Chapter 15

  Beginning of the First Act (IV)

  To the hundred and twenty-four other students milling about the expansive, ward-lined gymnasium, Xankoris stood out as a static anomaly. An unwelcoming boy acting far too arrogant to engage within the frantic, nervous networking of freshmen already forming cliques and groups.

  He was not the tallest in the room, by any means, yet he was prolific. Wrapped in a black form-fitting shirt that sculpted lean muscle, black cargo pants he bought more out of habit than anything. It felt natural. Same for the matching boots on his feet. He stood dead center on the polished floor, his hands folded neatly behind his back—he remained motionless like a statue.

  Though the reality was entirely less clinical.

  Xankoris stood in the center of the room because it was the densest point of contact within the swarm of students. Sure, less optimal as tactical vantage points go; especially if a threat were to come from within, but there were advantages to be had.

  From here, within his peripheral vision—thanks to his heightened senses—he could simultaneously track all four exits, he could monitor the structural integrity of the invisible wards which all converged and peaked right above him in the center of the gym, and finally the elevated observation booth behind two-way glass. Who was in there? He couldn’t tell as the reflection only showed him the underside of the ceiling thanks to the sharp angle, yet his instincts drew every fiber of his senses to it.

  His stillness was not arrogance; it was a deep-seated and calibrated hyper-vigilance. The sheer volume of noise—a hundred overlapping conversations, the squeak of rubber soles on the floor, the erratic spikes of unrefined magical signatures tapering in and out—gave him sensory overload.

  “You think he bleached it?” a voice muttered, close enough to cut through his focused tracking.

  Xankoris’s eyes, a piercing, unnatural shade of violet, flicked marginally to the left. He registered where it came from, and who said it. He could pinpoint it without issue.

  “If he did, whoever did it, knows what they are doing,” a second female voice responded, her tone pitched with the forced casualness of someone who wanted to be overheard—or so he thought. “I’m gonna ask who he uses.”

  He did not turn toward them preemptively. Engaging meant acknowledging, and acknowledging meant interacting. He preferred to remain an object in the room rather than a participant.

  But then he felt the physical contact—a light, hesitant tap on his shoulder.

  Years of deeply ingrained muscle memory flared. His body’s immediate, autonomic response screamed ‘pivot, trap the extended limb, pull and strike the throat. Then drive a swift, kinetic strike into the aggressor's skull.’

  It took a massive, agonizing exertion of willpower to suppress the reflex. Do people usually touch each other here? He stifled his discomfort and simply turned on his heel, his movements both fluid and deliberate. Carefully calculated.

  The girl who had tapped him instantly drew her hand back, taking a stuttering step in reverse. The playful curiosity evaporated from her face the moment she truly looked at him. The stark, near snow-white hair and eyebrows resting above the deadened stillness of his purple eyes. The respirator mask clamped over the lower half of his face hissed once as he exhaled slowly.

  “Hi, sorry…” she stammered in reflex, her gaze darting nervously and trying to make sense of what she was looking at. The clicking valves of the mask grabbed her attention. “I just… I wanted to ask who does your hair.”

  Xankoris stared at her. He let the silence stretch, not for the sake of it, not to be awkward, but just because… he had no idea how to respond to that.

  “It is how it grows,” the respirator modulated his voice. His heavy accent morphed into a slightly mechanical rasp. “It used to be black.”

  The girl’s brow furrowed in momentary confusion before her eyes went painfully wide. The realization hit her that she had just complimented a symptom of severe, often terminal, biological trauma: Magic Exposure. The sort that permanently burned and warped a person’s genetics in all manner of ways, often not as generous as it was with his.

  “Oh. God, I’m—I’m so sorry,” she whispered, her face flushing crimson. “I didn’t mean to—Sorry.”

  She spun around, hooking her friend’s arm and dragging them both away into the crowd. “That was so fucking awkward,” she hissed as they retreated.

  “What? What did he say?” her friend asked as she was dragged along through the crowd.

  Xankoris quickly dismissed them, turning his attention back to the front of the room.

  A few moments later, a man strode onto the raised platform. He was tall, heavily muscled, and wore a black tank top with gym shorts over compression tights. He moved with an undeniable weight. The way he carried himself was different, noticeable in a way that Xankoris could tell he had experience.

  “Alright y’all, we’re behind schedule, so let’s bust a move here!” the instructor barked, his voice booming with practiced authority.

  The man tapped his earpiece, exchanged communication with the observation booth, and then looked back out over the sea of students.

  “My name is Jorge Guzman. I am your Strike Team Tactics instructor...”

