The next morning, the air in the Hazard Clearance facility was thick with the ghosts of the dead. Unit 17 stood in a ragged line for roll call, the empty spaces in their formation a silent, gaping wound. The three survivors Maria, Leo, and the silent girl, Elara clutched their new, blood-stained gear like it was the only thing holding them together.
Sergeant Vale did not acknowledge their trauma. He simply scanned their ranks, his lip curling in a sneer. With a few casual strokes of a stylus on his Bureau data slate, he marked the dead as "expended." It was the same tone one might use when marking off spent ammunition.
A recruit from a different, less broken unit, muttered to his friend, his voice full of a naive pity that Jack found nauseating. "That's rough. At least their families will get a letter."
Vale's head snapped up. He had heard. A slow, ugly laugh, like the grinding of rocks, rumbled in his chest. "Families?" he barked, and the entire formation flinched. "Are you idiots? You don't have families."
He strode forward, his one good eye sweeping over the sea of confused and terrified faces, before landing on Maria. "You," he growled. "You're still clinging to that, aren't you? That some foster mother is waiting for a letter."
"She promised she would write," Maria shot back, her voice trembling but defiant.
Vale's smirk was a weapon. "Kid, the moment you turned fifteen and were recalled for Awakening, the contract the state had with your caretakers was terminated. They received a final stipend payment and a legal notice of asset transfer. You're not their daughter. You were a line item in their budget. You're state property. You are an asset. And when an asset breaks, we scrap it and file the paperwork."
The words hit the assembled orphans like a physical blow. A collective, silent gasp of horror.
"You're lying," Maria screamed, tears of rage and disbelief streaming down her face.
"Check the public records, girl," Vale said, his voice dripping with contempt. "The ink on your death certificate is already drafted, just waiting for a date. You are all paper orphans. You exist only on a government slate. Now get back in formation before I add a date to yours myself."
The fallout was a slow, quiet poison that seeped into the barracks of Unit 17. The rage was gone, replaced by a hollow, soul-crushing despair. Leo, the boy who had clung to a flickering light, finally broke. He sat on his bunk, his own [Glow] talent making his tears shimmer in the dim light. "No one," he whispered, over and over again. "No one's waiting for us."
Elara, the silent girl who had not spoken a single word since the assessment, looked at the chipped sword in her lap. Her voice was a dry, rustling sound, a thing unused to the air. "We were never anything," she said, her voice utterly devoid of emotion. Then she fell silent again, but the single, devastating truth of her words hung in the air like a death shroud.
Jack watched them from his bunk, a silent, attentive predator. He wore his mask of shared misery, but inside, he felt a profound, cold satisfaction. This was it. This was the final emotional tether he needed to sever. They were now completely unmoored from the world, adrift in a sea of despair.
His interface confirmed his victory with a clinical, beautiful notification.
[Tenant Despair Threshold Passed: Desperation Visibility Amplified.]
[Dungeon Visibility: Culvert beacon is now a permanent, high-priority signal to all members of Unit 17.]
To them, the red glow they could now see so clearly in their mind's eye was the only light left in their world. Family was the last lie, he mused, a cold, serene thought. Now, they belong only to me.
Miles away, in a sterile Bureau office, the same bleary-eyed analyst received the attrition report from Sergeant Vale's unit. Three assets expended. A normal day. He scanned the digital paperwork. The "foster contract termination" clause was standard boilerplate on every orphan's file. He clicked "confirm" without a second thought, his mind already on his lunch break. The apathy of the system was the final nail in the coffin.
That night, the barracks were silent. Maria stared at her dented shield, her rage finally extinguished, leaving only a hollow emptiness. "If no one's waiting for us," she whispered to the darkness, "then it doesn't matter where we die."
Leo clutched a small, smooth stone like a rosary, his eyes fixed on the far wall, in the direction of the culvert.
Jack lay awake, serene, the faint violet alert still pulsing at the edge of his vision. It was a minor annoyance, a problem for another day. He watched his new, broken, and utterly loyal flock. He had not forced them. He had not lied to them, not really. He had simply allowed the cruel truth of their world to do the work for him.
They've finally accepted it, he thought, a flicker of a smile on his lips. Sheep without shepherds are the easiest flock to claim.