The Selection Hall
Soft white light from the main corridor glowed across walls coated in nano-ceramic, the air cold and sterile in a way no ordinary building could imitate. The hallway stretched ahead without shadows, every step feeling like a walk through a living organ that processed everything passing inside it.
The woman in a white coat who escorted them stopped in front of a seven-meter-tall black door. Two horizontal violet lines drifted slowly across its surface like a faint, pulsing vein. "This is the National Selection Hall," she said.
Aki stared up, jaw slightly open. "This is as big as a stadium…" Ryu did not respond. He studied the door with calm eyes, although something tugged faintly in his chest, as if a part of his memory was being pulled toward a pattern he could not quite name.
The black door vibrated. The violet lines shifted into bright blue as side panels slid apart, releasing a breath of chilled vapor. The entire gate rose with a motion so smooth there was almost no sound of metal.
The hall beyond lit up slowly. White light dropped from above like a very quiet rain.
Ryu stepped inside. For a moment, everything he knew about scale and space felt too small for what he saw.
The hall was the size of a small city, its ceiling rising like a twenty-story building. Walls were covered in holographic screens showing data from across the Dominion of Austryx: provinces, genius indices, juvenile crime reports, and shifting genetic distribution charts. At the center, a vast circular platform held dozens of mental scanners standing like translucent crystal towers.
All across the floor, 1,379 gifted children stood in rigid formations, white uniforms with gray accents marking them as part of the national unit. Soft conversations rippled through the air: "North Province sent one hundred twelve…" "I heard there are forty investigation candidates…" "Where are the biotech prodigies?" "They said there is a special candidate…"
The whispers cut off when Ryu walked in.
Hundreds of heads turned at once. Eyes fixed on him, not in admiration, but with cold curiosity, as if he were an unfamiliar piece of equipment. "Hey… that is him." "The kid from the murder case." "The new subject."
"People say he crashed the medical system." "No way." "Yeah. Double-wave readings."
Ryu let his gaze move across them one by one. There was no awkwardness, no fear, and no visible hunger to compete. He did not treat them as threats, and that alone made some of them tense. Aki leaned slightly closer. "Great. You just became the center of the room." "It is fine," Ryu said quietly.
The central platform flared to life, dozens of crystal pillars lighting up in unison. Blue light rose from the floor and swept through the hall like a soft wave. A neutral synthetic voice echoed overhead. "National-Level Initial Selection: Commencing."
A massive hologram unfolded above them:
TOTAL PARTICIPANTS: 1,379
TOTAL SPECIAL SUBJECTS: 43
TOTAL CLOSED CANDIDATES: 3
STATUS: AWAITING SCAN
Aki swallowed hard. "You are kidding me. This is just the first phase?" Ryu watched the platform, unsure why his body felt more alert than usual. It was not fear. It felt closer to the sense that something far away had already begun measuring him.
"All participants, step forward group by group," the system ordered.
Cluster by cluster, children moved. Each one stepping onto the platform stood inside a scanning ring while blue light rose around them. The scanners read mental pulse, focus capacity, micro-responses, psychoelectric resonance, emotional stability, and potential threat.
The first child finished. A hologram appeared: "Class: Serpent." The second: "Serpent." The third: "Gryphon." A soft murmur followed. Gryphon was an elite classification.
The fourth: "Gryphon." The fifth: "Serpent."
And so it went, one child after another, a pattern of names and labels building an invisible hierarchy in the room.
From the right-hand side, Kael emerged and walked toward the platform with controlled, unhurried strides. Tall, straight-backed, and sharp-eyed, he moved like someone who had been trained to expect victory. As he passed, the crowd opened a path for him without being asked.
"Kael Veradin…" whispered several kids.
"Tactical war genius." "Scored ninety-eight out of a hundred in conflict simulation."
"Guaranteed core-track candidate."
Kael stepped into the scanner ring. Blue light rose and wrapped around him. The display flashed:
CLASS: GRYPHON - ELITE.
A small wave of approval broke out nearby. Kael descended with calculated composure, calm enough to appear mature, satisfied enough to make it clear he knew where he stood among the others.
As he walked past Ryu, his gaze stopped for half a heartbeat. It was brief, barely noticeable, but enough to carry a message. Kael clearly saw Ryu as a threat. Ryu, however, simply looked past him as if the encounter did not matter.
His lack of reaction made Kael's fingers curl into a fist. "I will make sure you fall," Kael muttered under his breath, ego burning beneath his calm exterior.
Aki heard it and winced. "Ryu… you just picked up a final-boss rival without doing anything." "Not important," Ryu replied.
Participants continued to be called. Children walked onto the platform, blue light scanned them, and labels appeared on the hologram above. For several minutes, everything ran smoothly.
Then the system called a different name.
"Ryu Alverion. Subject 4-7. Proceed to the platform."