  Guzman’s voice echoed off the concrete walls; the specific cadence of the command—the sharp, unapologetic demand for immediate physical compliance—sent a violent shiver down Xankoris’s spine. The bright, sterile lights of the gymnasium flickered and dimmed in his mind’s eye.

  The ambient warmth of the room vanished.

  Suddenly, he wasn't standing in a comfortable American gymnasium. He was nine years old again, standing knee-deep in the biting, ash-choked snow of the Siberian wilderness. It was a particularly harsh night; the wind was howling, a shriek that sounded like tearing metal, drowning out the whimpers of the children shivering in a neat, orderly line. Before them paced the instructors of the Sable Directorate—men wrapped in thermal armor, their faces hidden, their eyes empty.

  Looking back, it was all clear to him now. Xankoris understood Sable did not recruit them as students; no, they were acquired assets and needed to prove it.

  Sable didn’t recruit; they scavenged the unseen cracks and corners of the world. They swept through freezing slums, overflowing orphanages, and the wreckage of broken homes, harvesting the prodigies that society had otherwise deemed expendable. The unwanted, the forgotten, the extra mouths no one would ever make a public fuss over no longer needing to feed.

  The conditioning began instantly. Stripping away names first, branding them with numerical designations; all with the intent of surgically excising whatever fragile identities the children had managed to build.

  Sable knew that the first step toward absolute compliance was ensuring the weapons they were trying to break had absolutely nothing left to hold onto except them.

  Xankoris remembered the burning agony in his lungs during the forced marches. Miles of trudging through Rot-infested tundra with deliberately inadequate gear, testing their limits against the elements and the ambient decay. He remembered the worst days—the sharp, sickly-sweet smell of seared flesh. He remembered as they were pushed past their breaking points, failing to contain their own budding powers and consuming themselves in desperate, untethered surges of magic; all while their so-called instructors simply watched, taking notes and discussing what they were seeing, all detached and apathetic as the screaming eventually died out.

  He remembered the nightmares. The terror that ripped through him night after night in the dark of the barracks.

  But far worse than the memory of his fear was the memory of its end. The exact day the screaming stopped bothering him. The day the shivering, terrified shell of a little boy finally shattered, leaving only a cold, mechanical instinct to survive behind. Empathy burned out of his very being. If those around him turned to ash, it only meant one less competitor for rations.

  That was the Directorate's true curriculum: to hollow them out until there was nothing left to feel pain.

  A phantom ache flared violently at his scalp—the ghost of the agonizing weeks when his body had tried to reject the lethal doses of magic they were exposed to for weeks on end. The brutal regime of artificially spiking a recruit's tolerance. They poisoned them.

  Xankoris squeezed his eyes shut. He shoved his hands deep into his pockets, fingers curling into white-knuckled fists. He was spiraling. The phantom frost was creeping up his neck, freezing the blood in his veins.

  Control. He forced his fracturing consciousness into the rigid, mechanical rhythm of his mask.

  Breathe in. The filters hissed, violently pulling sterilized air over his ruined lungs. Breathe out. The exhaust valve clicked shut with a definitive, metallic snap.

  In. Out. In. Out.

  He was no longer bound; he was free. He drove that six-inch blade through his maker’s throat to prove it. He opened his eyes, the sharp violet irises focused once more, severing the memory and pulling him to the present.

  “Most Operators run in groups of five,” Guzman’s voice broke through the residual static in Xankoris's head. “Based on simple math, with a hundred and twenty-five of you present, we should have twenty-five groups. You have fifteen minutes. Go find a squad.”

  Xankoris froze. A microscopic twitch disturbed the stoic lines of his brows.

  Blyat.

  Panic bloomed coldly in his chest. They were organizing into units now? He did not fully understand what was happening, but he could discern this much at least. English was becoming easier to use and understand by the day, but the cadence of the Institute was still almost entirely lost on him.

  He possessed practically no real reference for social frameworks, especially American ones. So what was he supposed to do? How did someone approach a group of hormonal, inexperienced teenagers and petition for inclusion? What were the guidelines and parameters of introduction? He had already scared off some poor girl asking about his hair. He may as well have been an alien. Though he supposed he already was.

  Dealing with this internal turmoil, he remained rooted to his spot. The physical embodiment of a stone in a raging river, as the gymnasium around him erupted into a frantic, shouting-fueled scramble of alliances. The noise spiked again, grating against his nerves.

  His eyes automatically began filtering the chaos, seeking out combat-viable groupings.

  “Matthias!”

