There are places that look normal at first glance — white rooms, clean windows, spotless boards with no trace of chalk. But the longer you observe them, the more something feels off, like an aftertaste you can't name.
Alpha Academy is exactly that kind of place.
While the teacher handed out the sheets, his eyes swept over us. Not long. A fraction of a second. The kind of glance you miss unless you're the type of person who notices everything.
An analytical look. Not a teaching one.
I didn't like it.
The test wasn't a test.
There were no math questions, no equations, no historical dates, no physics laws. Nothing like that.
Just checkboxes.Vague sentences.Absurd scenarios.
"How would you react if a classmate committed a serious offense?"
"What do you think about the concept of sacrifice within a group?"
"Do you prefer long-term stability or quick decision-making?"
"Can a single mistake define a person's worth?"
This wasn't an exam. It was a personality assessment in disguise.
I shot a discreet look at the others.
Ayyi, the Strategist, read the sheet with the same mechanical calm he used whenever he dissected something. His eyes moved from sentence to sentence as if he were analyzing the purpose behind the test, not the questions themselves.
Amad wore a polite smile — the polite kind you show when you have no idea why you're being asked something but you don't want to be rude. But his fingers tapped lightly against the desk. A nervous tic.
Bintou… Bintou had already flipped the sheet over and was scanning the room, torn between answering honestly and crumpling the paper straight into the trash.
And me?I was trying to understand the logic behind all this.
Why a psychological test in a science class? And why these questions specifically?
I started filling things out automatically.
Question 12 : "In a group, should the individuals who slow down the others be eliminated?"
I stopped.I felt Ayyi watching me. He didn't say anything, of course. But his silence made it feel like he was reading my answer before I even wrote it.
The teacher walked between the rows. His footsteps were too regular, like he was counting something with each movement.
At one point, he stopped behind the four of us. No sound. Just a heavy presence, like an invisible hand pressing against the back of my neck.
"Continue," he said.
Two syllables. No emotion.
I lifted my eyes.
There was no morning fatigue in his gaze, no professor's boredom. Just… scientific curiosity.As if he were waiting for a result.As if we were a sample.
The bell finally rang. Students groaned, laughed, exhaled too loudly as they stood up, but the Four Greats stayed seated for a moment. None of us seemed eager to move.
Amad broke the silence first.
"Is it just me, or… was that not normal?"
Ayyi slipped his sheet into his bag with surgical calm."No. It was data collection. Nothing else."
"Data on what?" Bintou asked.
He paused for a second.Or maybe he already knew and was simply choosing the right words.
"On us."
We left the classroom. The hallway felt a little narrower than before.
I walked one step behind them — not far enough to be outside the group, but far enough to observe.
We crossed the courtyard. Groups of students chatted, ate, laughed. The Academy looked normal.
And yet…
The more I walked, the more I noticed small, insignificant details that, when pieced together, painted something unsettling:
Cameras placed at flawless angles.Supervisors watching us one second too long.Motivational posters with strange slogans.Tiny, mechanical movements in some students, as if they were running invisible routines.
Something was controlling this place.
Not a person.Not a school system.Something else.
When we reached the stairs, I stopped abruptly.
A sensation.A shiver.Like someone had just whispered my name from behind, without making a sound — a vibration inside my skull.
I turned around.No one.
But Ayyi had stopped too. He stared toward the administrative building, eyes narrowed.
"You felt that?" he asked.
Amad frowned.Bintou set her bag down, ready to fight a ghost if needed.
I didn't answer.
Because yes, I felt something.But it wasn't human.It wasn't intuition.
It was deeper.More primitive.More… off-key.
As if somewhere in this school, reality itself had just blinked.
Ayyi finally turned his head slightly toward us.
"Alpha Academy isn't a school," he said.
His words fell like a verdict.
"It's a laboratory."
And suddenly, everything I had been feeling for weeks took shape.
The perfect cleanliness.The calibrated light.The disguised tests.The lingering stares.The sense that someone was waiting for something from us.
Only one question remained:
What kind of experiment were we the subjects of?