He let the cold soak in, numbing the edge of the wounds he'd stopped counting. He flexed the hand that had almost broken Rehn's jaw, then imagined instead the feel of the blade at Lethren's throat, the brief, perfect resistance before the world rebalanced around the new reality.

He heard footsteps behind him, but didn't turn.

Lethren's voice was softer now, maybe with effort, maybe with calculation. "You played your part well," she said. "You'll get promoted for it."

Soren watched the city, not her. "I should thank you for the lesson?"

She stepped closer, boots silent even on the gravel roof. "The lesson is this: nobody will ever remember how you survived. Only that you did."

He turned, just enough to catch her eyes, black as ever, but now rimmed in something less certain. "I don't care what they remember. I care what you do next."

She smiled, thin and tired. "Next time, you'll be the one running the test."

He stood, the movement slow and deliberate. "If you ever use people as data again, I'll make sure you're one of them."

She didn't flinch. "Then I'll know I taught you something."

She turned and left, cloak sweeping a line through last night's dust.

Soren waited until the sound of her boots faded, then drew the blade from under his coat. He let the steel catch the city light, reflecting it in a single, wavering line across the rails.

He wondered what it would take to cut that line. If he would ever stop wanting to.

He let the thought ride the cold for a while, then sheathed the sword and went back down into the city, ready to see how much of himself he could leave behind before the next morning.

He didn't see the team for two days.

When he returned to the outpost, the mood had shifted: Lira and Liane were running a gambling pool on whether Soren's "advancement" would end in a promotion or a staged disappearance; Kale had found a way to forge medical dispensary chits and was now running a side hustle in ampoules; Seren, to his surprise, had commandeered the training deck and was drilling the new recruits, her voice sharper than he remembered.

He watched her from the mezzanine, the way she moved between the lines, correcting a stance or a grip with the kind of precision that was half memory, half hunger. She saw him, but didn't wave; just nodded once and returned to the new world she was building.

Soren left her to it.

The next morning, the recall came. Three words, all caps: REPORT TO SPIRE.

He packed his kit, checked the blade for imperfections, and set out for the elevator that would take him up into the old Academy. He didn't look back.

The ride was clamped in silence, the cable car rattling against the sky, each meter of ascent burning off another layer of city noise until the only sound left was the whisper of his own pulse under the collar.

At the top, Cirel was waiting, this time in person. Her face was older than the projection, and the hair at her temples was going the color of bone.

She motioned him in. "Take a seat, Vale."

He didn't.

She regarded him for a long moment, then said, "You did well. Better than the last three."

He waited.

She tapped the desk, a slow drumbeat. "You survived the experiment. More importantly, you didn't break when they gave you the chance."

"What now?" Soren said.

Cirel leaned in. "Now, you get to decide which side you're on. We have a window. Two weeks of quiet before they send you anywhere. You use it to heal, or you use it to plan."

He let the words hang, then said, "What if I don't want to run their tests anymore?"

Cirel's smile was almost, for a second, sad. "Then you make your own."

He almost laughed, but didn't.

She handed him a set of credentials, marked "Field Commandant." His own face, eyes hollowed by the scan, stared back up at him. "You'll have latitude. Not full, but enough. First assignment is Meridian Security. But you'll know what to do when the next order comes."

He took the badge, weighed it in his palm, felt the implied shackle at the wrist.

Cirel stood, and for the first time, looked tired. "You should eat," she said. "You'll need a clear head."

He nodded.

On the way out, he passed a mirror. For a second, he didn't recognize the figure in it—coat heavier, stance more certain, the old fracture in the wrist now just a pale seam against the skin.

He let himself look for a second longer, then turned away.

At dawn, he'd report to Meridian Security, and after that, whatever came next. He had two weeks to decide what kind of story he wanted written.

He didn't know, yet, if he'd settle for surviving.

But he was sure he'd make someone remember it.

In the nights that followed, Soren would sometimes walk the upper city, tracing the routes he'd mapped during the first mission. He stopped, now and then, at the places where the old world poked through the new: a statue with the face melted off, a fountain that still ran even though nobody remembered what god it was for. He watched the people move, the way they pretended not to see the uniforms, the way they flinched from the echo of boots on stone.

He thought of Jannek, and the cut that never quite closed.

He thought of Rehn, and what it meant to be a variable.

He thought of Lethren, and the kind of survival that needed other people's blood to justify itself.

He wondered, at the end of each night, if he'd ever carve out something that was his alone.

The procurement officer on station at the Meridian Security lobby took one look at Soren's new credentials and offered him a real smile, as if recognizing an old crime in a new face.

She had the kind of pinched features you only built after years of smiling at people you didn't like, Soren instantly idolized her. He signed the intake forms, scanned his hand, and was rewarded with a bundle of black, regulation-issue gear and a locker assignment three doors down from the actual holding cells.

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