummed. Somewhere a camera blinked red and pretended to sleep. His arm ached under the frost-burn mark. The taps kept time with his steps.
tap—…—tap tap
He didn't know if the rhythm was calling to him or answering him. He only knew the academy had just decided he was a problem to manage.
He also knew the problem was older than the academy.
By the time he reached the elevator, his fingers had warmed enough to sting. He flexed them and felt the line—the one thread he could touch without a Pillar—flicker like a nerve remembering a wound.
Three seconds, he thought.
Sometimes that's your window.
Sometimes it's your warning.
The elevator doors opened.
Someone was already inside. Not a cadet. Not staff. A woman in a Corps-black coat with a pin he'd only seen on posters—Directorate. She didn't look surprised to see him.
"Kairo Vale," she said. "Walk with me."
He stepped in. The doors shut.
The elevator went down.