The convoy was a cage of steel and silence.
No windows, just cold, reinforced walls that seemed to absorb sound and hope in equal measure. The constant, subsonic thrum of engines vibrated through the floor and into my bones, a mechanical heartbeat that marked time toward an uncertain destination. Lena sat across from me, her arms folded tightly against her chest, her gaze fixed on the sealed door as if she could see through it to a future she didn't approve of.
Two FBSD escorts flanked us, faceless behind polished visors that reflected the dim interior lighting. They hadn't spoken since we'd boarded in the Bureau's subterranean garage, as still and silent as automatons programmed for a single function.
'Low mechanical humming.'
I tried to quiet my mind, to stop it from circling the same damning classifications I'd discovered in my research. Class Zero. Reality Anchor Failure. Extinction Event Potential. The Academy wasn't just my destination—according to everything I'd learned, it was designed to be my endpoint.
And then I heard it.
A voice. Not spoken aloud, but somehow transmitted directly into my consciousness through pathways that shouldn't exist.
[Synchronization: Ninety-seven percent complete.]
It was a woman's voice—clear, calm, utterly precise, and utterly inhuman in its perfection. I jerked upright, my boots scraping against the transport floor as every muscle in my body went rigid with shock.
'Sharp breath intake.'
The escorts didn't flinch. Their visored faces remained perfectly still, betraying no awareness of what I'd just experienced. Lena's eyes didn't waver from their focus on the sealed door.
I was the only one who had heard it.
The voice lingered in my mind like an echo, a soft digital hum running in the background of my thoughts like a program I hadn't authorized but couldn't shut down.
Was this part of my anomalous nature finally manifesting? Or was I finally breaking under the psychological pressure of everything that had happened?
'Deep exhale.'
Lena's voice cut through the electronic whisper in my head, sharp and low with suppressed emotion. "You know where you should be going, right? The Anomaly Wing. The A-School. That's where they send the broken ones, the unreadables, the people who don't fit into any normal classification."
She leaned forward, her eyes locking onto mine with an intensity that made the confined space feel even smaller. In her brown eyes, I saw something that wasn't quite pity—it was warning mixed with a kind of desperate urgency.
"But someone pulled strings. Strings so high up the chain of command that I didn't even know they existed until this morning."
She let that statement hang in the air between us, competing with the steady thrum of the engines for dominance of the silence.
"One of the S-Class Awakened intervened on your behalf. A living weapon who teaches at the Central Academy." Her voice dropped to a near-whisper, as if speaking too loudly might summon unwanted attention. "He invoked something called a Right of Patronage. Claimed full responsibility for your integration and oversight."
My throat went dry. In all my research through the Bureau's databases, I'd never encountered references to S-Class classifications or Rights of Patronage. "Why would someone do that?"
"I don't know," she admitted, and the uncertainty in her voice was more frightening than confidence would have been. "But because of his intervention, you're not being sent to the Anomaly Wing where Class Zero cases usually end up. You've been fast-tracked into something completely different."
'Pause for dramatic effect.'
"You're going to Class A."
"Class A?" The words came out as a croak. I'd seen references to the classification system in the files I'd accessed. Class A was for prodigies, for the children of the Great Families, for the once-in-a-generation talents the Bureau molded into their champions and future leaders.
"The best of the best," Lena confirmed, her tone flat with implications I was only beginning to grasp. "Students with power levels that can reshape landscapes or level city blocks. Children who've been groomed since birth to inherit positions of authority in the post-Collapse world order."
Her eyes swept over me, taking in my too-new Academy uniform, my white-knuckled grip on the transport bench, the way I was clearly struggling to process what she was telling me.
"So you'd better be ready for what that means. They won't just dislike you for being different. They'll see your presence as an insult to everything they believe they've earned."
Because I looked weak. Because I had no documented abilities. Because by every metric they understood, I didn't belong in their elite circle.
She didn't have to say it—the implications were written in her expression and the careful way she chose her words.
Before I could formulate a response that wouldn't sound like terrified babbling, the voice whispered again, a ghostly presence in the architecture of my thoughts:
[Preparation phase nearing completion.]
'Transport slowing.'