  The sharp, desperate call caught his attention. Ten yards to his left, he watched an interaction take place. A girl with wavy brown hair was calling out to a boy who, other than being male, looked to be an exact carbon copy of her.

  “I said no.” The boy rejected his own flesh and blood. Xankoris couldn’t help noticing the boy’s face twisting into a scowl before he turned his back. Almost as if he was disgusted. He moved into a crowd of students who rushed to him, likely propositioning him into their own groups.

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Xankoris cataloged the remaining individuals standing with the rejected sister. It was a highly irregular composition—at least to him. A massive, black male whose sheer physical presence alone suggested he was the heaviest hitter in the room. Beside him stood a brown-skinned woman around his own height, commanding a defiant presence. Lingering quietly amongst them also was an Asian girl draped in traditional robes, holding herself with a rigid restraint. Perhaps she was some sort of hexblade or caster of sorts. As he stared at her, she too looked in his direction, locking eyes with him for a moment before skittishly looking away.

  It was a fundamentally flawed and mismatched unit.

  Before Xankoris could categorize them any further, his eyes went back to the front of the room, cutting through the chaotic blur of scrambling students, straight to the raised platform.

  Instructor Guzman was standing at the edge of the stage with his arms crossed, but he wasn't watching the crowd. He was locked dead onto Xankoris.

  Xankoris braced for the familiar, freezing dread, but the sensation never came. The instructors of his youth had possessed harsh, dead expressions—all flat, apathetic voids that observed children with the clinical detachment of a scientist watching rats in a maze.

  But Guzman was looking at him. And there was nothing dead about it.

  Guzman saw the stillness. He recognized the calm, heavy posture in a room full of panicked freshmen. Rather than stepping back to observe from a distance, Guzman leaned into it.

  Xankoris did not blink. He held the weight of that burning gaze, his own expression hidden safely beneath the mechanical lines of his mask, returning the heavy, unspoken acknowledgment.

  The standoff lasted only a second more before Guzman offered a single, approving nod, his smirk lingering as he finally turned his attention back to the rest of the room.

  Xankoris had no notion of what was being communicated.

  Then, a sudden movement in his periphery drew his sight away.

  The brown-skinned girl from the mismatched group was pointing a finger directly at him now. Even from a distance, he could hear her clearly.

  “Well, unless we want to get stuck with somebody,” she was saying to the giant and the swordswoman, gesturing right at him, “I say we go see what Luchador’s deal is over there.”

  They approached slowly, navigating the chaotic, milling crowd of students with the short brunette leading the vanguard.

  Xankoris tracked their approach, slowly rotating his frame to face them, squaring his shoulders and adjusting his center of gravity out of habit.

  “Hi. Do you have a group yet?” the brunette asked plainly. Up close, her hazel eyes were sharp, calculating, and surprisingly steady. She was assessing him just as much as he was assessing her.

  “I do not.” He returned her gaze with an inquisitive, unblinking stare of his own. He had answered her question; thus, as far as his training dictated, the exchange of information was now complete.

  Naturally, silence stretched between them. A second passed, then another…

  Malika blinked, her confident momentum hitting an invisible, absolute brick wall. The heavy, awkward air thickened to the point of suffocation.

  “Okay, uh… well, would you be interested in joining us? At least for today?” Malika finally prompted, gesturing loosely to the mismatched trio standing behind her.

  Before Xankoris could answer, the giant stepped forward.

  “‘Sup man, I’m Paul. Nice to meet you,” the massive teen rumbled, his face breaking into a wide, easy smile that completely contradicted his terrifying physical dimensions. He moved with the relaxed, unbothered energy of a golden retriever, effortlessly shattering the suffocating tension as he stuck out a hand the size of a dinner plate.

  Xankoris’s violet eyes dropped to the extended limb. Slowly, reluctantly, Xankoris pulled his right hand from his pocket and accepted the gesture.

  “Strong grip,” Xankoris stated, releasing the hold. “What weapon do you use?”

  Paul blinked, his hand still hovering in the air for a fraction of a second before he let it drop. “Weapon? Well, uh… I trained with warhammers back in the Academy.”

  Xankoris’s brow furrowed slightly, a microscopic shift in his otherwise static expression. “You trained with them. Do you not know what weapon you actively prefer?”

  The question was delivered with zero inflection. There was no mockery or judgment in the digitized rasp, only a cold, genuine confusion as to why the combatant had not yet optimized their primary armament.

  Paul paused, looking mildly taken aback, before a deep chuckle rumbled in his chest. He rubbed the back of his neck and shrugged. “I guess… not yet, man. Still feeling it out, you know?” He cast a sideways glance at Yvette, clearly unsure if he was being analyzed or insulted, but highly amused either way.

