The city looked different from his apartment window.
From here, Central Ward was a clean diagram: straight roads, even rows of towers, orderly streams of lights moving along the elevated lanes. The rain had thinned to a soft drizzle, turning everything behind the glass slightly blurred, like a painting covered in mist.
Aiden sat at his desk with the report open on his screen and his hands motionless over the keys.
FIELD INCIDENT: SOUTH SECTOR – UNREGISTERED ELECTROMANCER
AGENT: AIDEN LIORON – UNIT ALPHA
The cursor blinked at the end of the line, waiting.
He knew exactly how the report was supposed to look. The academy had drilled the structure into him: clear timeline, precise energy readings, no emotional language, no speculation. Just facts.
But when he tried to type, his mind didn't replay numbers or diagrams.
It replayed the sound of glass shattering, the sight of Kael dropping to his knees, the way lightning had wrapped around his shield like it recognized him.
A notification chimed softly in the corner of the screen.
REMINDER: INCIDENT REPORT DUE – 02:00
The time in the upper corner read 01:23.
Plenty of time, as long as he wrote the approved version of the truth.
He forced his fingers to move.
"Unit Alpha responded to an anomaly detected by the South Sector grid…"
His typing was fast and neat. He described the storm, the surge, the team's formation. He logged the series of attacks and defensive measures.
He did not type: Ihesitated.
He did not type: I almost shaped his lightning instead of blocking it.
His reflection stared back at him in the dark screen frame: short dark hair still damp at the edges, grey eyes rimmed in red from lack of sleep, the faint outline of the Department insignia on his shirt.
At the bottom, the report required a classification: THREAT LEVEL.
He entered: HIGH.
He stared at the word for a long moment.
High threat. Dangerous. Valuable specimen.
Lightning that laughs at suppression, Varrick had said. Put that in a lab, and they'll talk about it for years.
Aiden's hand tightened on the edge of the desk.
A soft chime sounded at the door.
He closed the report with a flick of his fingers and straightened. "Enter."
The door slid open to reveal a woman in a grey Department uniform, not much older than Aiden. Her ID badge flashed:
ELIA TERN – MEDICAL DIVISION
"Aiden Lioren?" she asked.
"Yes."
She stepped inside, the door hissing shut behind her, and glanced once around the room like she was checking for hidden observers. Her dark hair was pulled back in a loose knot, wisps escaping at her temples. She looked tired in the way only people who worked nights in hospitals did.
"I'm Elia," she said. "Your father requested a debrief on the Deviant's medical status to complete your mission file." She looked faintly amused by that. "I think he wants you to see the full chain of procedure."
Of course he did.
"Sit," Aiden said automatically, gesturing to the chair opposite his desk.
She shook her head. "No need. I won't stay long."
She passed him a small tablet. Medical data glowed on the screen: vitals, scans, power readings. Aiden skimmed them, not trusting himself to look too closely.
"Is he stable?" he asked.
"Physically?" Elia shrugged. "More or less. He took heavy suppression at high output. That kind of rebound can fry nerves. But his system is… resilient." She tapped a line of numbers. "Most mages would be unconscious for hours after readings like these. He was awake and sarcastic before we even finished the first scan."
That sounded exactly like the boy in the interrogation room.
"What about long‑term damage?" Aiden asked.
"You sound worried," Elia said, watching him.
"I'm building a complete picture for the report," he replied smoothly.
She lifted one eyebrow, clearly not buying it, but answered anyway.
"If they keep him on full‑strength bands and collar for days, he'll get tremors, muscle weakness, probably chronic pain," she said. "You can't crush that much power without some blowback. But I don't make containment decisions. I just patch people up enough so they're still useful."
Useful.
The same word his father had used.
Aiden's stomach twisted again. "You treat Deviants often?"
"Often enough." Elia's mouth flattened. "Sometimes I treat agents too. Funny thing: the injuries look the same going in, but not coming out."
He looked up. "What do you mean?"
She hesitated, then stepped closer to the window instead of answering. From this angle, the city lights washed over her face.
"You grew up in Central Ward, right?" she asked. "You ever been in the lower sectors without a unit around you?"
"I've trained there," he said.
"Training isn't the same." She turned to look at him. Her eyes were sharp, but not unkind. "Out there, when people say 'Deviant,' they don't always mean 'monster.' Sometimes they mean 'neighbor.' 'Brother.' 'Daughter.' A person who got unlucky with where their power showed up."
"That power still causes harm," Aiden said, hearing his father's arguments come out of his own mouth. "Without regulation—"
"Without education," Elia cut in quietly, "it spirals. Your father's protocols jumped straight to punishment and skipped a step. Do you know how many kids we see who never had a chance to learn?"
He didn't.
The academy had statistics. Charts. Percentages. None of them had faces.
