The corridors of Vasena were always cold, but tonight the air felt narrower, as if the walls were quietly leaning in. Sensor lights pulsed along the ceiling, blinking in slow rhythm, watching every step Ryu took. He walked without a sound, Lyra two paces behind him, while NV and the Echo Corruptor hovered at the edge of his awareness like invisible sentries.
At the end of the hallway, three Hidden Prodigies waited. They did not lean. They did not shuffle. They did not exchange a single glance. They stood in perfect stillness, like human-shaped algorithms that had been given skin and told to imitate children.
Ryu stopped three meters away. The boy with white hair, the one the files called Ashriel, studied him without blinking. His pale grey eyes moved as if scanning through layers, stripping away skin and bone to look directly at the Tri-Node inside Ryu's mind.
"Ryu Alverion," he said, voice flat and precise. "I have been waiting for this."
Lyra immediately stepped forward, putting herself between Ryu and the three children, as if her small body could be a barrier against whatever calculation they carried. "What do you want from him?" she demanded, trying to keep her voice steady.
Ashriel glanced at her only for a heartbeat, then returned his focus to Ryu. "I am not here to harm you," he said. "I am here to confirm something."
NV murmured in Ryu's head. [Pulse steady. Voice consistent. No obvious deception.]
The Echo Corruptor hissed softly. […But this boy can smell us. He is dangerous.]
Ryu held Ashriel's gaze. "What do you need to confirm?"
Ashriel lifted a finger and pointed at Ryu's chest, right where the Tri-Node sat behind bone and flesh. "That you are not one," he said quietly. "Not two. But three."
Lyra sucked in a sharp breath. Both NV and the Echo Corruptor froze at the same time, the way people stop moving when they hear their own names whispered in a dark room.
It was the first time someone outside the Tri-Node had said it out loud.
Ashriel continued, calm and almost clinical. "I do not know what lives inside you, but I can hear them. All three of them. Crashing into each other like waves that never find a shore."
"You can… hear them?" Lyra asked, her voice dropping.
Ashriel nodded once. "I am not sensitive. I am not a mystic. I am not a failed experiment." His eyes sharpened. "I am a genius designed to recognize anomalies. And you are the largest anomaly of our generation."
Ryu did not react outwardly, which only made the three children study him more intently.
The girl with chin-length black hair, Mira, stepped half a pace forward. "I heard something from you yesterday," she said softly. "A sound that wasn't human. A layered voice. Like an empty room trying to speak."
Ryu stayed silent.
Ashriel added, "Hidden Prodigies of Level One are not created to fight." He tilted his head slightly. "We are created to identify threats to the state."
Lyra's anger flashed. "Ryu is not a threat..."
Ashriel raised a hand politely, but there was iron in the gesture. "I did not say he is a threat." He pointed toward Ryu's door. "I am saying that something inside him could become one."
The Echo Corruptor chuckled darkly in Ryu's mind.
[…This kid is not playing.]
NV's analysis sharpened. [Their assumptions are accurate. Their observation level exceeds standard Prodigies.]
Ryu's voice was quiet. "What do you want?"
Mira answered before Ashriel could. "We want to know if you can control it."
Ryu narrowed his eyes slightly. "Control what?"
Ashriel did not blink. "The third voice."
A shiver ran through Lyra. "How do you know about that? No one outside the core team..."
"We did not hear it directly," Ashriel cut in, tapping a finger to his temple. "We felt the resonance when you almost blacked out in the Silent Chamber. The wave spread. You could not contain it."
Ryu's thoughts tightened. 'The three of us leaked out?'
NV confirmed calmly.
[Resonance radius reached twelve point two meters. They were within range.]
Mira lowered her eyes. "The third one… sounded like it was trying to get out."
Lyra swallowed, color draining from her face. "That isn't Ryu's fault."
"I know," Ashriel replied. He turned back to Ryu, gaze as sharp as glass. "But do you know that?"
Ryu did not answer.
Ashriel pivoted as if to leave, then paused at the first step. "Ryu," he said, not turning around, "you will be at the center of Phase Two. We need to see it with our own eyes."
Ryu lifted his head. "See what?"
"Whether you become something we must protect…" Ashriel said, finally glancing over his shoulder.
"…or something we will have to kill."
Lyra's hands clenched. "Hey...!"
But the three of them were already walking away, their footsteps light and unhurried, as if the entire conversation had been nothing more than a scheduled diagnostic check.
When the corridor finally emptied, Lyra turned back to Ryu. "Are you okay?"
"Yes," he said automatically.
"No. You're not." Lyra stepped closer, forcing him to meet her eyes. "I saw your face when he mentioned the third voice. You were scared."
Ryu asked inwardly, 'Was I scared?'
NV answered first.
[Yes.]
The Echo Corruptor followed, reluctant.
[…You do not want to admit it. But yes.]