The hall fell silent so quickly it felt unnatural, as if the air itself was waiting. Ryu moved toward the center, each footstep sounding a little sharper in his own ears. Some hearts in the crowd began to pound, whether in fear, jealousy, or simple confusion at his blank expression.
He stepped into the scanning ring. Blue light surged, and the scanners hummed into full power. In the same instant, something twisted.
The crystal pillars shuddered. Blue light warped into a deep violet tone. Side panels sparked briefly. A few children instinctively stepped back.
"What was that?" "Did the scanner glitch?"
"Is it breaking?" Aki snapped upright. "R-Ryu?! What are you doing?"
"I am standing here," Ryu replied.
He was not moving. Ryu did nothing. Yet the system behaved as though a foreign program had been injected directly into it.
The scanner tried again, pushing more power through the ring. Light dropped, climbed, and bent unnaturally. On the side display, status lines flickered in and out.
"Resonance unstable."
"Psychoelectric wave unresolved."
"Pattern does not match any category."
The instructor in charge frowned at the screen, lines tightening on his forehead.
Whispers rose again, sharper this time.
"This is insane." "The scanner looks… scared." "Who is this kid really?"
"He is breaking the machine?"
Ryu looked upward.
He heard something. Not a voice, not yet, but a faint impression, like pressure brushing the edge of his thoughts. A subtle knock in the dark part of his mind.
Thud… thud… thud…
He closed his eyes. The frequency returned.
Thud… thud … t...
NV was not speaking. NV was trying to register his neural pattern, sending a request over and over like a persistent knock. Ryu opened his eyes.
"The system is trying to enter my head," he said quietly.
The instructor snapped toward him. "What do you mean?"
"I can feel it," Ryu answered.
The man's shoulders stiffened, but before he could respond, the scanner dimmed entirely. The lights died. Across the main display, text appeared in stark blocks:
CLASS: ———
CLASS: ———
CLASS: UNDETERMINED.
The silence deepened.
Then a final line appeared:
"SUBJECT REROUTED TO: CLOSED TRACK."
The hall reacted at once, a contained explosion of shock. The Closed Track was the most secret path in Vasena, a route with no public schedule and no open documentation. Even elite cadets rarely heard it mentioned.
Aki stared at Ryu, face pale. "You… you just got thrown into a path even provincial geniuses cannot look up." "Apparently," Ryu said.
He stepped down from the platform, expression unchanged. Only one thought burned more clearly in his mind: NV was trying to connect, and Vasena's system could not classify him. That combination was not accidental. It was a key.
The instructor tapped his data staff against the floor. "Selection continues," he announced.
Names kept being called, but many eyes no longer cared about the screen. They watched only one figure: Ryu Alverion. Among them, Kael's gaze was the hardest, a mix of anger, fear, and a sense of personal insult that he could not fully hide. The competition between them had officially begun.
When Ryu returned to his place, the scanner that had gone dark flickered back to life. No one touched it. No command was issued.
One final sentence appeared:
NV PROTOCOL: REQUEST RESONANCE.
Ryu glanced at it. Aki's eyes widened. "Why is the sensor calling you?" Ryu did not answer. He understood one thing: this was only the warm-up.
A2 – The Boy Without a Category
The words had flashed only for a moment:
NV PROTOCOL: REQUEST RESONANCE.
A few kids standing closest had seen it before the line vanished. The instructor pressed a manual override on his wrist console, and a sharp tone rang through the local speakers. The panel reset to its standard neutral display.
"Temporary system interference," he said. "Ignore it. Selection proceeds."
But no one truly ignored it. Aki kept his voice low. "Ryu… that was NV, right?" "I saw it," Ryu replied. "NV is not just a random tag, it is..."
"A protocol name," Ryu cut in. "And not something we discuss in front of one thousand three hundred people."
Aki swallowed again. "You know how that sounds, right? You are being pinged by something that should not be out here."
Ryu did not deny it. Instead, he quietly archived everything: the timing, the position of the text, the instructor's reaction time, the exact moment the system chose to hide it. His brain recorded it all as structure, not as fear.
High above the hall, in the dark-glass observation room, screens replayed the scene. The man in the dark suit sat in the central chair, fingers laced loosely. Elara and Arvis stood on either side.
"Here, sir," the technician said, reversing the feed. "NV text appears on its own. No manual trigger, no injected command."
On the display, Ryu stood in the scanner, error messages flashing, classification collapsing, then the short line:
NV PROTOCOL: REQUEST RESONANCE.
"That protocol is supposed to be locked in the core," Elara muttered. "It should never surface in a selection module." "Nothing stays buried forever," the suited man answered quietly. His voice was calm enough, but the room instinctively lowered its volume around him.
Arvis folded his arms. "The timing is the point. It did not randomize; it responded."
