"The mind is a mirror; the more you stare into it, the more it reflects what should not be seen."
— Fragmented Notes, Prometheus Division
Cadet Academy,
VFP,
New Facility.
The lower assembly wing always smelled like burnt circuits and metal polish. The air was colder there, as was the kind that stuck to your lungs and made every breath feel like a drill. Hundreds of cadets stood shoulder to shoulder, as rows of gray uniforms stretched down the shiny steel-floored hall. Locating their lines, Bale and Tora joined the lined cadets.
Meters away, holographic banners flared to life above the rows. The VFP insignia spun slowly like floating shards of light. Beneath the glow were some figures in crimson beret and white uniforms. The instructors lined the podium, their faces seemingly carved out of stone. One of them, a lean man with rimless spectacles and streaks of silver hair under his crimson beret, stepped forward and spoke through the intercom at the center of the podium.
"Good day first-division cadets. Today's last synchronization test shall determine your rank promotion, and for some... it's gonna be a bad day" he said. His voice was smooth, but carried an edge that could cut. "Today is your final evaluation day which takes place at the end of every cyclic quadrant, and will determine your cumulative VCI. Those who fail to attain the cumulative VCI limit for rank promotion will be automatically retained to their old ranks until further review. However, your VCI evaluation data will be allocated to your neural comms by dusk." He darted his eyes through the crowd, as if expecting someone to throw up.
Hearing this, a few cadets groaned under their breath. Bale just stared at his wrist, where his neural band rested snug against his skin. The thin metallic strip wouldn't stop momentarily pulsing blue once before dimming again. It was supposed to be simple: keep your thoughts steady, let the band read your neural frequency, and sync. Easy, right?
... Just that Bale's mind never stopped talking.
The damned lad could even hear his own thoughts buzzing in this damned moment of solemnity!
'Don't mess this up. Don't mess this up. Please don't mess this up.'
Beside him, Tora looked calm as ever, but her face could tell she was being perverse. "You look like you're about to confess to your soup," she whispered.
Bale forced a weak grin. "Maybe it'll pray for me."
The instructor raised his arm, and the hall fell silent immediately. "Band synchronization, initiate."
At that moment, a wave of light spread through the crowd as hundreds of neural bands lit up among the Unfits, Explorers and Scouts, glowing veins of blue and green winding up cadets' arms. The hum of synchronized energy filled the room, low vibrations rattling the air.
Amused, Bale watched with fascination. When a band synced perfectly, the light pulsed a calm and rhythmic steady blue, almost alive. Some cadets, undoubtedly the Unfits, glowed with confident green, a sign of developing resonance. In a few seconds, the green lights would flare up into blue. Most cadets, especially the Explores and Scouts, had glowed blue right from the start of their bands activation. They had gotten used to the neural band synchronization. A few flickered, their lights uncertain, twitching between green and blue like a pulse under strain. That was not strange. If they got their synchronization under control, they would soon glow up to blue.
Out of these wonderful glows, one flicker caught his eye, though.
His own.
'God damnit. Not again.'
It started as a tiny spark, momentarily flickering between blue and red. At some moment, the spark grew brighter. Red... meant fully unstable and dangerous levels of neural distortion. Too much flicker could cause the sync to abort, frying the neural nodes on one's temples like old circuit chips.
'... I'm trying...'
Tora, who was beside him, noticed first. "Uh… Bale," she whispered. "Your band's having a seizure. It's flickering... red again?" She widened her eyes slightly.
He looked down. The red blinked again. Once, twice, and then it went still. "It's fine," he said, though his voice betrayed his uncertainty.
Suddenly though...
*Beep beep, beep beep, beep beep,...*
From the corner of the hall, an instructor's gaze snapped toward him. The man's visor caught the glow of red across the room as Bale's beep cut through his ears.
"Maintain synchronization!" the instructor barked, brows furrowed. He didn't seem to like what he was seeing. The attention of the other instructors were caught.
The atmosphere gradually intensified as the beeping grew louder. Bale tried to focus, to clear his head like the training modules always said. This was the only chance cadets had to sync with their bands. It was a grave offense syncing without instruction, and so Bale had to get his head straight, right here and now. But... the harder he tried, the more his thoughts spun out of control.
'God damnit.'
Then suddenly, he saw flashes.
Not memories. Not dreams. It was something else entirely.
Sort of... a spiraling field of white.
Within that white spiral field came a voice he didn't recognize, which seemed to whisper through his nerves and brain. The atmosphere stirred as if something was moving beneath... then an eye suddenly opened. Very ethereal. He instantly found himself isolated in a different world before a huge eye, which dwarfed him like a fly beside a spaceship. Its pupils were filled with suffocating darkness, one he could never hope to experience. It was very enormous and watching, giving off a sense of primal malevolence and ominousness. It was towering an infinite distance away from him, yet it seemed so close, like a few centimetres away .