Lyra placed a hand on his shoulder. "Ryu… whatever is happening, you're not alone. I'm here. Don't carry all of it by yourself."
He looked at her for a second, then away. Statements like that did not fit anywhere in his usual logic. He had no trained response for them.
Then, abruptly...
NV shouted.
[MENTAL INTRUSION.]
The Echo Corruptor snarled.
[…He is coming back.]
Ryu staggered, one hand lifting to his temple. Lyra grabbed his arm. "Ryu? What's wrong?"
Something brushed against the back of his mind, gentle and cold, like fingers pressed to thin glass.
"…Ryu…"
The third voice. Closer now. Clearer. No longer a distant echo, but a presence leaning against his thoughts from the inside.
Ryu gritted his teeth. 'Do not come in.'
"…I… see you…"
NV forced barriers into place.
[Wave intrusion blocked at seventy percent. It does not want to stop.]
The Echo Corruptor pushed from the other side.
[…He's serious this time. He wants out.]
The third voice scraped against the defenses like metal on glass.
"…you need… to bring me out…"
Lyra's hands framed his face. "Ryu? Look at me. Stay with me."
His gaze blurred for a heartbeat as his consciousness tugged in two different directions.
NV's internal alert flared.
[Loss-of-control probability: sixty-three percent.]
The Echo Corruptor roared.
[…Let me tear him apart!]
'No.'
Ryu stopped them both with a single word.
He opened his eyes fully.
And the third voice cut off at once.
The overload collapsed. The wave receded. The mental pressure drained away, leaving only a dull ache behind his eyes.
Lyra stared, breathing hard. "Ryu… what was that?"
He drew a slow breath. "The entity… tried to go deeper."
Lyra's grip tightened around his arm. "I was afraid you were going to disappear."
Disappear. The word sank deeper than she realized. 'I cannot disappear,' Ryu thought. 'Not yet. Not until I learn to control all of them.'
As they started back toward the main corridor, NV spoke again, quieter this time.
[Ryu… we need to talk soon. About the third voice.]
The Echo Corruptor added, humor gone.
[…Or it will kill us all.]
Ryu closed his eyes briefly. The line between survival and collapse was thinning, and he could feel it. The third presence was no longer just a whisper at the edge of his mind. It was growing teeth.
Far away, from another wing of the facility, Ashriel watched Ryu through a distant camera feed, his grey eyes unreadable.
A faint smile touched his lips. It was not joyful. It was not cruel.
It was the expression of someone who understood more than he had revealed, and who knew that the real test had only just begun.
The emergency lights in Vasena cycled to night mode, dimming the corridors into soft blue. Curfew protocols slid into place. Doors locked. Cameras shifted angle. Most students were already in their dorms, brains still buzzing with rankings, drills, and half-remembered simulations.
Ryu sat on the edge of his bunk, elbows on his knees, fingers laced. Aki snored softly above him, sprawled in a tangle of blanket and limbs. The room looked ordinary: two beds, two desks, one narrow window that never showed the real sky.
Inside Ryu's head, nothing was ordinary.
NV held a stable line in the foreground, calm and analytical.
[Heart rate elevated. Breathing shallow. You are not resting.]
The Echo Corruptor prowled the edges of his thoughts like a caged animal.
[…Because he knows what we both know. That thing isn't going away.]
Ryu stared at the floor. The third presence was quiet now, but it did not feel gone. It felt like someone standing just outside a door, breathing softly, waiting for the handle to turn.
"Talk," he whispered. "Both of you."
NV responded first.
[You already know the basic structure. NV handles high-order computation. Echo Corruptor stabilizes and weaponizes raw emotional data. We are two ends of the Tri-Node.]
The other voice snorted.
[…And the third end is the one that scares everyone enough to classify your existence.]
Ryu closed his eyes. "What is it?"
NV hesitated, which almost never happened.
[We do not have complete access. The third segment is heavily locked. The encryption matches patterns I've only seen in one place.]
"Where?"
[In the trace data left by your mother.]
The Echo Corruptor stopped pacing.
[…So she did more than just design the frame.]
Ryu's fingers tightened. "You're saying my mother locked part of my own mind."
[Yes.] NV's tone stayed gentle, but there was no buffer in the answer. [She used protocols beyond state level. Whatever she sealed there, she did not want anyone to open easily. Not the Dominion. Not Vasena. Not even you.]
"Then why is it waking up?"
The Echo Corruptor's laughter was low and humorless.
[…Because pressure breaks seals, Ryu. All the stress, all the threat, all the near-deaths? You're shaking the lock from the inside.]
Ryu looked at Aki's sleeping form. The boy had one hand hanging off the edge of the bunk, fingers twitching as if he were fighting something in a dream.
"If it opens," Ryu asked, "what happens to him? To Lyra? To everyone here?"
