The System notification flashed red across Dean's vision three seconds before the instructor's hand reached his throat.
[WARNING: Compliance Index Discrepancy Detected]
Dean didn't move. The hand stopped half an inch from his collar, trembling with restrained force. Instructor Venn's face contorted. Confusion bled through carefully maintained authority. His fingers flexed once, twice, then withdrew.
"You will address me properly, Unranked," Venn said, voice tight. "Or do you need remedial instruction on protocol?"
Around them, forty-three Academy initiates held their breath. The orientation hall's marble floor amplified every shuffle, every nervous swallow. This was supposed to be simple. Stand. Recite your name. Accept your provisional status. Begin the climb.
Dean had done exactly that.
But Venn's hand had still reached for his throat. And stopped. And the instructor didn't know why.
Dean kept his expression flat. "I addressed you correctly, Instructor."
Pure statement of fact. No challenge. No emotion.
Venn's eyes narrowed, searching for insubordination in Dean's face. The silence stretched three seconds too long. Long enough for the initiates in the back row to notice. Long enough for Venn's jaw to tighten. He found nothing to discipline, and the vacuum of authority made his next words sharper.
"Your provisional assignment is Menial Labor Track, dormitory section nine. You'll report to Administrator Hess for conditioning protocols." Venn's smile returned, cold and administrative. His confidence rebuilt itself in real time. "The System has determined your optimal path. Do you have questions?"
[Hidden Threshold Detected][Compliance Index: 94.7%][Suppression Status: Monitoring]
Dean saw the numbers overlay Venn's restored certainty. The instructor didn't know. None of them knew. The System fed everyone their roles, their ranks, their futures, and ninety-four percent of the population never questioned the math.
Twenty-eight days ago, Dean had stood in this exact position. Twenty-eight days ago, he'd obeyed every instruction, climbed to Rank 7, and been erased during a "statistical anomaly" purge.
Twenty-eight days ago, he'd died seeing numbers he wasn't supposed to see.
"No questions, Instructor."
Venn's satisfaction was immediate. He moved on to the next initiate, a girl who stammered through her name with appropriate deference. The moment passed. Forty-three witnesses returned to their own anxiety.
Dean walked to his assigned section, steps measured and unremarkable.
The dormitory corridor stretched in institutional gray, doors marked with capacity numbers rather than names. Section nine housed the bottom twelve percent of each intake year. Those the System had already written off. The air smelled like resignation and industrial cleaning solution.
His bunk was lower tier, third from the entrance. Five other occupants had already claimed their spaces, none making eye contact. Hierarchies formed fast here. Silence was survival.
Dean set down his single allotted bag and sat. The thin mattress compressed under his weight, springs groaning. Standard issue. Minimum comfort threshold. Everything here was calculated to the exact baseline of tolerability.
Around him, the dormitory continued its practiced routine of avoidance. The boy near the window arranged his belongings with mechanical precision. A girl two bunks over stared at the ceiling, lips moving in silent counting. No one spoke. Speaking drew attention. Attention drew evaluation. Evaluation meant risk.
Dean had learned that the first time. He wouldn't forget it now.
He focused on the edge of his vision, where the red notification still pulsed.
[System Access Expanded][New Function Available: Rule Visibility][Limitation: Information Only]
The interface opened wider than before. Not just his own stats. He could see fragments of the suppression algorithms running beneath the Academy's structure. Assignment weights. Punishment triggers. Partial access to the hidden math that turned "merit-based advancement" into controlled elimination.
But the data was incomplete. Redacted sections appeared as blank fields. Probability ranges instead of exact numbers. The System was letting him see, but not everything.
Not yet.
A boy across the room coughed. Dean glanced up.
[Target: Dren Moss][Rank: Unranked][Projected Outcome: (DATA OBSCURED)]
The notification flickered, then collapsed. Dean looked away. The System was showing him enough to confirm what he already suspected. Everyone in this room had been pre-assigned a trajectory. But it wasn't giving him the full picture.
He would need to earn that.
Dean stretched out on the bunk and closed his eyes. The metal frame creaked under the shift in weight. Around him, the other occupants continued their silent routines. Someone was breathing too fast. Someone else had started that counting again, numbers whispered just below audibility.
