The convoy doesn't stop. It turns straight into a narrower channel.
Temporary metal barricades rise on both sides, striped with reflective tape. On the ground, glowing guide-lines pulse—not steady light, but a fixed beat:
pop—on. pop—on.
Like a heartbeat. Like the floor is pushing people forward.
Li sits in the cargo bay and stares at his wrist.
The green light on the band no longer blinks. It's solid now. And text begins to scroll across the screen.
Not directives.
Labels.
[Branch Prediction: 7–4 Transfer Chain, Secondary Split A][Category Evaluation: IN PROGRESS]
A smaller line beneath flickers too quickly, but Li catches it:
[Association Rate: 72%] → [Asset Cluster: Recovery Team Roster—Brown Unit]
Asset cluster.
The term surfaces in his head with a sour clarity. It means the system doesn't see them as individuals. It sees them as bundled freight—strapped together, processed together.
The geolocation noise changes again.
It isn't "turn left" or "remain seated" anymore. It becomes more… procedural. A script running on invisible rails.
"Script segment: enter separation corridor.""Action: remain seated. Eyes forward.""Recitation prep: when green light flashes three times, recite your ID and your branch label."
Li listens—and realizes he nods.
After the nod, he freezes.
What… did I just hear? Did I nod?
Memory tears. From reading asset cluster to sitting here, there's a missing patch. He can't recall if he heard the full script, or whether he did more than nod.
No nosebleed. The tinnitus is softer.
But a deeper cold starts leaking through the seams of his bones.
"Li?" Daniel whispers beside him.
Li turns his head—slow. "Yeah?"
"You spaced out for almost thirty seconds." Daniel grips his little ruined notebook, eyes fixed on Li's band. "I called you and you didn't react. You just sat there, staring forward. Then your green light flashed three times and you suddenly recited your ID and that '7–4 transfer chain' line—voice flat, like system audio. After you finished, you kinda… woke up."
Li says nothing.
He doesn't remember any of it.
"This worker-bot system really doesn't let anyone slack," Daniel's voice tightens. "Even zoning out gets you scripted. You're forced online, and you have to read your own punch-in phrase."
The ceiling speaker crackles—zzzt.
Brian's voice comes through. Still cold—but now with an administrative, public-service tone, like he's announcing policy.
"All asset clusters entering the separation corridor: separation rules are now in effect."
The cargo bay goes dead silent.
"Separation is not random allocation. The system will rank using three metrics: Stability, Compatibility, Association. High score enters priority transfer branches. Low score enters holding, or high-loss branches."
Brian pauses.
"Li Kaine. ID 7–4–23. Spatial-perception Resonance user. Compatibility rating B+. Flagged as Dedicated Navigation Asset. Per rules, he will be extracted first into an independent calibration pipeline."
Marcus sits near the front, back straight, unmoving.
"Recovery Team roster—Association score 72%. Classified as High-Risk Bound Asset Cluster." Brian's voice stays even. "You have one option: within the allotted time, complete a compliance review—voluntary cooperation with Li Kaine's separation transfer, and signature endorsement on the process documents. If you cooperate, your remaining roster may be retained and returned to the next mission sequence."
No warmth. No threat-tone. Just a clean, procedural blade.
"If you refuse, or time out, the system triggers reselection. Meaning: your entire unit will be broken apart, re-evaluated, and likely assigned to branches with loss rates you've heard about."
The speaker clicks off.
Only the guide-line pulse remains:
pop. pop. pop.
Marcus slowly turns toward the two escort soldiers.
"Brothers," he begins, voice steady—almost sincere, almost cooperative, "we understand process. We'll cooperate. Efficiency. Lowering unnecessary losses. We're all workers here—no one wants blame at this level."
The soldiers watch him.
"But I'd like to make a technical suggestion." Marcus continues. "Li's current state—you've seen it. Scripted. Memory gaps. If you extract him now and the independent calibration fails because there's no on-site confirmation from the original operator unit… whose responsibility is that? Ours—for 'not cooperating'? Or Monitoring Center's—for designing a separation process with holes?"
He keeps his pace calm, like he's in a meeting about workflow optimization.
