The sky hadn't been truly dark in years.
Even at night, a faint artificial grid glowed above the Core City. It wasn't bright enough to blind anyone, but it was enough to erase shadows. The towers of glass and alloy reflected that pale light endlessly, giving the city a sterile sheen.
Surveillance drones moved in slow arcs between buildings. Their lenses pulsed red as they scanned the streets below.
No one looked up anymore.
There was nothing to see.
Jin stood in the central plaza with hundreds of other candidates. At the center rose the Neural Interface Obelisk, a seamless pillar of silver metal that stretched several stories high. It gave off a low, steady hum that vibrated faintly in the air.
A projection shimmered above them.
SOVEREIGN Annual Awakening Assessment
Batch 77-B
Neural Calibration in Progress
The crowd stirred, then settled.
Excitement was natural. Disorder was not.
Jin glanced at the thin band around his wrist.
F-2 Star (Provisional)
Cognitive Stability: Stable
Behavior Index: Within Parameters
Unremarkable.
That was ideal.
One by one, candidates were called forward. A palm against the obelisk. A flash of light. A result assigned.
Some celebrated loudly. A few tried not to cry. Most stepped aside quietly.
SOVEREIGN did not make mistakes.
"Candidate 77-B-419."
Jin stepped forward.
Up close, the obelisk felt colder than expected. When he pressed his hand against its surface, a line of white light climbed upward like a pulse traveling through veins.
Scanning began.
Neural pathways mapped.
Genetic markers cross-referenced.
Cognitive variance analyzed.
Then—
The hum stopped.
The drones above went silent.
The projection screens froze mid-flicker.
Jin blinked.
The sky flickered.
Not like a light malfunction.
Like something buffering.
A thin red fracture spread across the artificial atmosphere overhead. Jagged. Brief. Unnatural. It stretched outward in branching lines, as though invisible glass had cracked above the city.
His breathing slowed.
No one else reacted.
No gasps. No confusion. No alarms.
The world resumed a second later.
Sound rushed back. The screens refreshed. The sky returned to its faint glow as if nothing had happened.
The obelisk pulsed once more.
Ability Identified: Peripheral Awareness
Classification: Sensory Enhancement
Tier Assigned: F-2 Star
Stream Allocation: Logistics Optimization
A few nearby candidates whispered.
"Logistics?"
"Just sensory?"
"That's rough."
Jin removed his hand calmly.
Peripheral Awareness.
It wasn't incorrect.
But it wasn't complete.
Because when the sky had fractured—
He hadn't simply seen a glitch.
He had seen structure.
Lines beneath reality. Patterns layered under the surface of everything. And threaded through it all, faint but visible—
Cracks.
As if the world was held together by something that wasn't entirely stable.
He stepped back into the crowd. Someone brushed his shoulder. He didn't react.
High above the plaza, within layers of encrypted computation, a minor deviation registered inside SOVEREIGN's processing core.
Signal fluctuation: 0.0029 percent.
Source: Candidate 77-B-419.
Confidence: Low.
Classification: Environmental interference.
Dismissed.
The assessment continued.
Jin looked at the sky one last time.
It appeared flawless.
Stable.
Controlled.
But for a fraction of a second—
It had paused.
And he was certain of one thing.
It hadn't paused for everyone.