The screaming started during Cycle Five.
Not the panicked kind.
Not the sharp, sudden cry of pain that made bodies flinch and instincts kick in.
This scream was sustained.
Flat.
Wrong.
Kael woke to it echoing through the corridors, vibrating faintly through the walls of his room. The hum of the Freezer shifted pitch in response, deepening as if the structure itself were compensating.
He sat up slowly, heart already pounding.
That's not training, he thought. That's someone breaking.
The scream cut off abruptly.
Silence followed.
Not relief—expectation.
A chime sounded.
"Subjects are to remain in their quarters," the voice announced calmly. "Deviation has been recorded. Assessment in progress."
Kael swung his legs over the side of the bed anyway.
His hands trembled—not from the cold this time, but from the afterimage of the sound still ringing in his skull. He pressed his palms together, feeling the faint warmth beneath his skin.
Who was that?
He didn't need to ask.
He already knew.
---
They were assembled an hour later.
Or what felt like an hour.
The orientation hall was colder than usual. Not in temperature—but in tone. The blue light behind the panels pulsed slowly, deliberately.
One position in the semicircle was empty.
F-204.
A quiet boy. Thin. Nervous. He'd shaken constantly during baseline assessments, teeth chattering even when the temperature wasn't low enough to justify it.
He hadn't screamed during training.
Not until now.
"Subject F-204 has been removed from the program," the woman announced, voice level.
No explanation.
No pause.
Removed.
Someone swallowed audibly.
"What does that mean?" a girl asked, voice thin.
The woman regarded her with polite detachment. "It means he exceeded acceptable loss parameters."
Kael's stomach twisted.
"Loss of what?" he demanded.
The gray-haired man answered this time.
"Continuity."
Silence.
"Subject F-204 experienced a fragmentation event," he continued. "Identity drift exceeded ninety percent. Reintegration failed."
Kael clenched his jaw.
"You mean he lost his mind."
The man inclined his head. "If you prefer imprecise language."
Anger flared, hot and sharp, pushing back against the cold that pressed into Kael's bones.
"What happens to him now?" Kael asked.
The woman's gaze slid to him. "That depends."
"On what?"
"On whether he remains useful."
The words settled like frost over fire.
Kael felt something inside him recoil—not the flame, but himself.
F-093 shifted beside him, fists clenched at her sides. Her jaw was tight, eyes fixed on the empty space where F-204 should have been.
"This is a warning," the gray-haired man said. "The Freezer will make you stronger. It will also strip away anything unnecessary to that goal."
He looked directly at Kael.
"Your task is to decide what you are willing to lose."
---
Training resumed immediately.
No mourning period.
No adjustment time.
Combat drills. Cold endurance. Fire suppression.
As if nothing had happened.
Kael moved through the motions with mechanical precision, his mind half a step removed from his body. Every breath felt measured. Every movement deliberate.
He noticed things now.
How the Freezer's cold wasn't uniform—it pulsed, reacting to emotional spikes.
How Unrankables who resisted too hard burned faster.
How those who surrendered became… dull.
F-061 had returned.
His shoulder was wrapped, his expression darker, his arrogance sharpened into something edged.
He didn't speak to Kael.
He watched him.
That was worse.
During fire control exercises, Kael felt it again—the whisper at the edge of his perception. Not voices. Not hallucinations.
Patterns.
He saw how the flames moved before they moved. Felt where pressure would collapse before it did.
This is how it starts, he realized. This is the drift.
The Freezer didn't just test strength.
It rewarded disconnection.
"You're pulling ahead," F-093 murmured later, during a rare unmonitored interval in the recovery hall.
Kael snorted softly. "Doesn't feel like it."
She studied him. "You don't shake anymore."
He blinked. "What?"
"Your hands," she said. "Everyone shakes at first. From the cold. From the fear."
She met his eyes. "You stopped."
Kael looked down.
She was right.
That should have comforted him.
It didn't.
"What happens when someone breaks?" he asked quietly.
F-093 hesitated.
"I've heard rumors," she said. "They don't always discard them. Sometimes they repurpose them."
Kael's throat tightened. "Repurpose how?"
She looked away. "That's classified."
That night, Kael dreamed.
He stood in a vast white space, fire coiled in his chest like a living thing. Across from him stood another version of himself—eyes hollow, skin pale, mouth stretched into a grin that didn't belong on a human face.
You're adapting, the other Kael said.
"I don't want to," Kael replied.
The figure laughed. You don't get to choose.
Kael woke with a gasp, heart racing.
A message pulsed faintly at the edge of his vision—there and gone so fast he might have imagined it.
[EVENT PENDING: CONDITIONS NOT MET]
He stared at the darkness, breath shallow.
What was that?
No answer came.
Only the cold.
Only the hum.
Somewhere in the Freezer, a file was updated.
SUBJECT F-117:
LOSS THRESHOLD—UNDETERMINED
And for the first time since entering the Freezer, Kael understood the true metric being measured.
Not power.
Not control.
But how much of himself he could afford to lose—
—and still fight back.