"The band does not connect you to the neural system. It connects you to yourself. The system merely listens." — Technical Archive, VFP Records.
Cadet Academy,
VFP,
New Facility.
Bale lay sprawled across his bunk, staring at the dull metal strip dangling between his fingers. His face was exuding a distant and forlorn expression, flashing back to the incidence at the assembly hall. Even his cubemates seemed to notice his unusual attitude. In occasional situations, he gets unpleasantly teased among his senior cubemates because of his clumsy state during sync trainings, which almost every cadets in the Academy had known him for. However, today seemed different on Bale's end. He wasn't responding as usual to their amusement and therefore, they kept their distance. That at least gave a sense of comeraderie, he hoped. Flashing a distant look at his neural band — cold, quiet, and far too innocent-looking for what it did back at the assembly, he could not help but wonder about what he saw. Glaring at the metal band, he could even vividly imagine it breathing.
'It's just a neural band, isn't it?'
Every time he blinked though, flashes of what happened back in the assembly hall kept replaying in his mind. The red flicker, the whispering voice through static
... and that bizarre colossal eye he had seen intruding his own thoughts. He still could not help but shudder at the thought...
'Perhaps...' he thought bitterly, '... it's me. Maybe I'm the magnet for this crap.'
But what does that... stuff have to do him? Perhaps he had some connection to it in some way, or maybe it was a vision he inherited... talk about inheritance, Bale didn't know anything about his family to begin with. Right from birth, he had been raised in a foster house on his home planet before getting admitted into the VFP. Well back in the foster house, that was where he had met Tora. Noticing the fact that he had no relation he knew of, the foster house and the planet were only what made him feel connected, at least to a source. The people back at the foster house and inhabitants of the planet were the only familiar world he knew of as relatives. Ever since realizing that the identity of his parents were not known to him, and later finding out that they were most probably not dead, the whole situation seemed vague to him at his tender age. Considering the common technique of reproduction in this Age through surrogacy, he even questioned his natural birth.
Growing up to a sufficient age, he and his fellow foster mates were then taken into VFP admission system, where they got admitted into the Academy. That had been the system of care allocated to orphans or fostered children. After some certain age, under the authority of the New Facility, fostered children of sufficient age across New Facility would be assorted for admission into VFP. That meant that Bale had not been here by choice in the first place.
However, Bale was going to admit it. He wasn't currently capable of syncing well with the damned neural band. The strange events that had happened that day felt... eerily unfathomable. He didn't know what to make of that situation. It seemed as if the entity had been watching from a different dimension, finally making itself known.
"Gross," he muttered to himself, turning the neural band over in his hand. Its surface reflected his frown like a warped mirror.
"Maybe I really am losing it."
As if deliberately interrupting his thoughts, the AI's voice cut through the silence, crisp and emotionless.
"Time index nineteen-hundred. Appointment protocol initiated: Diagnostics Wing."
And a series of sharp digital pulses followed.
*dee-dee, dee-dee, dee-dee, dee-dee*
Each was perfectly timed and impossible to ignore as they cut through like blade.
... And just in time, groans rose from the other bunks.
"Hey Unfit! Turn that crap off!" one of the Scouts barked.
"Dunno yer place, heh?" another added, his voice thick with mockery.
"Turn that off, Unfit," the third Scout hissed from the top bunk, rolling over.
Bale shut the alarm off. The three Scouts were his cubemates.
'Assholes...'
He swung his legs off the bed and grabbed his uniform jacket. The dorm... or cube, as the Academy called it, was cramped and built more like a containment pod than a room. In the first division, four cadets were usually assigned to a cube, each containing two bunks stacked against alloy walls that always smelled faintly of sweat and solder.
He slid off his bed, threw on his jacket, and stepped into the hall in-between opposite rows of cubes.
The corridor lights were pale and unfeeling, casting sterile shadows that stretched behind him. Every few meters, holo-screens were pulsing with time indexes and mission statistics. The air smelled faintly of coolant and recycled air. That, was reminder that nothing in the Academy was ever truly clean.
Shrugging off the thought, he headed on towards the diagnostics centre.
-----
"Weird… why is your neural pulse constantly unstable?It's... fluctuating." Instructor Jet, one of the medics in the diagnostic unit, sighed as he studied Bale's neural pulse through his neural band.
Moments ago, Bale had been subjected to neural pulse diagnosis.
Tentatively resting his chin on his thumb, Jet squinted at the swirling blue projections hovering above the console. Lines of code twisted like smoke, forming neural patterns that broke and reformed, out of sync with each other. The console displayed datas of unstable neural patterns.
He exhaled. "Weird," he said again, this time slower, as if the word itself weighed something.
Bale sat stiffly in the diagnostics chair, his arms on the armrest, with his neural band still faintly glowing on his wrist. He didn't respond though. The air in the room hummed with the quiet mechanical pulse of the scanners.
Jet straightened and turned, folding his arms. "Lad, pray tell. How were you admitted into the Academy here in VFP?" His voice exuded a perverse tone.
"Sorry, but why ask?" Bale asked, raising a brow, pretending he didn't hear the insult in the man's tone.
Jet blinked. Then he laughed once, so dry and short, such kind that didn't need joy. "Huh. Never heard of a cadet your level who's got such unstable data. Your data..."
