The first sign that something was wrong came in the form of coffee.
Aiden entered the Unit Alpha briefing room at 07:00 sharp, as always. The long table, the wall screen, the neat rows of chairs all exactly the same.
What wasn't the same was the extra file on his place.
And the coffee.
Someone had put a steaming mug where his usual glass of water should be. On the rim hung a small paper tag.
YOU LOOK LIKE YOU NEED THIS.
Rian lounged in the chair next to his, boots crossed at the ankles, arms folded behind his head.
"Don't say I never do anything for you," Rian said. "You've had 'haunted' eyes since the raid."
Aiden lifted the mug. It smelled strong and bitter.
"Thanks," he said.
He meant it.
Mara entered a moment later, punctual as the clock. Conversations cut off. Everyone straightened. She placed her tablet on the table and tapped the screen.
The main display flickered on: a schematic of the South Sector, the alley from the raid highlighted in red.
"We're revisiting last night's operation," she said. "The Board wants a full review of Deviant activity in the area and any potential accomplices."
Aiden's spine stiffened.
"Accomplices?" Rian whispered. "He was alone."
"Deviants rarely operate entirely solo," Mara said, as if she'd heard. "Networks hide them. Families cover for them. We missed something in that alley."
She looked around the table.
"That's what today is for," she said. "We're going to find out what."
She began the playback.
From the overhead drone's angle, the raid looked clinical: agents moving in perfect formation, shields rising together, bolts firing in a clean arc. The flare of lightning, the explosion of streetlights, the final suppression hit.
On screen, Aiden watched himself advance with Mara toward Kael, shield up.
His shoulders were square. His steps were precise. From this distance, he looked exactly like every other agent in the unit.
"Pause," Mara said.
The image froze.
Her finger circled a section of the screen. "Here," she said. "The surge radius."
The map overlay lit up, showing where the lightning wave had hit.
"Notice anything?" she asked.
Someone at the far end raised a hand. "It veers," they said. "Left side of the street takes more of the impact."
"Correct," Mara said. "The Deviant had range. He could have spread the surge evenly. Instead, he pulled it toward the side with fewer buildings. Less chance of people inside. That suggests some form of control and awareness of civilian presence."
She snapped her gaze to Aiden.
"Agent Lioren," she said. "You noted the same in your revised report."
"Yes," Aiden replied.
"Why didn't you mention it in the first version?" she asked.
Because I was still trying to fit what I saw into the story you trained me on.
"I needed time to review the data," he said. "At first glance, it looked like random discharge. On closer analysis, it didn't."
Mara held his gaze for a long second, then nodded once.
"Very well," she said.
The playback resumed.
Aiden forced himself to watch the moment his shield flickered, remembering the feel of his own power straining to twist the lightning into something else.
The screen didn't show that part.
It only showed the shield shimmer, then stabilize.
"Even with his attempts to control the surge," Mara said, "the Deviant still caused structural damage to three buildings and knocked out grid power for two blocks. Publicly, we emphasize the capture. Internally, we treat this as a near‑disaster."
She cleared the screen and brought up a new image.
Kael's file.
Subject: E‑73. Male. Estimated age: 20. Power class: Electromancer (High Output). Status: CONTAINED – PENDING TRANSFER.
Aiden's jaw tightened at the last line.
"Research has requested accelerated transfer," Mara said. "The Director has approved in principle. Before that happens, the Board wants to be sure we understand every variable in play."
Her gaze flicked across the unit.
"Which means we verify there were no leaks," she said. "No missing data. No unsanctioned contact."
Aiden felt his pulse jump once, hard.
"Any questions?" Mara asked.
No one spoke.
"Good," she said. "You're dismissed. Lioren, stay."
The room emptied quickly. Rian shot Aiden a sympathetic look and a quick wince before slipping out.
When the door closed, Mara leaned against the table, arms crossed.
"Your performance on the field was solid," she said. "Your report was thorough. Your initiative in analyzing the Deviant's behavior will look good to the Board."
"Thank you, Captain," Aiden said.
"But," she went on, "initiative can become a problem if it ignores protocol."
There it was.
"You went to Sublevel Three last night," she said. "Unauthorized. Twice."
Aiden's stomach tightened, but he kept his voice calm. "I believed direct observation would improve our understanding of his threat level."
"You believed your judgment more important than the chain of command," Mara said. "The Director may tolerate that in his son. The Department will not."
Her eyes were sharp, weighing.
"Are you compromised, Agent?" she asked.
The question hit harder than he expected.
"Compromised how?" he asked.