The convoy began to decelerate, the engine's constant hum dropping to a lower register. With a series of hydraulic hisses that sounded like mechanical breathing, the transport door unsealed.
Sunlight—real, unfiltered sunlight—spilled inside with an intensity that made me flinch and raise my hand to shield my eyes.
When my vision finally adjusted, my breath caught in my chest.
The Central Academy wasn't a school in any sense I could have imagined—it was a fortress that had been designed by people who understood that education and warfare were no longer separate concepts.
'Awe-struck silence.'
Towers of dark, nano-forged alloy speared the sky like obsidian daggers, their surfaces woven through with pulsating veins of blue light that seemed to carry information in patterns too complex for me to follow. The walls were sheer and impossibly high, etched with defensive runes that shimmered in the daylight with energies that made my teeth ache when I looked at them directly.
It was a citadel designed to withstand gods and monsters, a place where the next generation of power was being forged under conditions of absolute security.
"Welcome to the heart of the FBSD's future," Lena said, her voice stripped of all warmth and tinted with something that might have been regret. "Try not to get lost."
'Massive gates groaning open.'
The entrance gates groaned open with the sound of metal under enormous stress, revealing a courtyard that took my breath away for entirely different reasons.
The space was alive with controlled demonstrations of power that bordered on the artistic. Students moved with an easy confidence I could never fake, their casual use of abilities that would have been considered miraculous before the Collapse now as routine as breathing.
A group nearby conjured intricate sculptures of hardened light, laughing as they made them dance through complex patterns that hurt to follow. Another student—a girl who couldn't have been older than sixteen—had her skin sheathed in crystalline armor that caught and refracted the sunlight into rainbow patterns. She casually caught a training drone that had been hurled at her with enough force to shatter concrete, her enhanced strength making the impact look effortless.
And every single one of them seemed to sense my presence the moment I stepped into their domain.
'Whispers starting.'
Whispers coiled around me like snakes, carried on currents of air that felt charged with hostility and curiosity in equal measure.
"—that's the one?"
"They're putting the Null in A-Class?"
"Must be nice to have a Patron who doesn't care about standards."
"—heard he broke three diagnostic systems just by sitting in them—"
"—some kind of reality anchor failure—"
Their stares were weapons, sharp and condescending, measuring me against standards I couldn't possibly meet and finding me catastrophically lacking. A cold dread began to pool in my stomach, my palms growing slick with sweat as the weight of their collective attention pressed down on me.
Then, cutting through the rising panic, the voice spoke again:
[Emotional interference detected. Cortisol levels elevated. Initiating stress response mitigation.]
The fear didn't vanish—that would have been too obviously unnatural. But it... muted. The sharp edges of panic were wrapped in something like mental cotton, pushed behind a pane of psychological glass that let me observe the emotion without being consumed by it. My heartbeat slowed to a steady, controlled rhythm. My breathing evened out into a pattern that suggested calm I didn't actually feel.
The artificial composure was terrifying in its own right. This wasn't coming from me—something else was managing my emotional responses, treating my psychological state like a system to be optimized.
'Bitter laughter.'
A sharp, mocking laugh cut through the murmur of conversations like a blade through silk. A boy with perfectly styled hair and a uniform that looked like it had been tailored by artists rather than seamstresses leaned against a pillar that glowed with internal light. His smile was the kind that suggested he'd never encountered a problem that couldn't be solved by the application of superior resources.
"Let me guess," he drawled, his voice pitched to carry across the courtyard and ensure maximum audience for his performance. "You're the charity case. The Patron's pet project that we're all supposed to pretend belongs here."
His eyes—cold and assessing as a jeweler examining a flawed stone—scanned me from head to toe and clearly found nothing of value.
"Class A eats weak links for breakfast," he continued, his circle of friends chuckling with the kind of agreement that sounded rehearsed. "I'd wish you luck, but it would be a waste of breath on someone who won't last the week."
Heat flushed up my neck in a wave of humiliation, but the artificial calm held my anger in check, leaving me feeling disconnected from my own emotional responses.
'Footsteps approaching.'
"Don't mind Cassian," a new voice said, breezy and unconcerned with the social dynamics that had just played out. "He's contractually obligated to be insufferable. It's part of the Valerius family brand."