  Yvette let out a short, bright snort of laughter, crossing her arms as she looked up at the brooding boy in the mask. “What’s your deal?” she smirked. “What’s it matter what weapon we use?”

  Xankoris stared at her, processing Luchador more than anything else she had just said. He remained silent as he had no clue what the word even meant. Yvette matched his stare with furrowed brows.

  ‘Well, this is going well,’ Malika thought as she let out a quiet sigh, stepping back in to assert control over the fracturing conversation before it could stray even further south. The guy was incredibly difficult to read, hovering somewhere between intensely disagreeable and just socially defective, but the options around the gym were rapidly dwindling. Almost every other competent-looking student had already clumped into a group, and she refused to get stuck with whoever was left at the bottom of the barrel.

  “Look, it’s not a big deal,” Malika said, her tone shifting into a brisk, pragmatic cadence. “We’re all going to be encouraged to test out new equipment and weapons as the semester rolls on anyway. We have a good foundation here, right?” Even she did not buy her own bullshit. “So… are you joining us or not?”

  She let the question hang, her hazel eyes locking onto his violet ones, silently daring him to make a choice here.

  Xankoris evaluated the four faces looking back at him. The brunette appeared competent. The giant offered unparalleled strength, if he could wield it right. The defiant one seemed unsure of herself behind the emotions she was putting on display. The silent, robed artillery was the strongest one here based on her magic signature alone. It was a bizarre, unpolished configuration, but a known variable was always statistically superior to leaving it all to chance.

  “I will join,” Xankoris finally said, the respirator clicking softly. “For now.”

  Malika exhaled a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding, giving a quick, satisfied nod. People were difficult, and this one was going to be a unique headache, but it was fine. They had their five. If it did not work out, maybe she could find someone else—or a whole other group entirely.

  Up on the raised platform, Guzman’s booming voice suddenly cut through the ambient roar of the gymnasium, amplified by the PA system.

  “Okay, listen up! We have five minutes left on the clock!” the instructor barked, checking a heavy tactical watch on his wrist. “When you have your five, find a designated marker and occupy it with your unit. Let’s see who actually knows how to follow instructions!”

  As if responding to Guzman’s command, a low, resonant hum vibrated through the soles of their shoes. The floor flickered to life. All around them, the latent containment wards woven into the architecture flared to life. Twenty-five large, perfectly uniform, glowing blue circles materialized across the expanse of the gymnasium floor, illuminating the space with a cold, ethereal light.