This was the bottom. The place where the System deposited those it had already discarded. Most of these people would never leave section nine. They would cycle through conditioning, fail the mandatory evaluations, and be reassigned to manual labor colonies outside the city walls.
The System called it optimization.
Dean called it what it was.
Footsteps echoed in the corridor. Heavy. Deliberate. The kind that announced authority before arrival.
Administrator Hess filled the doorway, a mountain of institutional certainty wrapped in formal Academy black. His eyes swept the room with practiced disinterest, cataloging failures before they'd even tried.
"Menial intake, you have one function: obedience," Hess said. His voice carried the weight of a thousand identical speeches. "Your conditioning schedule begins at dawn. Attendance is mandatory. Performance metrics will be recorded. The System is watching. The System is fair."
He paused, letting the words settle into young spines.
"Questions will not be entertained. Complaints will be noted as Compliance Index infractions. You are here because the System has determined your optimal contribution to civilization's stability." His gaze landed on Dean for precisely two seconds. "Some of you will adapt. Most will not."
Dean met his eyes. Two seconds. No longer. Just enough to be counted as present.
Hess's expression didn't change, but something in his posture shifted. A micro-adjustment. His weight redistributed slightly backward, and his next breath came half a second late.
He had noticed something.
The administrator's jaw tightened. Not much. Just enough to suggest the beginning of a question he couldn't articulate. His hand moved toward the data tablet at his belt, then stopped. He glanced at Dean again, this time for less than a second, and the confident smile returned to his face.
Forced. Slightly too wide.
"One more thing." Hess's tone shifted, gaining an edge of personal satisfaction. "Tomorrow's first conditioning session will be overseen by Senior Instructor Vane. I'm told she has a particular gift for identifying unsuitable candidates early."
The satisfaction in his voice was real, but the backward shift hadn't corrected itself. Hess turned and left, his footsteps slightly faster than when he'd arrived.
The door closed.
Silence reclaimed the dormitory. Around Dean, the other five occupants remained frozen in their bunks, processing the threat. Senior Instructor Vane's name carried weight even among the Unranked. She had termination authority. She used it frequently. Last year's intake had lost eleven candidates in the first week alone.
Dean lay back on his bunk, staring at the ceiling's water-stained tiles. The stains formed patterns. Irregular, organic, the result of structural failure somewhere above. No one had bothered to repair them. Section nine wasn't worth the maintenance budget.
[New Objective Available][Achieve Conditioning Score: Target Unknown][Warning: Anomalous Performance May Trigger Escalation][Recommendation: Compliance Optimal]
The System was giving him advice now. Recommending he fail on purpose, blend in, accept his assigned trajectory.
Dean's expression remained neutral, but his pulse was steady. The System didn't know he'd already died following its recommendations. Didn't know that compliance was just another name for controlled elimination. Didn't know he could see the edges of its suppression framework. Incomplete, redacted, but visible.
Twenty-eight days ago, he'd trusted the System.
He wouldn't make that mistake twice.
Across the room, Dren Moss coughed again and turned toward the wall. The sound was wet, exhausted. Dean didn't look over. Not his problem. Not yet. Every person in this room was a variable. Resources, obstacles, or irrelevant.
Right now, Dren was irrelevant.
The girl two bunks over had stopped counting. Her breathing had evened out into the rhythm of forced sleep. The boy by the window sat motionless, staring at his hands. No one spoke. No one asked questions. This was survival behavior, learned fast or not at all.
Dean closed his eyes and waited for dawn, perfectly still, perfectly compliant. Just another Unranked in section nine. Just another number the System thought it had already categorized.
But in the darkness behind his eyelids, the notifications continued.
[Compliance Index: 94.7%][Threat Rating: 0.02%][Suppression Protocol: Monitoring]
And then, one more.
[Administrator Hess: Behavioral Flag Submitted][Review Status: Pending][Escalation Probability: (CALCULATING)]
Dean's breathing didn't change. His heartbeat remained level.
But the System had noticed.
The question was whether it understood what it was looking at.