The technician brought up layered graphs, tracing peaks and dips. "Resonance spikes right here," he said, pointing at a sharp rise. "Exactly when the scanner forces classification. The second wave we saw in medical appears again."
"And NV treats this as a connection request," Arvis added. "As if the boy's brain is inviting a link."
Elara watched the overlapping curves. "As if his neural structure is flagged as compatible hardware." The man in the suit looked down at the tiny figure of Ryu in the crowd.
"How many children have ever produced this exact error?" he asked. "None," the technician replied. "Even Cael only pushes numbers higher. No internal protocol has ever surfaced on its own."
"Good." The man rose from his chair. "In the official report, do not use the term NV. Label it as a frequency anomaly. Only the three of us will carry the real label."
He turned to Elara and Arvis. "From now on, Ryu Alverion is handled separately. Closed Track. All records of his training go to my desk first."
Arvis gave a brief nod. "And if NV attempts contact again?" A faint smile touched the man's mouth. "Then we will know the boy is moving in the right direction."
Back in the hall, the process rolled forward. Name after name scrolled past, each kid entering the scanner, each label sliding onto the hologram: Serpent, Gryphon, Serpent, Gryphon.
No more flickering lights. No more anomalies. The system behaved as if it wanted to erase its own embarrassment by working flawlessly for everyone else.
Aki tried to breathe normally again. "Look at that group," he said, pointing to the right. "Northern Sector. One of them already helped crack a small crime ring before he came here."
Ryu studied the boy in question. He observed where the boy's weight rested on his feet, how often he glanced around, how his shoulders shifted before he spoke. In Ryu's internal scoring, the boy processed social information quickly, but his breathing was too short. Under sustained pressure, he would burn out early.
Not a major threat.
Aki pointed again. "That tall, exhausted-looking guy? Neuro-hacking prodigy. People say he can read habits from how someone types."
Ryu watched the tall boy's fingers twitch even when they were not touching anything, and noticed how rarely his eyes met anyone else's. His pattern screamed technical thought rather than instinct. Interesting, potentially useful, but not immediately dangerous in direct confrontation.
Ryu did not bother memorizing faces. He memorized patterns: how people stood, how they reacted when stressed, how their voices shifted when lying or pretending to relax. That was what stayed with him.
The selection phase ended. The system voice took over again. "Phase one complete. Initial grouping will now be displayed."
A new hologram descended from the ceiling, filling the air with glowing names. Three main columns formed in the air:
SERPENT CLASS – GRYPHON CLASS – STRUCTURED PROGRAMS
Aki scanned the list anxiously. "Where am I…" He found his name under Serpent.
"Serpent. Not trash at least," he muttered.
The Gryphon column glittered with the names other kids had whispered about. At the top, framed by a brighter outline:
Kael Veradin - Gryphon Prime.
Soft applause followed. Kael stood with the sort of expression that had been trained into him: respectful enough for the institution, proud enough that everyone understood he knew his worth.
"Where are you?" Aki asked.
Ryu scanned the panels. There was no "Ryu Alverion" under Serpent. None under Gryphon. The Structured Programs column listed dry modules, schedules, and codes.
At the very bottom, isolated from all columns, a single line shone alone:
Ryu Alverion - CLOSED TRACK
Training location: Classified. Instructions: Issued directly.
Aki went still. "You are not even in the system with the rest of us," he said quietly. "You are outside all the classes."
"So it seems," Ryu answered.
"Ryu… this is insane. The Closed Track is not a curriculum. It is more like…" He shook his head. "Something people do not return from."
"Nothing here is meant to be safe," Ryu said. "That is the point of this place."
Aki exhaled sharply. "You are talking like there are not one thousand three hundred seventy-eight other kids who just watched the system fail on you."
Kael approached again.
People moved aside without quite realizing it, opening a steady line through the crowd. His gaze was no longer neutral; it was direct and edged.
"Ryu Alverion," Kael said.
"Yes."
"You step on the scanner, the system fails. You are given no class. Instead, they drop you into a track without a label." Kael's eyes narrowed. "I do not accept that an untested subject gets a special path."
Ryu took a brief moment before answering. "You think the Closed Track is a reward?"
"If it is not a reward," Kael replied, a thin smile forming, "why did they not give it to me?"
It was the most honest thing he had said all day. Aki could not help himself. "Maybe because you look like you want it too badly, man."
Kael's eyes snapped toward him, sharp enough to cut the sentence in half. Aki shut his mouth.
Ryu observed Kael again, this time more deliberately. He watched the way Kael clenched his jaw and then forced it to relax, how his breathing shortened when his pride was touched, how his gaze refused to break contact.
"If the Closed Track is dangerous," Ryu said quietly, "you are jealous of someone who might not leave it intact."
