Zayel learned early that mornings were the worst.
Not because of classes.
Not because of tests.
Mornings were when people decided who they could step on today.
The school yard was wide and clean, designed to keep students moving. There were no benches unless your rank allowed rest access. No walls to lean on. No corners to hide in.
Movement was mandatory. Stillness was suspicious.
Zayel walked with his head down, hands in his pockets, trying to look smaller than he already was.
Someone bumped his shoulder.
Hard.
He stumbled forward but caught himself. He did not turn around. Turning around meant eye contact. Eye contact meant invitation.
"Watch where you're going," a voice said behind him.
Zayel kept walking.
A second shove hit his back.
This time he almost fell.
"Hey," the voice said louder. "Your chip not working again?"
Laughter followed.
Zayel felt his face heat up. His heartbeat spiked, then dropped suddenly as his chip intervened. It always overcorrected. Instead of calm, he felt numb.
A blue notice flickered briefly in the corner of his vision.
EMOTIONAL STABILITY ASSIST — ACTIVE
He hated that message.
He hated knowing the system was watching his feelings and deciding how much he was allowed to have.
He reached his locker and opened it quickly.
Too slowly.
Someone slammed it shut.
Zayel flinched.
"Oops," the boy said. "Reflex delay."
That got more laughs.
The boy leaned closer, openly scanning Zayel's forehead now. Public scanning was permitted, as long as no physical damage occurred.
"Class D," he said. "Barely."
Zayel looked up.
That was a mistake.
The boy smiled wider.
"Oh," he said. "He can make eye contact. Progress."
A shadow stepped between them.
"Enough."
The voice was sharp, controlled.
The boy rolled his eyes and backed off.
"Relax, Lyra," he said. "We're just helping him socialize."
Lyra Kess stood with her arms crossed, chip glowing a steady green. Her posture was perfect. Her uniform was spotless, like the air around her was filtered differently.
She glanced at Zayel like he was data, not a person.
"You're causing a time delay," she said. "Move."
Zayel opened his locker, grabbed his things, and stepped aside.
As he walked away, he heard her mutter, "Waste of processing space."
The words stayed longer than the bruises would.
In class, it got worse.
Instructor Hale announced a paired exercise. Groups were assigned automatically by the system, names flashing across the room in clean white text.
Zayel waited for his name to appear beside someone else.
It did not.
A message appeared above his desk.
NO COMPATIBLE PARTNER FOUND
The silence that followed was almost worse than laughter.
Then someone snorted.
"Even the system doesn't want him," another whispered, loud enough for the room to accept it as truth.
Instructor Hale did not react. He did not even glance up for long.
"Solo task," he said. "Begin."
The room shifted into quiet compliance.
Class A, B and C students leaned back, eyes closing as data streamed directly into their chips. You could see the difference in their faces. Their breathing slowed. Their jaws unclenched. Learning looked like sleep.
Zayel picked up the tablet.
It was heavier than it should have been. Not because of weight, but because of meaning.
Halfway through the task, a paper ball hit his desk.
Then another.
Then a third.
The instructor did nothing.
The system detected no violation.
When Class D students were targeted, it was categorized as peer correction. A corrective experience meant to motivate improvement. The punishment wasn't the paper itself.
It was being forced to exist in a world where paper meant you had failed.
Zayel did not feel hurt by the impact.
He felt hurt by what it represented.
In this era, writing was a punishment. Knowledge was meant to be absorbed, not written. Last year, after failing the annual adaptability evaluation, he had been ordered to transcribe an entire textbook by hand.
Not as learning.
As correction.
The system called it motivation.
Zayel called it humiliation.
Pain, anger, and helplessness tangled inside him. His chip lagged behind, failing to stabilize his emotions on time, letting everything rise too high before it remembered to crush it.
Then, finally, it reacted.
A prompt slid across his vision, calm and neat, like it was doing him a favor.
EMOTIONAL REGULATION PROTOCOL — ENGAGED
ANGER: REDUCED
STRESS: SUPPRESSED
COMPLIANCE: RESTORED
REMINDER: ACCEPTABLE BEHAVIOR MAINTAINS ACCESS
The numbness returned.
It always returned.
Instructor Hale began calling pairs to the front.
"As usual," he said, "we begin with top performers."
Aurelian Vox stepped forward.
Class A Ascendant.
The system called him the perfect human. It wasn't a compliment. It was classification. A summary.
Every metric favored him. It showed in his appearance alone. Tall. Flawless posture. Silver hair always perfectly styled. A pristine white and gold uniform untouched by wear, like fabric and dirt had an agreement to never meet.
His eyes were calm. Unreadable.
The system paired him with another Class A Ascendant. It was always like that. High efficiency matched with high efficiency. Perfect data flowing into perfect storage.
The activity was simple.
One student sent data. The other received it.
Five minutes.
Aurelian stood still, hands behind his back, like the room belonged to him. His partner raised a hand slightly, initiating the transfer.
A soft shimmer appeared between them. Not visible to everyone, but you could see the faint pulse in their chips. Two synchronized blue lights. Two perfect signals.
Instructor Hale watched the timer.
Aurelian's display appeared clean and immediate.
DATA RECEIVED: 100%
LOSS: 0%
STABILITY: OPTIMAL
No fluctuation.
No delay.
No human error.
Aurelian did not smile. He simply stepped back, as if perfection was expected and anything else would have been embarrassing.
Next was Lyra Kess.
Class B Synthetic.
Even in Class B, she was treated like a problem the system still hadn't solved. Her memory storage scores were too high. Her control was too steady.
She stood at the front with her chip glowing a steady green. Slim build. Sharp facial features. Long dark violet-blue hair falling neatly down her back, not a strand out of place.
Her uniform wasn't standard. It was modified, traced with faint glowing circuit lines that pulsed softly when she synced.
Because of her storage capability, the system paired her with a Class A Ascendant.
Not as an honor.
As a test.
Lyra's partner initiated the data stream.
Lyra's eyes closed. Her posture didn't change, but her chip brightened slightly as if it was hungry. The holographic display formed in front of her, crisp and confident.
DATA RECEIVED: 99.7%
LOSS: 0.3%
STABILITY: HIGH
A whisper ran through the room.
That kind of number from a Synthetic made people uncomfortable. Not because it was lower than Aurelian.
Because it was too close.
Lyra opened her eyes and looked toward the class like she was already bored.
She stepped back without waiting for praise.
More pairs followed.
Class A with Class A.
Class B with Class B.
Class C with Class C.
Everyone performed well enough to avoid attention. That was the real goal. In this school, excellence was rewarded, but normal was safer.
Then it was Zayel's turn.