While I waited in the white room, my 'escort' arrived.
They removed the restraints without ceremony and guided me toward the door. A strip of fabric slid over my eyes.
Blindfolded.
I did not resist. I listened.
A deep hum vibrated through the air, steady and heavy enough to rattle in my chest. The floor trembled faintly beneath my feet. Not machinery inside the room. Something much larger.
A military carrier, I decided.
They led me forward until my boots met metal. The surface felt reinforced, solid beneath my weight. A ramp. I paused long enough to be sure, then stepped on.
The hum intensified.
Air pressure shifted. Something sealed shut behind me.
When the blindfold came off, I had to stop myself from staring.
The interior of the aircraft stretched wider than I expected. Steel walls layered with reinforced plating curved overhead. Long command tables dominated the center of the carrier, each projected with rotating holographic displays of the megacity. Ring schematics hovered above them, segmented and color coded. Streams of data scrolled too fast for civilian eyes to follow.
A command carrier.
Officers and analysts stood around the tables, voices low, movements precise. IRT personnel in partial armor shifted between stations. No one looked at me.
Not because they had not noticed.
Because I was not important yet.
I stayed where I was and took it in. The carrier had to be at least fifteen meters high, wide enough to accommodate vehicles along its sides. Everything about it was built for endurance rather than comfort.
This was not transport.
It was a mobile headquarters.
I took a step forward.
Commander Hale noticed me immediately. She did not speak. She raised a hand and pointed toward the side corridor.
Two soldiers detached from the wall and approached. I did not argue as they guided me away from the command floor and into a narrower passage.
We stopped at another white room.
Of course.
The door slid open. Inside waited a table, a set of chairs, and nothing else.
Another interrogation room.
One of the soldiers gestured toward a seat. I sat.
They left without a word. The metallic door sealed behind them with quiet finality.
I leaned back and exhaled, replaying my conversation with Hale in my head.
Too much interest.
Too many careful questions.
I yawned and let my posture slacken. If I was right, and I usually was, I was being monitored.
Cameras. Sensors. Neural analysis. Maybe something worse.
So I played tired.
Bored.
Harmless.
Inside, my thoughts moved fast.
The blindfold. They did not want me seeing the route. That meant Ring IV.
Which meant the questioning earlier had happened in Ring IV as well.
My head ached faintly. A hum brushed my thoughts, different from the carrier's engines. Subtle. Brief. Gone as quickly as it came.
I forced my breathing to slow.
The room responded.
Not louder. Not softer. Just different, like a system recalibrating after receiving new data.
Definitely monitored.
I leaned my head back and half closed my eyes. Ring V teaches you how to disappear in plain sight. If there were cameras, they would read fatigue. If there were neural sensors, they would detect suppression.
The chair was bolted to the floor. Lightweight alloy. Comfortable enough for hours. Uncomfortable enough to remind you who held control.
A faint vibration ran through it, syncing with the hum in the walls.
Baseline scan.
I slowed my breathing further.
The hum softened.
Good.
Time passed. Minutes or hours, it was hard to tell. No windows. No clocks. Just my pulse and the quiet pressure of observation.
Then the room spoke.
Not aloud, but close enough to feel.
"Leon Willis."
I opened my eyes slowly.
"Yes."
Silence.
"You are skilled at pretending," the voice said. "But you are still human."
A pause.
"Do you know where you are?"
"A military carrier," I replied. "Command class."
Another pause. Longer this time.
"Correct. How did you determine that? You have no recorded history of boarding one."
"I do not need to board one to recognize it," I said. "They have been sighted over Ring V. Rarely. Always at altitude."
Silence.
"Do you know our current location?"
"No."
I lied.
"Did you experience any unusual sensations during your stay here?"
"No."
Another lie. Smaller. More dangerous.
The voice shifted, resolving into Commander Hale's.
"You are being observed, not interrogated," she said calmly. "Your behavior will determine which becomes necessary."
I nodded once.
"Understood."
"What do you believe happened in District Twelve?" she asked.
A simple question.
"I do not know exactly," I said. "I was passing through."
Silence stretched.
"You caused a resonance event that destabilized and then stabilized the breach," Hale said. "You previously claimed ignorance."
"I was not the only person present," I replied. "And I still do not know what you are talking about."
"You were recognized by hostile actors," she continued. "Multiple times."
"Yes."
"This was not your first encounter with them," Hale said. "You have evaded their territory for two years."
The pieces started aligning.
"Our footage shows your reaction time degraded during the fight. Your strikes landed late. That is why you were overwhelmed before intervention."
I said nothing.
"You were exactly two hundred meters from the breach," she went on. "That range results in neural contamination or liquefaction for unprotected individuals."
Her tone sharpened.
"But our sensors did not record external signal emission."
The air felt heavier.
"Instead," she said, "we detected neural interaction originating from you."
The screen in front of me activated.
Footage of the fight played. My movements slowed and analyzed frame by frame. Graphs followed. Spikes. Gaps. Alignment patterns.
I understood immediately.
I had been tested from the start.
"So, Leon Willis," Hale said, "do you experience sensations near breaches or anomalies?"
The screen went dark.
Not powered down. Dismissed.
For a moment, the room returned to silence.
"You already decided," I said quietly.
"Yes."
"This was never an interrogation."
"It was an assessment," Hale replied.
"You do not know what happened."
"No," she admitted. "We know the result. Not the cause."
The hum pressed faintly against my thoughts.
"You put me into intake without answers."
"Keeping you outside the system was no longer an option."
I stared at the wall. "So I disappear."
"Yes."
"You think I am dangerous."
"I think you are unknown," Hale said. "Which is worse."
The door slid open.
"Get some rest, Leon," she added. "Cadet intake begins in six hours."
The channel cut.
I stood. No restraints. No guards waiting.
That worried me more than cuffs ever had.
I was led out toward a massive megastructure rising above the compound.
The hum followed.
Not from the walls.
From inside my head.
Elsewhere.
An office door slid open.
Dark inside. Intentionally so.
A single desk lamp illuminated scattered paper files. Old technology. Pre anomaly.
One file lay open.
A photograph.
SUBJECT: LEON WILLIS
AGE: SIXTEEN
SEX: MALE
RING OF ORIGIN: RING III
CURRENT STATUS: UNDER OBSERVATION
Commander Hale stepped inside and saluted.
"The subject will be inducted into this year's cadet intake for continued observation."
"Good," a male voice replied from the shadows.
A pneumatic chair hissed softly.
"What is your assessment?"
Hale did not hesitate. "High intelligence. Emotional control. Adaptive behavior. Too perceptive for his age."
The man leaned back, leather creaking.
"You chose well, Commander."
"Thank you, sir."
"Update the file," he said. "Bring it back in one hour."
She saluted again and exited.
Alone, the man studied the photograph.
"Let's see how long you keep lying," he murmured