Bale's face hung in the air in an ugly manner. He could not behold what he was having sight of. The scene was both ghastly and ominous, giving off a sense of ultimate danger. It was not like anything Bale had ever encountered, that if he ever encountered ominous scenes like this. Its reflection was shimmering in his neural band.
'What the hell!'
Contorting his face in an ugly fold as involuntary harrowing paranoia and pressure assaulted his body and soul, his thoughts seemed to almost become spoken words as his knees buckled vigorously before he caught himself, his lips trembling. He involuntarily stepped backwards a little, his legs shaky.
With the ethereal sight before him, he tried to take hold of himself, his mind. One thing about Bale was, in the direst of unexpected or sudden emergencies, he could still get a hold of his mind, even if thrown off by fear. He was a man of strong will. Growing up, he had learnt to adapt almost seamlessly to his immediate environment and thus, that served as a boon for him in the direst of situations he had ever been. This one before him though... was of a different level, too ominous in comparison to his most dire pasts.
Everyone else present in the hall locked their confused gaze on him, some feeling a mixed sense of emotion. Fear was sure to be among them. However, no one seemed to notice what he was seeing. They mistook his attitude for his awkwardness.
"What's with Prophet today? Has his awkwardness skyrocketed to a different level?"
"Talk about awkwardness.. do prophets not see visions?"
"Oh?Perhaps he saw his mom's nude?"
"Keep it low, the instructors are eavesdropping."
"Tch. Unfits these days."
The hall was filled with tension and murmurs as every eyes was on Bale.
The instructors though, seemed not to pay him any other attention. Perhaps they were curious about why he reacted that way, but kept their thoughts to themselves.
Moments later, the ethereal entity dispersed after he blinked severally. Looking around, he seemed to have gotten back into the hall.
'Wh.. what the hell... did I just see?'
The light on his wrist dimmed to blue again, steady and almost peaceful.
"Stabilized," the instructor called out, showing a nascent sign of relief. It was almost unnoticeable. Everyone in the hall, except the instructors... and Bale, collectively exhaled. A few cadets wiped sweat from their brows, and the air returned to its quiet hum.
Bale though, remained frozen. He must have been dreaming. What was that just now? His whole body screamed of danger at the ghastly sight of that... eye of some sorts.
Suppressing his paranoia, he regained consciousness of his environment, looking around.
It seemed that everyone knew Bale for who, perhaps what, he was already. This was not his first neural band incident, and most Explorers and Scouts, even Unfits, recognized him for that.
Just that today's strangeness dwarfed the previous ones.
Tora elbowed him gently. "See? You didn't explode."
"Y–yeah," Bale flinched, forcing a laugh. "Small victories." He said, turning to her.
On previous clumsy occasions which most cadets had known him for, his neural band would simply flicker blue and dim again, showing that he was totally unfocused in his neural sync. It would not even glow green.
This time, his eyes stayed locked on the band. The metal was cool and calm again. In fact, too calm. It shouldn't have done that. It flared red moments ago, then snapped back like nothing happened. It felt like something inside it had blinked.
...Or worse, something had blinked back.
'I'll be damned...'
As the test ended, the cadets were dismissed one row at a time. Reaching his turn, Bale lingered for a moment, watching the holographic screens flicker with data from the synchronization results. His name flashed briefly in red before fading to white.
There he saw his own familiar set of data.
"Cadet Bale – Neural Instability: 0.02%"
It was small, barely a fraction. But instability was instability, and even a whisper of it could ruin a cadet's standing. He just prayed not to have a VCI below 5. That was the worst news to hear.
'Don't think about it... at least for now. I guess today's too strange a day...'
Appearing behind him, Tora tugged on his sleeve as they walked toward the exit. "So… you gonna tell me what that was?"
"I don't know," he said quietly. "It felt like the band wasn't just reading me. It was... watching?... sort of." Bale shuddered a little at that thought, though Tora didn't catch it.
"Watching?" She raised an eyebrow. "That's creepy."
"Yeah," Bale said, staring at the neural band on his wrist.
Just then, a Scout bumped intentionally into the duo, a mocking smile on his face.
Bale wanted to say something, maybe make a joke that could get a few of his teeth scattered across the metal floor. The day was suddenly too troubling for him.
"Just ignore them. Revenge day's pending." Tora tugged at him, pulling him away.
As they reached the corridor, a faint static hissed through the comm system. The voice of the silver-haired instructor came through, low and unreadable.
"All cadets with red flicker records, report to secondary diagnostics at 1900 hours."
Tora glanced at him. "That's you, isn't it?"
Bale didn't answer. Perhaps he did, with a stare.
As they passed through the corridor, the corridor lights dimmed for a second, then flickered. It happened once, then twice before stabilizing again.
Somewhere deep in the academy, a low hum pulsed through the walls, almost like the heartbeat of something alive.
He didn't know it yet, but the band wasn't done with him.
...And whatever was listening through it had just found its signal.