Chapter 3: "Ranked"
Vael didn't sleep that night.
Not because of the fight. Not because of the Echo. And not because of the HUD logs still flickering in the corner of his vision. It was the silence.
No announcements. No reassignments. No med scan follow-up.
Just silence.
The Academy's way of acknowledging something they didn't have a protocol for.
He ran the fight back in his head more times than he wanted to. Frame by frame. Movement by movement. That thing—him, but not—had known his rhythm. Had predicted his feints. It was a copy, but one stripped of hesitation, one built on something more than just reflex. And it had tried to kill him.
He had felt it. The force. The intention.
When morning came, no one mentioned it. Not Kane. Not Solas. And definitely not the instructor who handed him a new set of bronze-band gear without a word. It didn't even fit properly. He had to tie the gauntlets down with stripcord so they wouldn't slide off his wrists.
"Congratulations," the system said in his HUD. "You have been assigned: PROVISIONAL RANK — BRONZE."
It didn't feel like a win. It felt like a formality.
The rank band was matte brown, already scratched around the seams. A sign someone else had worn it before him. Maybe they didn't need it anymore. Maybe they failed.
He stood in the locker room longer than he needed to, watching cadets filter in and out without ever looking in his direction. Bronze gear usually meant an upgrade—a moment of pride. For Vael, it felt like someone had dropped a label on him just to buy time.
One cadet near the bench glanced up when Vael adjusted his gauntlets. Then quickly looked away. Like proximity might make whatever he was contagious.
By the time he hit the mess, the whispers had started.
"He glitched the sim."
"Clone logic looped."
"No way a zero pulled Echo."
"Maybe the system marked him defective."
He didn't respond. He just got his tray and sat near the back wall where the lights always flickered. The noise helped. It covered the sound of people deciding whether he was dangerous or lucky or fake.
His food steamed for a while. Then it cooled. He never touched it.
Across the hall, Lenya sat with the other silvers. She didn't speak to him. But she looked up once. Just once. Long enough to confirm he was still here.
Then her table moved on.
Later that day, Solas posted trial results. Most of Class Z remained unranked. A few hit bronze. Two went silver. Vael's name showed up at the very bottom, tagged with a blinking code:
VAEL DRAYCE — PROVISIONAL BRONZE — FLAGGED: SYSTEM DEVIATION (REVIEW PENDING)
Everyone saw it. The system made sure of that.
Even the ranking screen hesitated when it passed over his file, like it wasn't sure he counted.
No one made eye contact when he crossed the training hall. Conversations thinned when he walked into a room. Cadets who usually had no issue pushing past him now gave him space. Too much space.
Nobody said anything to his face. But every hallway felt a little quieter when he walked through it. Doors stayed open a beat too long. Voices dropped in volume. A few cadets stared at him just a second too long, trying to decide what they were looking at.
A warning. A threat. Or a lie the system hadn't explained yet.
By lights out, Vael had gotten two cryptic messages on his HUD. No sender ID.
"Do not trust standard updates."
"You are not the only Anchor."
He stared at the ceiling of his bunk, hands behind his head, heartbeat slow.
He thought about the word again: Anchor.
It hadn't been a label. It was a role. Or maybe a threat. Maybe both.
His fingers flexed against the mattress. The cot beneath him buzzed faintly every thirty seconds—a heartbeat from the facility systems syncing to internal loop cycles. For the first time since arriving, he noticed the rhythm was off. Half a second slow.
The silence wasn't empty anymore.
It was full of things waiting to speak.
The next morning, everything felt wrong. Not overtly—nothing looked broken. But the air was heavier, as if the system core had shifted its attention. The training halls felt colder. The lights lingered just a second longer when he passed through a scanner arch. It wasn't obvious enough to trigger alerts. Just... present.
Classes proceeded like normal. Theory modules. Combat drills. Feedback reviews. Except everywhere Vael went, people either whispered or moved. No one challenged him. No one addressed the blinking flag next to his name in the roster. But everyone saw it.
During sim review, he caught Kane glancing at his file. Just once. Kane said nothing. But that glance said more than most people did in a full report. It was the kind of look soldiers gave wreckage—trying to figure out if it was dangerous or useful.
The silence between them grew longer each hour. Kane didn't avoid him, but he didn't engage either. Vael suspected he was being observed, not ignored.
After drills, Vael checked the edge of the server wing. He'd heard a rumor that some cadets could bypass standard protocol alerts by re-routing their HUD logs. Nobody confirmed it, but he figured if anyone had left a trace, it would be there.
Behind the cargo crates, near a diagnostics panel, he found it.
Another message.
"Static is a form of resistance."
No sender. No timestamp. Just a blinking green dot that vanished after reading.
That night, he stood by the dorm windows, staring at the dark curvature of the simulation dome overhead. Stars didn't move in the Academy sky, and yet, he felt like something up there had shifted. Like the dome was watching back.
He touched the bronze band on his wrist, pressing it tighter.
They hadn't reset him. That was the first anomaly.
They hadn't reassigned him. That was the second.
They'd marked him and let him roam.
Which meant someone—somewhere—was waiting to see what he'd do next.
The following evening brought another anomaly. During end-of-day sync, Vael's HUD skipped an expected update. The screen blinked out for a full two seconds before rebooting—no sound, no color. Just flat black. When it returned, it showed his ID band was still active… but the "Review Pending" flag had vanished. Replaced by something else.
[MONITORING: ACTIVE - PRIORITY VARIANT DETECTED]
He blinked hard. Then again. It didn't go away.
He logged into a public interface console and requested a file audit. No change. His user profile listed no infractions. No elevation. No flag.
Whatever was watching him had stepped out of hiding.
Back in the dorm, he ran a silent system trace on his band. No new connections. No bouncebacks. Just a ping loop from a location labeled "INT.STG NODE: REDUNDANT." A folder without permissions. Usually dead space.
It was active.
Something, somewhere, had opened the door—and left it cracked just wide enough for him to notice.
He lay awake again that night. Not out of fear.
Out of expectation.
And for the first time, the system didn't feel like a prison.
It felt like a test.
The next day, the academy seemed even colder. Conversations around him took on a guarded, clipped tone. Vael noticed more patrol drones than usual, their optic sensors scanning more deliberately, sweeping corners and shadows they usually ignored. Even the academy's instructors seemed tense, their movements sharp, expressions cautious.
After combat practice, Vael lingered near the weapon racks, adjusting gear that didn't need adjusting. Solas approached quietly, his steps silent enough Vael almost missed them.
"You're adjusting quickly," Solas said, not looking directly at him. "But adaptability is just the first step."
Vael kept his attention on the gear. "To what?"
Solas's voice lowered. "To surviving whatever comes next." He moved on without further explanation.
At dinner, Vael found himself alone again, the table around him clear. Lenya approached cautiously and took a seat across from him, breaking her usual silence.
"You're making people nervous," she said quietly.
"I'm not doing anything," Vael replied.
She leaned forward slightly. "That's exactly why they're worried. Usually, the system acts fast. You're still here, uncorrected."
Vael met her gaze. "Do you know something?"
Lenya hesitated. "Just be careful. The system never ignores a problem. It studies it first."
She left him then, leaving more questions than answers.
That night, Vael received another message on his HUD.
"Anchor status verified. Await further instructions."
Instructions from whom? And for what?
He stared at the ceiling again, feeling the academy's heartbeat in the faint buzz of machinery beneath his bunk. Now it matched his own rhythm perfectly, as though syncing to him.
Sleep still didn't come. But tonight, it wasn't silence keeping him awake.
It was anticipation.