Zayel stood alone at the front, holding the tablet.
No partner.
His task was different. He had to show how much data he managed to store through manual input. A relic method. A humiliation ritual disguised as an exercise.
He closed his eyes anyway.
He tried to do what everyone else had done. He focused, sending signals to his chip, forcing it to respond. Forcing it to pretend it belonged with the others.
It glowed faintly.
A holographic display flickered into existence.
Numbers crawled upward.
Slow.
Lagging.
Then stopped.
0.8%
The chip stuttered again. Storage refused the data like it was contaminated.
Zayel pressed his lips together.
He felt the numbness creeping in, arriving like a curtain before the humiliation could fully form. A delayed mercy.
Whispers spread through the room.
Some laughed, because it was easy.
Some looked away, because it was uncomfortable.
Some didn't bother hiding their disappointment, because Class D disappointment was considered acceptable.
Instructor Hale watched for a moment.
"Return to your seat," he said.
No comfort.
No correction.
Just dismissal.
Before the bell, Instructor Hale synchronized with the class.
An announcement was sent.
Overall standings.
Aurelian Vox ranked first.
Lyra Kess remained near the top.
Most of the batch ranked high.
Three students were flagged at the bottom.
Zayel's chip lagged.
Everyone else received the ranking in an instant. He watched their eyes flicker as they read it, the subtle expressions of relief and pride, the quick glances toward whoever had fallen.
Five minutes passed before the data reached him.
That delay was the reason he had not been classified as a Reject.
His chip did not refuse commands.
It delayed them.
That delay allowed him to feel anger before suppression. Fear without erasure. Injustice without emotional flattening. The system flagged him as inefficient.
Zayel called it the only thing that still felt like his.
Class ended.
Students left quickly.
Zayel stayed behind, as usual.
The academy had confirmed it again.
Bottom of the ranking.
He waited until the corridors were empty before leaving. When he finally stepped out, the academy dome had shifted into false evening, the brightness dimming smoothly like the world was pretending to rest.
On a higher walkway overlooking the lower wing, Aurelian watched.
He stood with his hands behind his back, posture perfect even when no one was grading him. Lyra stood beside him, arms folded, eyes focused on Zayel's data feed.
"He pulled our year average down," one elite student behind them muttered.
"We'll get flagged as a volatile batch if they keep him," another said.
"It's statistical," Aurelian replied calmly. "One unstable subject increases incident likelihood by thirty-eight percent."
Lyra frowned. "So what? You think removing him fixes the curve?"
Aurelian didn't answer at first.
His chip pulsed blue.
A private data packet slid into his vision, sealed and clean, carrying the kind of authority that didn't need to raise its voice.
FACULTY OVERSIGHT — PRIVATE NOTICE
STATUS: AUTHORITY DEPLOYMENT CONFIRMED
PROTOCOL: ERROR CORRECTION
TARGET: ZAYEL ANZ
LOCATION: LOWER WING ROUTE
INSTRUCTION: DO NOT INTERFERE
Aurelian exhaled slowly.
Not annoyed.
Not excited.
Just acknowledging a process he had always trusted.
"The authority is already on the move," he said. "It's an error correction now."
He looked down at the lower corridor where the lights thinned.
"Let it happen," Aurelian added, voice calm. "The system doesn't issue that protocol unless it's decided."
Lyra's eyes narrowed slightly, but she said nothing.
Below them, Zayel continued walking, unaware of the notice attached to his name like an invisible tag.
The corridor to the lower dormitories was always darker. Not because the lights were broken, and not because the wiring was old. The school simply didn't spend brightness on students the system had already marked as low return.
Zayel walked slower the deeper he went, like his body understood something his mind refused to accept. Above, the upper wings hummed with clean footsteps and soft chimes. Down here, even the walls sounded tired.
His chip pulsed once, late and dull, like a heartbeat that had to be reminded to exist. A notice tried to form in the corner of his vision, then flickered out before it could finish loading. He swallowed and kept moving anyway.
He told himself it was nothing. He told himself it was just lag, just another daily failure that would embarrass him and then pass.
The corridor curved left, then right, like it was guiding him somewhere he didn't want to go. The screens thinned out as he walked, and the surveillance nodes were spaced wider apart. Blind spots existed here, not by accident.
By design.
A tone chimed.
Low. Neutral. Official.
Zayel stopped because his body stopped for him, the same way it stopped when a teacher spoke or a scanner hovered. The sound came again, closer this time, and it didn't come from behind him.
It came from above.
A soft mechanical glide echoed across the corridor. Something moved along the ceiling rail with the smooth confidence of technology that had never been questioned.
Then the authority arrived.
They didn't come like instructors. They didn't come like students. They came like a system update, quiet and unavoidable.
Two enforcement units descended first. Smooth matte bodies, narrow and jointed, moving with unnatural steadiness. No faces, no eyes, only a circular lens that pulsed faint blue as it scanned.
Zayel's chip flickered orange.
A notice finally loaded, delayed as always.
FACULTY OVERSIGHT DETECTED
STAND BY FOR ERROR CORRECTION
His stomach tightened.
He hadn't done anything. That thought came automatically, like a prayer, even though he knew innocence wasn't a category the system recognized. The system didn't punish intent.
It corrected instability.
One unit stopped a few meters away. A speaker activated, calm and genderless, designed to be impossible to argue with.
"ZAYEL ANZ," it said. "CLASS D DRIFTER. ADAPTABILITY UNSTABLE."
Zayel forced his voice out because silence always made him feel smaller. "I'm going to my dorm," he said, as if stating a destination could count as permission.
The unit didn't respond to words.
It responded to his metrics.
A new prompt slid into his vision.
CORRECTIVE SESSION INITIATED
CATEGORY: ERROR CORRECTION
PARAMETERS: NON-LETHAL OUTCOME PREFERRED
OBJECTIVE: COMPLIANCE REINFORCEMENT
Zayel took a step back.
The second unit shifted, cutting off the corridor behind him with a smooth motion. Not dramatic, not aggressive. Just final.
He glanced toward the nearest wall-mounted camera node. Its indicator light barely blinked, dim and tired, like it was pretending not to see.
Down here, being seen wasn't guaranteed.
A panel on the wall slid open with a soft click. Three figures stepped out, clean gray uniforms with no class colors, only a thin blue strip across the chest. Their chips glowed a regulated white that did not belong to any rank.
Authority.