"Why are you telling me this?" he asked.
Elia looked at him for a long moment, then smiled faintly.
"Because you went pale when you saw that boy come in," she said. "You looked like you'd been hit yourself."
Heat crawled up the back of his neck. He hadn't realized anyone had noticed.
"It was my first live capture," he said.
"It was your first time seeing what happens afterward," she corrected.
His hand curled slightly on the desk. "What will they do with him?"
"Elia."
Both of them stiffened at the sound of his father's voice over the room's speakers. Aiden's gaze flicked to the ceiling. A small, previously unnoticed lens blinked red near the corner.
The Director's tone was calm but left no room for argument.
"Your role is to report medical facts," Hadrien said. "Not to editorialize them."
Elia's jaw tightened.
"Of course, Director," she said, looking at Aiden, not the ceiling. "Medically speaking, the subject is currently stable and ready for transfer to Research when ordered."
The red light faded.
Elia exhaled through her nose.
"Careful what you ask aloud in this building," she said softly. "The walls always listen."
She turned toward the door.
"Elia," Aiden said, stopping her at the threshold. "If… if someone wanted to see him again. For observation purposes. What wing would they go to?"
Her eyes searched his face, reading the parts of him he didn't say out loud.
"Observation purposes," she repeated.
"Yes."
She hesitated, then answered.
"Sublevel Three," she said. "Research Holding. But you didn't hear it from me."
The door slid shut behind her.
Silence filled the room quickly, loud in his ears.
Aiden looked down at the report still open on his screen. The cursor blinked at the end of the final paragraph.
He should send it. Close the file. Go to sleep.
Instead, he saved it as a draft and stood.
The hallway outside his apartment was empty and quiet. The late‑night cleaning drones had already passed, leaving the air faintly scented with chemicals. Cameras watched from the corners, their red lights blinking in a slow rhythm.
Sublevel Three required clearance he technically didn't have.
He had something else.
In the elevator, Aiden stood very still as the doors slid shut. The scanner flashed over his eyes, confirming his ID.
"Destination?" the system asked.
"Administrative floor," he said.
The panel lit up.
He waited.
The elevator hummed, descending smoothly. As it passed the main levels, Aiden let his magic rise just enough to touch the image of the floor display. A soft shimmer wrapped around the glowing numbers, bending them like light through water.
The lift thought it stopped at Administration.
It kept going.
The doors opened onto a colder world.
Sublevel corridors were built of thick grey composite, no windows, only strips of harsh white light on the ceiling. The air smelled of metal, ozone, and something sharp beneath the disinfectant: old spellwork burned into walls and floors.
Signs marked each direction:
CONTAINMENT
RESEARCH
ARCHIVES
Aiden's heart beat faster.
Research Holding was down two turns and through a locked door ringed with wards. A guard sat at a desk beside the entrance, half‑watching a monitor, half‑reading something on a slim pad.
He glanced up when Aiden approached.
"ID," he said in a bored tone.
Aiden held out his badge. The guard scanned it, frowned.
"Your clearance doesn't cover this level," he said. "You lost?"
"No," Aiden replied, keeping his voice calm. "Director Lioren requested additional field notes on the Electromancer subject. He wants a firsthand assessment before he finalizes the new protocols."
The guard hesitated. Nobody liked risking trouble with the Director.
"Do you have written orders?" he asked.
"Not yet," Aiden said smoothly. "He said time was more important than paperwork."
He let a touch of cold authority slip into his tone an echo of his father's voice. Not too much. Just enough.
The guard swallowed.
"Right." He pushed a form toward Aiden. "Sign this entry log. If anyone asks, I'll say you were sent."
Aiden signed.
The door unlocked with a heavy click. Wards shimmered once, then parted.
Inside, the lights were dimmer. Doors lined both sides of the hallway, each with a small observation window and a screen displaying status: OCCUPIED, EMPTY, RESTRICTED.
Most showed EMPTY.
A few glowed red.
He walked slowly, reading labels: pyrokinetic, telepathic, kinetic anomaly. Then he saw it.
UNREGISTERED ELECTROMANCER – TEMPORARY HOLD.
The window was small, barely larger than his hand. He had to tilt his head to see inside.
Kael sat on the narrow bed, back against the wall, knees drawn up. The collar still circled his throat, its light dimmer now but steady. The cuffs were gone, replaced by a lighter band around one wrist, linked to the wall by a thin cable of energy rather than metal.
He was awake.
His head was tilted back, eyes closed, lips moving silently. Maybe counting. Maybe talking to someone who wasn't there.
Aiden hesitated, aware of the camera above the door, the listening walls Elia had warned him about.
Then he knocked just once, a soft tap.
Kael's eyes snapped open.
For a moment he didn't move. His gaze searched the small space, confused, until it found the window.
Aiden.