  “What’s the idea with this?” Malika murmured under her breath.

  ~~~~

  The air in the auditorium had grown thick, heavy with the collective, industrious scratching of styluses on tablets and the low murmur of tactical theory. Bethany Kline stood before the massive LED wall, which had been gridded out into twenty-five distinct high-definition feeds—one for each of the freshly formed squads running drills down in the gymnasium.

  “Composition is not just about filling slots with warm bodies,” Bethany said, pacing slowly across the front of the room. She tapped a button on her remote, highlighting a random group on the screen. The camera zoomed in on three heavy shield-users and two mages. “Now, some of the teams here have what looks like decent composition, but take a look at Group 7. What do you see?”

  She paused, letting the silence stretch for effect, before answering her own question. “I see massive defensive potential. Heavy hitters, probably. But beside that, not much in the way of mobility. How do we determine that just from a quick glance? Well, for one…”

  She kept talking, but her explanation faded into white noise as I stared at the colossal screen. My eyes naturally drifted away from Group 7, hunting through the grid for the only feed that actually mattered to me. I finally spotted them tucked away in the very bottom right corner of the display.

  Group 25.

  Seeing them all standing together like that was just… weird. Malika looked relatively calm as she folded her arms against her chest. Then there was Paul, looking like a literal monolith standing next to Yvette. And tucked slightly apart from them was Xankoris. The new guy—a white-haired kid in a mask. Man, he really did look like an anime character.

  The good news from all this was that the group had formed just as it was supposed to.

  “Here is your first exercise,” Bethany announced. The houselights came up just enough to illuminate our desks, snapping my attention back to the room. “I want you to pick one group from the board. Just one. Watch them for the next ten minutes as they run through their basic cohesion drills, and give me a one-page write-up on their projected synergy. Basically, do you think they would work out well as a group? Generally, groups put together in this fashion do not work out well at all—from my experience. Not saying they won’t work out, but I would not put money on it panning out.”

  A collective groan threatened to ripple through the room, but she cut it off. “Again, no points for this, so don’t clam up on me. I just want something basic. Identify the lynchpin. Identify the weak link. Whatever you see, as they work through their drills, just tell me what you see. That’s all.” She leaned back against her desk, crossing her arms. “Don’t overthink it. Go with your gut. I want to see your instincts.”

  My gut?

  My gut was currently telling me I had absolutely no idea what the hell I was looking at. And that I was ready for lunch.

  To me, it just looked like five teenagers standing awkwardly in a glowing blue circle. I pulled my tablet closer and then opened a blank document. The cursor blinked at me. Mocking me. What the hell was a lynchpin? The weakest link made sense to me, but… I barely even knew them, aside from Yvette. How the hell was I supposed to read into that based on a video?

  Bzzzt.

  My phone vibrated violently against the hard, hollow surface of the desk. The student sitting in front of me glanced over their shoulder at the phone, then shot me a dirty look. I mouthed a quick, panicked apology, fumbling to put the device on 'Do Not Disturb'. But as my thumb hovered over the screen, my eyes caught the notification.

  Alaric: Put the glasses on.

  I stared at the message, a cold, sudden prickle of unease ghosting down the back of my neck. I looked around the room instinctively. I checked the corners. I checked the back of the auditorium. I even glanced up at the ceiling vents, because honestly? Who knew with that guy. He was short; he could fit up there.

  Nothing. No sign of him. How the hell did he know I wasn't wearing them? I hadn't even taken the case out of my bag since orientation.

  Alaric: Don’t look for me. Put the glasses on, Jesse. They will help you.

  Oh, fuck off. How the hell do you know that?! I grumbled in my head.

  I reached into my bag, my fingers blindly searching until they brushed against the hard plastic of the case. I pulled it out, trying to keep my movements subtle. Inside sat the simple black frames. They were aggressively unassuming, radiating the exact vibe of standard, three-dollar reading glasses you’d pick up from a drugstore checkout aisle.

  I unfolded the arms and slid them onto my face.

  For a second, nothing happened; but then my eyes drifted back up to the screen.

  It was a bizarre sensation. The image on the LED wall sharpened—not in visual resolution; it was more akin to someone having suddenly pulled back the curtain on the underlying math of the world. It all… shit, bloomed, I guess, in my mind? I just suddenly could see it all before me. Everything I needed to know. It didn't appear as floating text or a heads-up display; it was all instinctual. I felt confident about it, like I had known it as a basic equation: one plus one equals two.

  My eyes snapped straight to Malika. The leader. Archetype: Fighter. The concept locked into my brain instantly. I watched the way she held herself on screen—determined, driven, bleeding combat experience from her very posture. Yet, beneath the rigid discipline, the glasses laid her bare: her driving force, the core of her mindset, was fueled almost entirely by fear.

  I rubbed my eyes beneath the lenses, my breath catching in my throat, before looking at Xankoris. Archetype: Assassin. As I focused on him, abstract ideas swirled into concrete reality. I saw him as a coiled spring of kinetic potential. Trauma. Loss. Anger. All compressed together into jetfuel. Quick with a bow, devastating with a dagger. Fast, agile, lethal. He fit his archetype like a glove.

  Looking at Yvette was a jarring experience. Out of everyone down there, she was the one I knew best, but the glasses stripped away my preconceived notions. Defiant. Expressive. Challenger. The words formed in my head, and I actually let out a quiet chuckle. Archetype: Fighter. It was perfect. Over six feet tall, raw strength, a preference for hand-to-hand with a secondary proficiency in staff combat. Though, the tactical gap filled my mind: Requires expanded weapon-based skills to maximize party composition.

  Then there was Paul. Anchor. Responsibility. Archetype: Tank. He was exactly what he looked like—the monolith. Humble, fun-loving, fiercely protective of those around him. But the glasses pinged a warning. That unwavering loyalty? It was a liability. He would throw himself on a sword for a teammate without a second thought, making him easily exploitable to a smart enemy.

  Finally, my gaze shifted to Bao Lin, huddled quietly near the edge of the group, filling the space Matthias had left behind. The visual didn't match the download. Regret. Uncertainty. Fear of the future. Archetype: Warlock. I popped an eyebrow behind the black frames. I knew bits and pieces from Alaric’s notes—a nomadic past up north, exiled from her country and her family, then trained in magic and combat. Still, there was a lot I just didn't know.

  My fingers found the stylus. I didn't have to think about what to write, because I knew what I needed to write now. I didn't have to struggle to sound smart; the analysis was flowing directly through the lenses, bypassing every ounce of my doubt and pouring straight onto the screen in front of me. I wasn't guessing anymore. I didn’t need to.