He leaned forward, close enough that Bale could smell the faint sting of synthetic cologne and metal dust. His eyes glinted with something unreadable. Perhaps curiosity, or quiet suspicion.
Leaning back slightly in discomfort, Bale crawled up his neck.
'Don't kiss me, you pervert!'
"... is the worst I have ever diagnosed."
Jet tilted his head as his voice dropped to a murmur. "Ah… I see. Your band refuses to synchronize because…" He paused, as if enjoying the silence. "…you aren't mentally stable enough."
"Huh?"
Jet didn't flinch. "You heard me, lad. Neural pulse this unstable? You're lucky your brain's still yours."
Bale's jaw tightened in fury. "So that's your professional opinion?"
Jet shrugged. "That's my experienced opinion, lad. Don't take it personal. You've lasted longer than most Unfits do before frying their cortex... I wonder how you haven't yet."
Saying the last few words, his gazes lingered on him, longer that usual.
To Bale, his tone was too casual and light for what he said. It sounded like someone reading a death sentence over breakfast.
'Morbid type.'
Then with an obvious fake, good-guy smile that felt more like mockery, Jet added, "But hey, I get it. You want to help humanity, fight for New Facility, and be one of the supernatural Unbounds. Cute. Who doesn't want to be noble? But lad, you know, courage and stupidity share a very thin border. Not all lofty heights are meant for everyone."
Bale's right hand clenched into a fist.
Well, not that he could dare take on his own with an Instructor of the Academy.
"Judging from your stats, you're from the public foster house at Borderlands, right?"
Bale wasn't surprised by those last few words. Of course, an Instructor should have access to such information. Borderlands, was the name of his planet hometown. Meanwhile, Jet went on, almost theatrically as he posed with both hands on his hips. "I admire your bravery, kid, really. But here's my advice, lad. You can simply resign duty, get back home, pick up a tech trade, fix pipes and build drones. Be with your family. Leave the Academy and the vortexes to those who can handle them. Cadets stronger than you often drop out of the Academy, claiming the trainings here are too odious. I see no way you can withstand it."
His smile widened. "We'll take care of things from here."
Just then, something inside Bale snapped as he heard an unfamiliar word. He had pondered on it earlier in his cube.
'Wait.. family?'
That word... it hit like a slap. No, a sharp blow, like a blade. To Bale, it was a hollow, cold word that didn't seem to relate in any way with him, or perhaps something he knew nothing about.
He believed it was something he never had.
"What do you m—"
KRRRRRRRRMMM!!
Suddenly, a huge vibration travelled across the floor of the whole Diagnostics Wing, jolting every feet into tremor.
A sound like the earth itself splitting in half thundered through the Academy. Across the Academy, lights immediately flickered, the walls groaned, and both of them staggered as the room shuddered violently. The sound of alarms screamed through the halls.
"Earthquake?" Jet shouted, steadying himself on the console.
Noiser fluttered about as everywhere went into disarray.
Bale didn't answer though.
The vibration... was moving...
... It felt alive, pulsing in patterns, like something beneath them was stirring. Then he felt it crawl up through his boots, into his legs... and his chest.
And then he saw something.
Suddenly, his neural band glowed and trembled with a flickering red.
It shimmered like liquid fire under his skin.
The light spread in thin lines, tracing up his arm in pulses that matched the rhythm of the quake.
'W-what's happening?'
Assaulted with a chilling sensation, his chest tightened. The air around him buzzed, distorting like static building in his ears.
And through the noise, he could swear he heard a voice. It was a faint, layered... and impossible voice.
It was a subtle whisper in the electric storm.
Then a cold breeze washed over him slowly and heavily, as if stepping into deep water. The scanner lights flickered, the holographic panels glitched and froze, and fractals of unreadable symbols flashed for a second before collapsing into static.
Bale stumbled to his feet. "What's happening—"
Jet didn't answer. However, he was staring at Bale's wrist, his eyes wide and frozen in place. "Your band… it's reacting to the tremor—no, it's syncing with it."
"What?"
Bale followed his gaze. The red light was pulsing faster, as if breathing. He felt a nascent presence, but real, watching him from somewhere he couldn't see... somewhere his vision couldn't cover.
'Crap!'
His whole body trembled involuntarily as he felt a sense of seeing something... no, more like feeling something. It was there, he felt it, but couldn't see it.
... It was like from a different dimension.
The sirens wailed louder. Outside, the corridors were filled with rushing footsteps and shouting commands.
Bale didn't wait. He bolted for the exit.
The corridor lights flickered overhead as he ran, shadows cutting across the walls like shards. The metallic floor trembled beneath him, and the cold hum of the band vibrated through his bones.
When he reached the courtyard, he stopped. The air there hit him like frost.
Every screen around the plaza was glitching, as lines of white static crawled across the displays. Looking up towards the sky, he froze.
Above the Academy dome, the clouds had twisted into a slow-moving spiral, churning in silence.
At the center of that spiral was something which shimmered faintly. There was a crack, and within it was light bleeding through it like a wound in the sky.
And there, reflected in the crimson shimmer of his band, something blinked...
He wasn't sure though. Since the previous day, things seemed not to go well for him.
But, it seemed that only Bale could see it.