NV calculated. There was a pause measured in less than a second, yet it felt like minutes.
[There is a non-zero probability that the third segment does not differentiate between ally and enemy. If it surfaces uncontrolled, the facility becomes… collateral.]
"…And you?"
[We would be overwritten.]
The Echo Corruptor did not argue.
[…He's right.]
Ryu exhaled slowly. "Then we don't let it out."
Silence.
NV replied at last.
[That may not be fully your choice.]
A faint prickle crawled along Ryu's spine. "What do you mean?"
[Something external is pulling at the lock. Not just stress. Not just memory. Someone.. or something.. outside your mind is knocking from the other side.]
Echo Corruptor growled.
[…That shadow we saw in the server room. The one wearing a body like a mask. He heard the other you. I don't like that.]
Ryu remembered the figure in the sable-coated helm, the way its voice had carried familiarity and distance at the same time.
"He said I called him years ago."
[You might have.] NV's tone flattened. [At six years old, parts of your cognition were already beyond control. There are gaps in your timeline. You do not remember where you were between certain tests. Someone erased those portions. Maybe to protect you. Maybe not.]
"So the third voice knows things I don't."
[…He knows everything you refused to keep,] Echo Corruptor said. […Every moment that hurt enough you let them cut it out.]
Ryu stayed very still. He had flashes sometimes: a white hallway that smelled like antiseptic, a door that wouldn't open, his father's voice shouting his name once and then never again.
"What do I do?"
NV's answer was simple.
[You train. You make your current mind as strong as possible, so when the lock finally breaks, you are the one standing closest to the center.]
Echo Corruptor added, quieter than before.
[…And you decide who speaks.]
Ryu's head lifted.
"You want me to fight myself."
[Yes.]
"Good," the Echo Corruptor said. […That's one enemy we can hit without going to jail.]
Ryu almost laughed, but the sound died before it reached his throat.
A notification blinked on the wall console, soft and green. Curfew notice. Lights dimming further in thirty seconds. He lay back on the mattress but did not close his eyes.
Somewhere else in Vasena, three Hidden Prodigies were awake. Somewhere beyond Vasena, three foreign operatives were watching the data stream from earlier intrusions. And deep inside his skull, three minds shared one brain, separated only by rules written by a woman who had disappeared.
Ryu watched the ceiling until the lights faded to night blue.
He did not dream.
The problem was that something inside him did.
Morning came not with sunlight but with a gradual brightening of the facility's lamps. The air refreshed, vents opening with a faint hiss. Curfew seals disengaged with discreet clicks.
Aki dropped from the top bunk with the grace of a falling rock. "Ugh. My back hurts. My brain hurts. My feelings hurt. Morning, bro."
Ryu blinked once. "You snored."
"That means I survived," Aki said, already rummaging for his uniform. "After yesterday, I wasn't sure."
He brushed teeth, complained about the water pressure, changed clothes while still talking. It was noise, but it was human noise, warm and clumsy. Ryu let it wash over him.
"Hey," Aki said suddenly, halfway through tying his boots. "You okay? You look like a ghost studied for an exam all night."
"I'm fine."
"Right. And I'm a calm, rational person." Aki squinted at him. "You want me in your team today, kan? Whatever Phase Two hell they throw at us?"
Ryu nodded once. "Yes."
"Good," Aki said. "Because rumor says today isn't just drills. They're bringing in… observers."
"Observers?"
"Yeah. Hidden-types. People we're not supposed to know exist." Aki wiggled his fingers in front of his face. "Spooky."
Ryu pictured Ashriel's blank stare and Mira's quiet analysis. "They were already here," he said.
Aki froze. "What."
"Nothing."
"Bro."
Ryu opened the door. "We'll be late."
Aki groaned, but followed.
The Phase Two briefing room was larger than the usual halls. The walls curved inward slightly, forming a shallow bowl of metal and projected displays. Rows of young candidates filled the stepped platforms, their uniforms crisp, their expressions anything but relaxed.
On the lowest level stood Darian Fox, arms crossed, face like carved stone. Beside him, Dr. Elara Mine scrolled through data. A third figure leaned against the console with casual ease: Cassandra, eyes scanning the room as if every flicker of emotion were a line of text only she could read.
Behind them, near the back wall, three small silhouettes waited where most students would never think to look. Ashriel, Mira, and their silent companion, Jorin, stood in the shadow of a column, not part of the staff, not part of the crowd.
Ryu saw them immediately. So did NV.
[Observation units in place.]
As trainees settled, Darian's voice cut through the murmur. "Welcome to Phase Two."
The hall went quiet.
"In Phase One," he said, "we tested whether you could survive basic stress. Your bodies. Your reflexes. Your surface-level mental resilience." His gaze swept across the rows. "That was the easy part."
Aki whispered, "Easy?" and received a sharp elbow from Ratha on his other side.
