The world hit him the moment he stepped outside.
The station doors hissed shut behind him, muffling Nicole's calm, clinical explanations—and replacing them with a reality that felt feral.
The air was thick with smoke. Not choking, not unbearable just ever-present, drifting like a bruise across the sky.
In the far distance, fires burned in scattered clusters. Some were controlled. Some… weren't. Their glow pulsed like angry heartbeats against the horizon, flickering off the glass of half-evacuated buildings.
Above him, the thrum of helicopter rotors cut through the air again and again.Not military birds but civilian emergency crafts retrofitted with sensor pods and stabilized harnesses. They flew low, scanning the surroundings.
Sirens wailed in overlapping pitches, distant but constant. And ahead of him—directly across the street a riot.
A mass of civilians pressed against the barricades outside the police department, their shouts crashing into each other like waves. Some were begging for information. Some were furious shouting for loved ones. Some simply terrified following the wave of desperation. A few smashed objects against the barriers, desperate to be seen, heard, understood.
Officers stood behind the blockade with riot shields, faces tight, trying but failing not to look overwhelmed.
A drone drifted overhead, projecting warnings that were drowned out instantly.
It all felt… wrong.
Obei hugged the strap of his bag, the weight of Nicole's explanation suddenly cementing itself in his chest.
This is the world we're inheriting he thought.
A transport shuttle slid to a stop beside him—sleek, armored, bearing the Initiative insignia. The Initiative insignia was simple, sharp, and unmistakable. A vertical eye-shaped emblem, its outline formed by two mirrored arcs. Inside it, a single geometric star rested followed by four points, clean and angular they hovered above a thin horizontal line that split the symbol in half.
The door folded open with a hiss.
"Obei Draven?" the driver asked.
He nodded wordlessly and stepped in.
-----
The shuttle slowed as it approached a pair of gates not metal gates, but a shimmering barrier of refracted light, like heat mirages woven into a solid wall. Automated sentry pylons tracked the shuttle for a heartbeat, then allowed it entry.
The campus appeared—and Obei's breath left him.
It looked like a mixture of both a school and a fortress. For a moment Obei doubted the very words of Nicole. Everything here looked like a prison, just not the type that most people would expect to see.
The Initiative campus stretched across a vast landscaped green, framed by tall oaks and newly planted pines. The buildings themselves weren't metallic monoliths or alien fortresses—they were constructed in clean, contemporary architecture: pale stone, dark steel beams, and broad windows tinted just enough to hide what happened inside, but not enough to look oppressive.
The main structure rose at the center like a university hall crossed with an elite training facility. Wide steps led to its entrance, where a massive overhang cast sharp shadows across the courtyard. The façade was trimmed with vertical slats of polished wood, giving the entire place a strangely warm tone despite the reinforced materials beneath.
Students or rather Performers, he corrected himself were walking in groups across the grounds. Some wore casual clothes, others fitted tracksuits marked with their respective tiers. A few were laughing. Others looked like they hadn't slept in days.
What struck him most wasn't the militarization.
It was the normalcy.
Benches dotted the pathways. A fountain—turned off for now—stood in a small plaza, surrounded by informational boards and digital kiosks. To his left, he saw what looked like a cafeteria, its giant windows glowing with warm yellow light. To the right, an athletic field stretched out, equipped with reinforced turf and sensor-embedded running lanes.
The campus was a clean, modern space designed to look welcoming enough to soothe the nerves of those present while hiding the fact that every wall, every path, every brick had been reinforced, reinforced, then reinforced again.
The shuttle eased to a halt at the drop-off point.
Obei stepped out, backpack slung over one shoulder, taking in the scene with wide, stunned eyes.
A fresh breeze carried the scent of cut grass.
"This… is where we're supposed to learn to survive?" He asked no one in particular.
The driver gave him a nod before the shuttle door shut and the shuttle whisked away.
Obei stood there alone for a moment, staring up at the main hall's towering entrance.
Modern, Polished, and Purposeful.
Obei pushed through the glass doors of the main hall, as soon as the doors closed behind him the noise of the outside world cut off, like someone had flipped a switch.
Inside, the building was spacious, bright, and polished to a near-clinical sheen. Sunlight filtered through skylights arranged in geometric panels overhead. the area had a soft tranquility, it was calm, orderly—nothing like the chaos of the city.
A circular desk made of pale wood and reinforced glass sat at the center of the room. Digital displays floated above it, projecting rotating maps of the campus, announcements, and tier classifications. Behind the desk were three receptionists, all dressed in uniform slate-gray attire, moving with an efficiency that told of countless hours of procedure.
One of them was a young woman with her hair in a neatly twisted bun looked up as he approached.
"Name?" she asked.
"Obei Draven."
Her gaze flicked across a holographic interface he couldn't see from his angle.
"New admission?" she asked.
"Yes ma'am" he replied.
She tapped something, and a thin sheet of composite paper printed from the side of the desk with a soft whirrr.
"For registration," she said, sliding it toward him. "Please fill out everything except the final line. The evaluators will assign that."
He took the paper and a pen. The form was straightforward:
{Name: ___________________________________________ }{Date of Birth: ____________________________________}{Mutation Name: _________________________________}{Ability Classification: ____________________________}(Tentative Power Rank:(Evaluator Use Only) }
He filled out the form and handed it back.
The receptionist scanned it, nodded once, then pressed a button on her console.
"Escort requested," she said. "Please wait to your right." pointing to a set of chairs neatly aligned against the wall.
Within five minutes, a door near the lobby opened, and a tall man in a navy-blue uniform stepped out, the words 'Instructor' In bold letters across the torso. He had the build of someone who taught people how to break bones efficiently and the eyes of someone too tired to care if they tried.
"Draven?" the man asked.
"Yeah." He replied
"Follow me to the Evaluation wing." He said.
Obei swallowed hard and fell into step behind him as they moved through a long corridor lit by recessed LEDs. The air grew cooler, more sterile, the deeper they went.
Eventually, they arrived at a reinforced door marked
ABILITY VERIFICATION – AUTHORIZED ENTRY ONLY.
The instructor keyed in a code, and the door slid open with a hydraulic hiss.
The room inside was wide, minimalistic, and intimidatingly empty.
Padded walls. Shock-absorbent flooring. Cameras in every corner. Sensor panels along the ceiling. It felt like a gym, mixed with a laboratory, mixed with a blast chamber.
A woman in a lab coat stood inside, tablet in hand. Her eyes flicked immediately to Obei.
"Subject Draven," she said. "We'll begin with a simple demonstration."
She gestured toward the center of the room.
"Please step forward and… show us your power."