The acceptance letter arrived on a Tuesday, in a cream envelope with a wax seal shaped like a phoenix wrapped in a circuit.
Congratulations, Miss Morrow. You have been selected.
Not admitted.
Selected.
As if they'd been watching. Waiting.
I held the paper between my fingers like it might burn me. My mother stood in the kitchen doorway, wiping her hands on a dish towel, her eyes bright with a hope so heavy it made my chest ache.
"Veridian," she said, like it was a prayer. "No one from this side of the city's ever gone."
I didn't tell her I'd already read everything I could find. That I knew the alumni: CEOs, senators, a tech oligarch who once said, Democracy is inefficient. We need better filters.
I didn't tell her the last scholarship student had left after one semester — transferred "for personal reasons," according to the website. No photo. No quote. Just a blank space in the archive.
I did tell her I'd go.
Not because I wanted to.
But because I needed to see what they were hiding.
Veridian Academy sat at the end of a winding road, carved into the side of a mountain like something grown, not built. Stone towers, glass atriums, a courtyard paved with slate from some forgotten quarry. No fences. No guards. Just silence, and the kind of stillness that comes from absolute control.
My taxi stopped at the gate.
A boy in a navy blazer stepped forward, clipboard in hand. He smiled — perfect teeth, perfect posture — and said, "Sage Morrow?"
I nodded.
"Welcome to Veridian. I'm Kieran Vale. I'll be your orientation guide."
He took my suitcase like he'd done it a hundred times. Maybe he had. There was something rehearsed in the way he moved, like every gesture had been measured and approved.
As we walked, he spoke without looking at me. "The campus runs on balance. Order. Respect. You'll find that those who understand that tend to… thrive."
I glanced at him. "And those who don't?"
He almost smiled. "They don't stay long."
The dorm was a long, low building with floor-to-ceiling windows. Inside, everything was beige and chrome, soft lighting, the hum of climate control. My room — 317 — had a single bed, a desk, a wardrobe, and a small speaker embedded in the wall.
"The earpiece goes behind your right ear," Kieran said, handing me a silver disc the size of a dime. "It syncs with the campus network. Language training, schedule updates, wellness prompts."
"What if I don't want to wear it?"
He turned slowly, as if I'd asked something in a dead language.
"It's mandatory," he said. "For your safety. And everyone else's."
He left without another word.
I stood there, alone, the door clicking shut behind me.
Then I walked to the window.
Below, students moved in quiet clusters, laughing just enough, touching only when necessary. A girl adjusted her blazer in a mirror. A boy typed on a tablet, then stopped, looked around, and erased what he'd written.
I pressed my palm against the glass.
Cold. Solid. Transparent.
Just like the lie.
That night, I didn't sleep.
I sat at the desk, opened my laptop, and typed three words into the search bar:
Veridian Academy Index.
The results were clean. Polished. Nothing about rankings. Nothing about Luka.
But in the corner of an old PDF — a brochure from five years back — a footnote flickered as the page loaded:
Project Alpha Protocol: Longitudinal Study in Leadership Formation (Internal Use Only).
I stared at the words.
Then I whispered, quiet enough that no microphone could catch it:
"I see you."