Chapter 30: Arrival Day
The sky bled gold and gray the morning they arrived.
Four unmarked black cars. Tinted windows. They came with no fanfare, no insignia — but everyone knew exactly what they were. The air shifted the moment the first door opened.
Six agents. One lead investigator. No names. No handshakes.
They moved like people used to being feared. Like men and women who had read too many files and still believed they knew everything. I watched from the courtyard balcony, arms crossed, their rhythm calculated.
"They're here," Haruto said, standing beside me.
"They think this is just another school," I replied.
Tamir and Juno were already back in the control room beneath the academy, overseeing the last cycle of the Reflection Protocol. The performance had to be perfect — no glitch, no hesitation, no trace of rebellion.
By midday, the lead agent — a woman in slate gray, hair like woven steel — was seated in Cyrus' office. Her eyes flicked to mine like she already had a bullet with my name carved into it.
"You've been a mystery for too long," she said. "We don't like mysteries."
"And yet you keep creating them," I said.
She opened a thick dossier. Photos. Logs. A few blurred images of my face from decades past. All failures to pin me down.
"We're here to assess the psychological conditioning of the students. Their ethics. Their behavioral patterns. Their connection to you."
"Why not just ask them?"
She smiled coldly. "We will."
The students were called in, one by one.
Eva sat down like a diplomat. She spoke with sincerity, offered reports, and complimented the academy's methods.
Haruto played the ambitious prodigy — all answers sharp, all numbers cleaner than reality.
Juno pretended nervousness, just enough to seem genuine. Tamir fed clean data into the monitors. Emel quoted regulations back at the agents better than their own manuals.
Each one delivered their part.
Each one flawless.
Behind the scenes, their real selves watched every move.
The agents prowled through classrooms, dorms, corridors. They found nothing. Everything was too pristine. Too believable.
By sunset, the lead agent looked… agitated.
"This can't be all," she told me. "It's too perfect."
"Maybe you've forgotten what real potential looks like when it's not caged," I said.
She didn't reply.
But I saw the tension behind her eyes.
That night, I stood in the courtyard again, watching the mist curl through the stone paths. Emel joined me.
"Do you think they'll believe it?" she asked.
"They already do," I said. "But that's not the point."
"What is?"
"We're not just hiding," I said. "We're rewriting the rules while they still think they're reading the manual."
And just like that, the board was set.
They arrived with doubt.
They would leave with false certainty.
But certainty... is a weapon.
To be continued in Chapter 31.