"My point is: per best practice, before separation, the original Recovery Team—us—should execute one shortest possible secondary verification. One motion. Confirm interface match between navigation asset and transfer chain. Highest success rate. Lowest downstream risk. Good for us, good for Monitoring Center. Otherwise if something goes wrong, and higher-ups ask 'Why didn't you do final confirmation?' that's a very large, very round pot of blame."
The two soldiers exchange a look. One presses a finger to his earpiece, listening.
Ten seconds pass.
He nods.
"Approved. Fifteen minutes. Complete before the next gate. Action must be compliant. Data must uplink."
"Understood," Marcus says, and turns away.
Daniel immediately slides closer, whispering, almost impressed. "Fifteen minutes! Boss—your 'compliance counterplay' is nasty. You weaponized their fear of carrying blame."
"Less talk." Marcus's eyes stay locked on the faint light ahead at the end of the corridor. "We're not using fifteen minutes to run. We're using fifteen minutes to make separation… look different."
He glances at Daniel. "That one-second desync you mentioned—can you scale it up?"
Daniel flips his notebook open fast. "I was about to say. I logged it. The corridor's gate refresh isn't a simple twelve-second loop. It's three phases: preheat, compute, receipt. About four seconds each."
He points at a crude waveform sketch.
"Sophia's material—we have some left. My plan: not one hit. Three. During preheat, compute, receipt—different fake near-field strengths to confuse the classifier."
"Objective?" Li asks. He's speaking smoothly again. The last gap has passed, for now.
"Objective isn't to make you run," Daniel says, words spilling. "It's to make the system misclassify. In compute-phase, strong interference—temporarily push you into 'incomplete calibration' group so your extraction priority drops. Or in receipt-phase, disrupt so it concludes our asset cluster binding is too tight—'non-separable'—requires whole-cluster transfer. We're betting on a classification error."
"And if we lose?" Marcus asks.
Daniel swallows. "If we lose… system flags anomaly, triggers reselection. Then yeah—we get dumped into high-loss branches for real. The ones where people go in and almost no one's signal ever comes back intact."
Marcus is silent for two beats.
Then: "Do it."
At that moment, Li's wristband flickers—weak and irregular for the first time—and a short prompt pops up:
[Process Node: GH–7–B → Separation Gate Segment][Minor waveform noise detected. Recommend manual review insertion.][Review request sent to Monitoring Center… awaiting approval]
The window lasts three seconds, then vanishes.
Li stares. This wasn't in the script.
Almost immediately, the cold script-voice in his head stutters.
Like a record skipping.
In that one to two second gap, images slam into him—hard, cold, not memories so much as something pried out of frozen water.
A white room. Not a hospital—an experimental lab. Rows of equipment blinking. A glass partition. Behind it, a small girl seen from behind, wearing gray.
On the back of her shirt:
A–47–11.
His daughter.
Not at a coordinate point.
Behind a process door.
A–47 isn't a place.
It's a classification.
The image cuts off like someone yanked power.
The script-voice floods back in—colder, tighter, denser.
But Li knows two things now:
That "manual review" prompt didn't appear by accident. Someone forced it open.
And the someone is Erin.
And forcing a "legal loophole" like that leaves traces. The system will follow it back to her sooner or later.
This isn't help.
It's a rope around two necks.
The convoy begins to slow.
Ahead, a massive gate—metal fused with some luminous material—slides open, both halves peeling away. Beyond it, brutal white light floods the corridor so hard you can't see what's inside.
On every wristband, new directives appear simultaneously:
[Prepare for group roll call.][Recite your branch label.][Countdown: 5]
Li's throat tightens. He doesn't want to speak—
but his lips move anyway.
The cargo bay fills with low, overlapping voices—mixed, yet weirdly on the same tempo:
"7–4 transfer chain, secondary split A…""7–4 transfer chain, secondary split A…""7–4 transfer chain…"
Li recites too. When he's done, a slice of his mind goes blank again. He can't remember whether sound even left his mouth.
Then the system receipt lands in every mind at once—louder than any human voice:
"Separation execution: countdown initiated.""Category: A–47.""Next node: Process Door.""Trigger action: contact A–47 verification port.""Failure penalty: reselection."
The convoy drives into the white-out.
Behind them, the gate slides shut—slow, final.