Recognition flickered across his face, followed by a mix of disbelief and something darker.
"You," Kael said, voice muffled through the glass. "Of course."
He pushed himself up and walked closer, stopping just on the other side of the barrier. Up close, he looked worse than he had in the interrogation room dark circles under his eyes, tension in every line of his body.
Aiden leaned slightly toward the glass.
He had come here for "observation," he told himself.
But the first words that came out were nothing like a report.
"Are you in pain?" he asked quietly.
Kael stared at him, then huffed a short laugh.
"That's your first question?" he said. "Not 'why did you do it,' or 'what did you think would happen'?"
"I saw the medical file," Aiden said. "I know suppression backlash isn't minor."
Kael's mouth twisted. "You read my pain on a file? That's cute."
He lifted his wrist, showing the glowing band.
"It burns," he said. "Every time I think about using power, it tightens. They call it a 'behavioral reminder.'"
Aiden swallowed.
"This isn't… permanent," he said. "If you cooperate, if you—"
"Cooperate?" Kael cut in. "You mean give them everything they want so they can copy me and toss what's left?"
"That isn't necessarily—"
"You really believe that?" Kael asked, eyes narrowing. "You were there in the interrogation room. You heard how they talk. 'Useful.' 'Data.' 'Repurpose.'"
The words landed hard. Aiden had no answer for them.
"I'm here to understand," he said finally.
Kael raised an eyebrow. "Understand what? How a Deviant thinks? How to catch the next one faster?"
"No," Aiden said, more sharply than he intended. "Understand what happened. Out there. With the surge. With…" He hesitated. "With the way our powers reacted."
Kael's expression shifted.
"You felt it too," he said slowly.
Aiden didn't speak, but it was written all over his face.
Kael exhaled, a shaky sound that could have been a laugh.
"You're not like them," he said. "Not completely."
"I'm an agent," Aiden replied. "I'm part of the Department."
"Yeah," Kael said. "And I'm part of the grid. Still doesn't stop it from trying to fry me."
He stepped closer to the glass, close enough that Aiden could see the fine cracks in his bottom lip, the faint freckles on his nose, the anger burning steady in his eyes.
"You want to understand?" he asked. "Here's a start: I didn't flare because I wanted to hurt people. Your unit cornered me near a safe route. Kids were passing through there tonight. If your bolts had hit the wrong wall, you would have buried them."
Aiden's chest tightened. "There were children?"
"There usually are," Kael said. "We don't get to pick 'safe' places. We take what the city leaves."
Images flashed in Aiden's mind: narrow corridors, metal doors, small bodies pressed into shadows, trying not to breathe.
He hadn't seen any of that on his visor feed. The raid logs hadn't mentioned civilians.
"Our scanners didn't show—"
"Your scanners don't look where you don't tell them to," Kael snapped. "That's the trick, Agent."
Silence stretched between them for a moment.
"I didn't know," Aiden said at last.
"I believe you," Kael answered. "That's what scares me."
He sat back down on the bed, still facing the window.
"So what now?" he asked. "You going to write a better report because you saw I have a face? Maybe recommend a slightly softer cage?"
"I don't decide your sentence," Aiden said. "But I can add my assessment to the file."
Kael's eyes narrowed with interest.
"And what would that assessment be?" he asked. "Go on. Give me the official wording."
Aiden thought of the standard phrases: high‑risk threat, unstable power, immediate danger to civilians.
He thought of the way Kael had shouted for them to stop shooting, the way he'd taken the blast rather than send it further down the street.
"Highly reactive under pressure," Aiden said slowly. "Responds strongly to perceived threats. Shows signs of…protective behavior toward others."
Kael blinked.
"That's the nicest thing anyone in this building has ever said about me," he said. "You should put it in bold."
Aiden almost smiled, then caught himself.
"Your power is dangerous," he said.
"Power is always dangerous," Kael replied. "The question is who gets to use it."
Their eyes met.
Something passed between them, quiet and fierce. Not lightning, not illusion just a thin, fragile understanding forming in the space the Department hadn't watched closely enough yet.
Aiden heard footsteps at the far end of the hall.
He straightened instinctively.
"I have to go," he said.
"Of course you do," Kael replied. "Agents don't disappear into sublevels without reason. Someone will start asking why."
Aiden hesitated.
"I don't know what I can change," he said. "But I can see. I can learn."
Kael looked at him for a long moment.
"Then start by not lying in your report," he said quietly. "Write what actually happened."
"That won't save you," Aiden said.
"I know," Kael answered. "But it might save the next me."
The footsteps grew louder. Aiden stepped back from the door.
Kael leaned his head against the wall, eyes closing again.
"This isn't over," he said, not as a threat this time, but as a fact.
"No," Aiden replied.
Then he turned and walked away, feeling every camera and every silent spell in the walls follow his back.