Kael's smile turned colder. "Strong people are not afraid of danger." "Foolish people," Ryu replied in the same calm tone, "do not know when to be afraid."
The air froze.
Several kids stood perfectly still, caught between stepping back and leaning closer. What just occurred was not a loud argument but a clean strike at ego, delivered without raised voices or wasted words.
Kael stepped closer by half a pace. "Consider this the start," he said under his breath. "Whatever path they give you, I will prove I can beat you in any field."
"If our paths are different," Ryu answered, "we are not even playing on the same board."
For a second, it looked as though Kael might throw a punch. He did not. Vasena was not a place to lose control in front of the system's eyes. Everything here was recorded.
He stepped back. "We will see at the Thirty-Day Examination." Then he turned and walked away.
Aki finally let out the breath he had been holding. "You just had a duel with a national prodigy and your voice never moved."
"There was no need," Ryu said.
"You are not worried he will come after you?"
"Worried is not the right word." Ryu glanced up at the hologram one more time. "I am curious how far someone like him can be used by Vasena."
He put a slight pressure on the word "used." Aki's skin prickled.
After the grouping, participants were sent to their assigned areas. Serpents headed for their wing, Gryphons toward the elite training zone. Ryu and Aki walked the familiar route toward Barrack 47. Some kids stepped aside as they passed, less from respect and more from wanting distance.
"You feel that?" Aki whispered. "Half a day and you already have a reputation. The rest of us still have numbers." "Reputation does not feed you," Ryu replied. "It just changes who wants to control you."
Inside Barrack 47, the air was quiet. Ryu's bunk in the left corner remained untouched, sheets crisp and folded. A small monitoring light above the door glowed steady green.
Aki flopped onto his own bunk. "I am exhausted from standing in that hall," he muttered. "You?" "Not really," Ryu answered.
He opened the narrow locker beside his bed. A new card lay inside, unlike the standard access cards. Matte black, with a single thin blue line running across the center.
Ryu picked it up. Words appeared along its surface.
Ryu Alverion Closed Track – Special Unit
Instruction: Open wristband access panel at 05:00.
No room number, no instructor, no explicit schedule.
He tapped the card lightly. His wristband vibrated, and a new entry appeared on the small display.
[TOMORROW'S SCHEDULE]
05:00 – Direct instruction (Closed Track)
06:30 – Serpent/Gryphon physical class (optional)
08:00 – Cognitive test (mandatory)
10:00 onward – To be announced
From his bunk, Aki watched the black card. "Yours is different," he said quietly. "Only one blue line, but it looks nothing like ours."
He held his own card up for comparison. It was light gray, with three small green lines in one corner. "Standard Serpent class tag."
Ryu nodded, sliding his card back into the locker. Once again, he was placed outside all normal tracks.
Night in Vasena came not with darkness from the sky, but with a subtle dimming of artificial light. Corridor noise faded. Cleaning drones glided along the ceilings, humming softly.
In Barrack 47, Aki fell asleep first. His breathing smoothed out, though a faint crease remained between his brows, holding all the questions he had not dared to ask.
Ryu lay on his back and watched the ceiling. The camera in the corner watched him back with its quiet green light. He closed his eyes and let his thoughts fall inward.
He called a single name without moving his lips.
NV.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then an awareness brushed against his mind, as if something large had turned its attention in his direction.
NV> RECEIVING.
"Closed Track," Ryu thought. "Is that what you wanted, or what they wanted?"
The answer came as meaning, not sound.
NV> BOTH.
THEY WANT CONTROL.
I WANT TO WATCH.
"Watch what?"
NV> WHAT YOU BECOME
WHEN EVERY DOOR IS FORCED OPEN.
The word "door" dragged him back to the night his father died. A severed cable, a screen gone black, the thud of a body, a door left cracked open with no visible intruder.
"What if I refuse this path?"
NV> YOU CAN REFUSE TASKS.
YOU CANNOT REFUSE FACTS.
"What facts?"
NV> THE FACT THAT YOU HAVE BEEN SEEN.
AND IN A PLACE LIKE THIS,
ANYTHING THAT IS SEEN
MUST EVENTUALLY BE OWNED
OR DESTROYED.
Ryu opened his eyes again. The same white ceiling stretched above him, smooth and indifferent. He drew in a long breath, not in panic or resignation, but with the steady recognition that the game he had been pulled into was far larger than he had first understood.
In the corner, the small digital clock on the wall rolled forward.
04:59.
His wristband vibrated at his pulse line.
05:00.
A new interface slid across the band's surface, pale text floating above his skin.
"Ryu Alverion. From this moment, your training no longer follows human-standard tracks."
Under the line, a signature appeared:
Director General of Vasena.
Far below the living quarters, deep in a sector not marked on any public map, a room that had been dark for a long time slowly lit its first row of lamps.
Waiting for the boy without a category to arrive.