The sound was not a noise. It was a vibration, a dull, drilling resonance that lived inside the marrow of his bones.
Beta-79 opened his eyes.
The ceiling was the same as it had been yester cycle. Same as the Cycle before. Same as the thousand cycles of sleep that constituted his life. It was a slab of grey, rivet-studded durasteel, cold enough that condensation gathered on its surface in beads that looked like sweat on a dead man's forehead.
He did not move. Movement required will, and the field—the "Dampener," as the White Coats called it—sapped that first. It lay over the room like a heavy, wet blanket of Ovis-fleece, stifling the air, making every breath a conscious, laboring effort. The hum was the physical manifestation of the field. It sat at the base of his skull, a constant, low-frequency throb that tasted like oxidized metal and spoiled milk.
Inhale. The air smelled of ozone and chemical cleaner. Exhale. The air smelled of fear and recycled breath.
Beta-79 sat up. The motion was slow, disjointed. His joints popped, loud in the suffocating silence of the containment block. He swung his legs over the edge of the cot. The floor was a grid of metal grating, cold enough to burn the soles of his bare feet. He welcomed the pain. Pain was clarity. Pain was a data point. It confirmed that the nerve endings were functional, that the body was responsive, even if the spirit was dragging behind like a crippled Kyn-form.
He looked at his hands.
They were thin, the wrists bony, the skin pale from a life spent buried beneath the earth. On the dorsal of his right hand, the mark pulsed.
It was faint, barely a glimmer against the sterile white of the room's artificial lighting. The Sigil. The brand of the Signifer.
Lumen.
That was the classification. Light. Illumination. Clarity.
Beta-79 stared at it, his eyes narrowing. It didn't look like light. It looked like an infection. A bruised, sickly orange spiderweb tracing the veins beneath his skin. The dampening field crushed it down, forcing the mana back into the core of his soul. It felt like trying to hold a breath underwater while someone stood on his chest. The mana wanted to flow; the field demanded it stagnate. The result was a constant, nausea-inducing pressure in his gut.
He rubbed his thumb over the sigil, feeling the heat coming off it.
Control, the internal voice whispered. It wasn't his voice. It was a composite of a dozen instructors, a hundred lectures, a thousand beatings. You are the Control. You are the insulation on the wire. You are the wall that holds back the flood.
He closed his hand into a fist, hiding the light.
He was fourteen grand cycles old. He knew this because the datapad on the wall updated the date every morning. Fourteen grand cycles. A child, by the standards of the surface world—the world of Quinland or Estrada that he had seen only in stolen glimpses on careless datapads. But here, he was not a child. He was hardware. He was a component in a machine built by the Argent Legion and the shadow-brokers of New Earth.
He stood up. The room spun. The "Orange Haze."
That was what the Beta units called it, in the rare moments they were allowed to speak in the mess hall. It was the side effect of the Orange-tier mana soul struggling against the suppressors. It tinted the vision, bleeding the color out of the world and replacing it with a sepia-toned apathy.
He walked to the small, polished metal plate bolted to the wall—the mirror.
A face stared back. Hollow cheeks. Eyes that seemed too large for the skull, dark circles bruising the skin beneath them. The hair was cropped short, utilitarian, barely covering the scalp. It was a face designed for efficiency, not aesthetics. There was no joy in it. No anger. Just a flat, terrifying neutrality.
Beta-79.
He said the designation in his mind. He didn't say it aloud. Speaking required energy. Speaking was a variable.
Beta division. The Stabilizers.
Alpha division broke things. They were the hammers, the Aero blasts and Ionization strikes that tore targets apart. Gamma division changed things. They were the monsters, the Metamorphoun flesh-shapers who turned their own bodies into weapons of terror.
And Beta?
Beta kept them from burning out. Beta was the cooler for the engine. Beta was the leash on the kyn.
He leaned his forehead against the cold metal of the wall. He felt the phantom itch of his second sigil, the Infusus mark on his left hand. That was the channel. That was the drain. Through that mark, he could pull the volatile mana from another, suck the poison out of a rampaging Alpha or a destabilizing Gamma, and ground it into himself.
He was a garbage disposal for magical radiation.
Suppression successful, he thought, mocking the automated reports. Subject is compliant. Subject is stable.
Deep inside, beneath the dampener's crushing weight, beneath the training and the fear, a small, hot spark screamed. It was a high, thin sound, like a tea kettle left on the boil. It wanted to shatter the lights. It wanted to burn the metal grating. It wanted to turn this grey box into a supernova of blinding white light, to scream until his throat bled, to rip the door off its hinges and run until his lungs collapsed.
He swallowed. The scream died in his throat, unvoiced.
Emotion is inefficiency.Fear is a miscalculation.Hope is a statistical error.
He breathed in the ozone again. He centered himself. He envisioned a box in his mind, a heavy lead safe. He took the scream, the fear, and the rage, and he shoved them into the box. He locked it.
His heartbeat slowed. His hands stopped trembling. The Lumen sigil on his right hand dimmed to a barely perceptible dull glow.
He was ready.
He turned to face the door. It was a massive slab of blast-proof steel, lacking handles or windows. It was the only thing in the universe that mattered right now.
He waited.
Time in the facility was not measured in hours or minutes. It was measured in beats of the routine. The wake-up. The Syphon. The Slop. The Training. The Pain. The Sleep.
He counted the seconds by the throb of the dampener in his teeth. One.Two.Three.
He could hear them outside. Heavy boots. The clack-clack-clack of standard-issue Vanguard-pattern boots on the corridor floor. Not the hurried steps of an emergency. The rhythmic, bored tread of the guards.
Four.Five.
Beta-79 straightened his spine. He clasped his hands behind his back. He assumed the "Rest Position." Feet shoulder-width apart. Chin up. Eyes forward, focused on nothing. A statue of obedience.
The steps stopped.
There was a pause. A moment where the universe held its breath.
Then, the sound.
BZZZZZT.
It wasn't a bell. It was a harsh, electrical rasp, like a saw cutting through bone. The red light above the door flashed once—an angry, bloody pulse.
Hydraulics hissed, a sound like a dying snake. The heavy steel door jerked, then slid sideways into the wall with a grinding rumble that vibrated through the floor grate and up into Beta-79's shins.
The corridor outside was brighter than the cell. The light spilled in, harsh and clinical, illuminating the dust motes dancing in the recycled air.
Two figures stood in the doorway.
They wore the grey and black tactical armor of the facility security. Faceless helmets. Visors that reflected only the sterile hallway. They held shock-batons, the tips crackling with blue Ionization arcs. They were not Signifers. They were "Nulls"—men without magic, hired for their ability to follow orders and their lack of empathy.
Beta-79 did not look at them. He looked through them.
"Unit Beta-79," the guard on the left said. The voice was distorted by the helmet's vocoder, metallic and stripped of humanity. "Transport for Syphon Protocol."
It wasn't a question.
Beta-79 stepped forward. His bare feet made no sound on the metal. He moved with the fluid, eerie grace of something that had learned that making noise attracted attention, and attention brought pain.
He crossed the threshold. The dampener field in the hallway was stronger. It hit him like a physical blow, a wave of dizziness that made his knees buckle for a fraction of a second. He caught himself. He didn't stumble.
Control.
He walked between the guards. They fell in step behind him.
He was walking to his own dissection. He was walking to have his soul drained, measured, and bottled like vintage wine.
Beta-79 stared down the long, endless corridor of grey steel. He didn't blink.
Just another cycle, he told the screaming thing in the box. Just another cycle.