I turned to see a girl standing nearby, her auburn hair cropped short and practical, a thin scar splitting her left eyebrow in a way that suggested she'd earned it through experience rather than accident. Her uniform was rumpled and stained with what looked like oil or grease, and she had a smudge on her cheek that she either hadn't noticed or didn't care about.
Her grin was easy and genuine, the first expression I'd encountered since arriving that didn't seem calculated for effect.
"I'm Tessa," she said, thrusting out a hand with the direct confidence of someone who'd never learned to doubt herself. "And you look like you just survived a dimensional collapse. First day?"
I shook her hand, grateful for the first human contact that felt normal since stepping off the transport. For a single, fleeting moment, the oppressive weight of the Academy lightened enough for me to remember how to breathe.
"Karl," I managed. "And yes, definitely first day."
'Deep resonant chime.'
Before our conversation could develop further, a sound thundered across the courtyard that seemed to resonate in my bones. The chime was deep and resonant, pitched at frequencies that commanded immediate attention from every person in the space. All conversation died instantly, as if the sound itself had reached into their minds and switched off their ability to speak.
Above us, holographic screens flickered to life in the air, displaying the severe, uncompromising face of a man in a director's coat whose expression suggested he'd never experienced a moment of doubt or uncertainty in his entire life.
"New arrivals," his voice boomed across the courtyard with the weight of absolute authority. "You stand here because you possess potential that sets you apart from baseline humanity. But potential is meaningless without proof, and proof requires testing under conditions that will reveal your true nature."
A nervous ripple passed through the crowd of students, a collective intake of breath that suggested this wasn't entirely routine.
"Before you are assigned quarters, before you taste your first meal in these halls, before you are permitted to call yourselves Academy students, you will undergo your initial immersion trial," the man continued, his gaze seeming to pierce through the holographic projection and examine each of us individually.
"This is the way of Class A. You will be tested from this moment until you graduate, break, or are removed from the program. Survive the initial trial, and you earn the right to walk these halls as equals."
He paused, letting the implications of that statement settle over us like a weight.
"Fail..." The word hung in the air like a blade. "...and you will be transferred to more appropriate educational environments. Your presence here will not be remembered."
'Holographic displays vanishing.'
The screens vanished as abruptly as they'd appeared. On the far side of the courtyard, a colossal archway that I hadn't noticed before began to iris open with mechanical precision, revealing not a room or corridor, but a swirling vortex of white light that hurt to look at directly.
The light seemed to pull at something deep inside my chest, creating a resonance that made my teeth ache and my vision blur at the edges.
'Nervous exhale.'
Tessa blew out a long breath, her casual confidence wavering for the first time since I'd met her. "Well. No boring orientation speeches or welcome committees, at least." She glanced at me, and I caught something in her expression that might have been sympathy. "Come on, new guy. Try not to die on your first day. I'd hate to lose someone interesting before I've had a chance to figure out what makes them tick."
My wristwatch—the one Lena had given me during our shopping trip—vibrated against my skin. When I glanced at its display, a message appeared in stark, clinical text:
[IMMERSION TEST: INITIATE IMMEDIATELY]
[COMPLIANCE REQUIRED]
[FAILURE NOT RECOMMENDED]
And then, clearer and more present than ever before, the voice in my head spoke its final, terrifying promise:
[Synchronization: Ninety-nine percent complete. Awaiting activation trigger.]
'Heart rate accelerating.'
My blood ran cold as the implications crashed over me like a wave. Something was inside my mind—something that had been building toward this moment, counting down to some kind of activation that I didn't understand but instinctively feared.
The white light from the archway pulsed, pulling at us with increasing insistence. Around me, the other new arrivals began moving toward it with the mechanical precision of people following a compulsion they couldn't resist.
Something was inside me—a coiled spring of impossible energy that had been waiting thirty-one years for exactly this moment. The Academy wanted to test me, to determine what I was capable of and how I should be classified.
They were about to find out that some questions shouldn't be asked.
And some tests shouldn't be administered.
The activation trigger they'd unknowingly provided was about to show them exactly why I'd been classified as an extinction event potential.
'Footsteps toward destiny.'