"Emotionally," she said. "Morally. Deviants are trained to poke at weak points. To make you doubt. We need to know if he's succeeding."
He thought of Kael in the cell, talking about kids in tunnels and rules that only applied to some.
"I still believe he's dangerous," Aiden said. "I also believe the risk he poses is more complicated than the files say."
"That already sounds like doubt," Mara replied. "And doubt gets agents killed."
"With respect, Captain," Aiden said, "blind certainty does too."
The words were out before he could pull them back.
For a heartbeat, the room went very still.
Then, to his surprise, one corner of Mara's mouth lifted.
"I'm not asking you to be blind," she said. "I'm asking you to be careful. You're useful, Lioren. Don't make yourself look like a liability."
Her expression hardened again.
"You will not visit the subject without explicit orders," she said. "You will not use your abilities to bypass security. And you will remember that whatever else he is, he is our prisoner, not your project. Understood?"
"Yes, Captain," Aiden said.
"Good. Dismissed."
--------
The rest of the day dragged.
Aiden processed incident logs. He attended a strategy session about grid vulnerabilities. He sparred with Rian in the training room, their practice staves cracking together in a steady rhythm.
"You're distracted," Rian panted, blocking one of Aiden's strikes. "That's new."
"Long night," Aiden said.
"Thinking about Lightning Boy?" Rian teased, then winced. "Sorry. Bad joke."
Aiden didn't answer. Rian's eyes narrowed.
"You really are thinking about him," he said. "You know you're not responsible for what happens to him next, right? That's above our pay grade."
"Is it?" Aiden asked.
Rian hesitated.
"We're soldiers," he said finally. "We follow orders. We do the job. If we start thinking we can fix the whole system by ourselves…"
He let the sentence trail off.
"What happens?" Aiden asked.
"We burn out," Rian said quietly. "Or we disappear."
The practice stave in Aiden's hand suddenly felt heavier.
He thought of Kael's words: *You'll have to decide what to be. An agent who walks the line they drew for you… or something else.*
Every time someone repeated "just follow orders," the line felt sharper under his feet.
---------
On Sublevel Three, at almost the same hour, Kael sat on his bed and stared at the ceiling.
The lights in his cell stayed dim most of the time, cycling through a fake day‑night pattern that fooled the body just enough to hurt. The collar around his neck had settled into a constant low burn, a reminder more than a punishment.
He flexed his fingers, feeling the phantom itch of electricity under his skin.
The band on his wrist pulsed when he did, a little warning shock that said: *Don't even think about it.*
The walls hummed with spells and circuits.
They were afraid of him.
He clung to that thought like a stubborn scrap of pride.
Footsteps passed in the corridor. A door clanged shut somewhere. Water moved through pipes in the walls, a faint steady sound.
He wondered what the kids were doing in the tunnels tonight.
If they were talking about him.
If they thought he was dead.
"Subject E‑73," a voice crackled through the intercom. "Prepare for transfer evaluation at 09:00 tomorrow."
Kael rolled his eyes at the ceiling.
"Can't wait," he muttered.
He didn't know what "transfer evaluation" meant exactly. He had heard whispers tests, stress trials, labs. Some people came back from them. Some didn't.
He thought about the agent who kept coming to his door.
Not the ones with hard eyes and clipped voices.
The one who had almost admitted he felt the current too.
*You're the one they point to when they want to prove the system works.*
Kael gave a humorless smile.
Maybe, he thought, that was the crack.
Not big enough to escape through.
But big enough to push a question into.
-------
That night, Aiden found himself at his window again, looking down at the city.
He thought about the day, about Mara's warning, Rian's quiet fear, Elia's two imaginary kids.
He thought about being called compromised.
Was he?
He still believed the city needed rules. He still believed magic without limits could destroy lives. He had seen that in simulations, in real footage, in history lessons.
But he also believed what he had seen in Kael's eyes.
Fear.
Defiance.
Care for people the system insisted did not exist.
Two things were true at the same time.
Kael's power could burn a whole street to ash.
Kael had also thrown himself between that power and the hidden children in the tunnels.
The reports would only need one of those truths.
The city, most likely, would only believe one of them.
Aiden lifted his hand and pressed his palm against the glass. A faint illusion sparked to life: a thin line of light tracing the border between Central Ward and the lower sectors. On one side, the line shone bright white. On the other, it dimmed to a soft blue.
A boundary.
A choice.
He wondered how many lives had already been decided by the simple accident of being born on one side of that line instead of the other.
The light trembled, then broke.
He closed his fist, and the illusion vanished.
Hairline fractures, he thought.
In every story, that's how walls begin to fall.