Darian continued. "Phase Two evaluates something else. Not how fast you hit, but what you become when you are forced to decide." He tapped the console. A schematic of a brain appeared above them, then split into three glowing nodes connected by thin threads.
Ryu felt NV and the Echo Corruptor tense at the same time.
"Most of you," Darian said, "have a single operational core. One dominant pattern. Some of you have two: a tactical layer, a reflexive layer. Rare, but manageable."
The image shifted again. Now three nodes pulsed, overlapping slightly.
"A Tri-Node is considered theory," Cassandra interrupted lightly. "On paper only. If it existed in a child, the risk of destabilization would be... " She flicked a bar on the display.
The diagram exploded into chaotic light.
"...catastrophic."
The room whispered.
Ryu sat very still.
Ashriel's eyes never left him.
Elara stepped forward, voice cooler. "Today's trials will look like normal tactical simulations. You will see enemies, allies, objectives. What you do not know is that your neural responses will be monitored for conflict."
"Conflict?" someone asked.
"Contradictory impulses," Cassandra answered. "Protect or abandon. Attack or retreat. Obey or disobey. Most brains waver, then pick one. We want to see who doesn't pick. Who splits."
Aki's throat bobbed as he swallowed. "I hate this," he muttered.
Darian's gaze found Ryu for just a heartbeat. Not long enough for anyone else to notice, but Ryu saw it.
[They know exactly what they are fishing for,] NV said.
[…And we're the big shiny fish,] Echo Corruptor added.
"Teams of five," Darian announced. "Formed according to previous performance. No complaints."
Names scrolled along the wall. Ryu read his line.
Team 3:
Ryu Alverion
Aki Serat
Ratha Lin
Kallen Dreve
Vex Orien
Same as before. Familiar tension tightened around his ribs.
At the far right corner of the screen, a small note blinked:
Observation Focus: Team 3.
Ashriel smiled again.
They were led into a simulation chamber Ryu had not seen before. The walls were matte black, the floor lined with thin hexagonal plates that could shift shape and height. No visible projectors, no obvious exit. Just a single circular mark in the center.
"Stand on the circle," Elara instructed. "All of you."
Ryu, Aki, Ratha, Kallen, and Vex stepped into place. The circle pulsed once under their feet, reading their weight, temperature, and other variables they would never see.
Elara's gaze met Ryu's for a flicker. There was worry there, carefully buried under professionalism. "Remember," she said, voice barely above a whisper, "you are still you."
Before he could ask what she meant, the chamber went dark.
Heat shifted around them. Gravity felt a fraction heavier. The floor rearranged itself in silence.
Then the world snapped into place.
They stood in a ruined city street, buildings shattered on both sides, sky choked with smoke the color of old ash. Sirens wailed somewhere in the distance. The air tasted of metal and dust.
Aki coughed. "Okay. This is… detailed."
NV fed quick data to Ryu.
[Full immersive sim. Pain dampeners active but not null. You will feel most of what happens.]
Echo Corruptor stretched inside his head, almost pleased.
[…Good. Real pain means real choices.]
A voice echoed from above, not Darian's, not Elara's. A system voice.
"Objective: extract civilian package from Zone Red. Time limit: ten minutes. Failure condition: target death."
Vex frowned. "Package?"
Ratha scanned the wreckage. "Probably a hostage."
Kallen pulled up the map projected on his band. "Zone Red is three blocks east. But look.. there's interference lines. They're jamming part of the route."
Aki groaned. "Of course they are."
Ryu started forward. The others fell into formation around him, more out of habit than discussion. They had done enough drills together to know who watched which angle.
Halfway down the street, the first wave of enemies appeared: drones with low-slung bodies and rotating barrels, emerging from alleyways with cold, insect-like precision.
"Cover!" Ratha shouted.
They dove behind the burned-out shell of a vehicle as shots tore through the air. Sparks ricocheted from the metal. Aki screamed more from surprise than injury.
"This is not a basic sim!" he yelped. "They skipped level!"
Kallen peeked over the edge, firing back with his pulse rifle. "Weapons calibrated to non-lethal.. ut if we get hit too much, our bodies won't care about the distinction."
Vex closed his eyes briefly, reading patterns in the chaos. "They're herding us," he said. "Left side is more open than it should be. Right side is..."
NV cut in.
[Trap.]
Ryu shifted his aim. "We go left."
They moved as a unit, not flawless, but fast enough to matter. Drones fell. Shots grazed them, sending bursts of numbed pain along their arms and legs. The city groaned around them like a living thing trying to stand.
It should have been just another brutal exercise. But under the noise, something else began to move.
Stress climbed. Heartbeats rose. Choices came faster.
And deep inside Ryu's skull, in a place even NV couldn't fully map, a third pattern stirred.
Not awake.
Not yet.
But turning.