Morning arrives without sound.
No sunrise, no shift of light through glass—just the slow exhale of the ventilation system reminding me that day and night are inventions here. The ceiling glows to life by degrees, a sterile white that doesn't warm, only exposes.
I'm already awake. Sleep never fully takes me anymore; it circles, cautious, like an animal that doesn't trust my stillness. I lie there and listen—to the rhythm of air filters, to the small creak of metal beds under other bodies—and try to decide whether the ache behind my eyes is fatigue or thought.
The wake-signal buzzes. A single note, perfectly pitched to slice through the last membrane of rest.
Everyone moves at once. Mattresses sigh, boots scrape the floor, the air thickens with breath that hasn't yet become conversation. No one talks before inspection; even whispers feel like a risk. Discipline here isn't obedience—it's silence that has learned to survive itself.
I sit up. The blanket folds itself along old creases. My hands know the motions without needing me. They smooth, they tighten, they reach for the black uniform hanging from the hook. The fabric is cool against skin that still remembers dreams I never get to finish.
When I bend to lace my boots, the tag inside my right one presses against the bone of my ankle. Its edge bites faintly—a small, private reminder that identity is a thing that cuts both ways. I touch it once, lightly, as if confirming that I still exist.
Outside the barracks, the corridor hums with fluorescent light. We line up automatically. Boots aligned, eyes forward, shoulders squared. The smell of disinfectant clings to everything, sharp and medicinal, like they're trying to scrub humanity out of the air.
Then Albert's voice comes through the speakers: calm, exact, without hurry.
"Block Two. Report to the yard. Full gear. Five minutes."
In reality five minutes means three.
We all move. The line of us is an artery of black fabric and breath drawn through narrow halls that smell of oil. Our reflections slide along the metal walls—pale faces, shaved hair, eyes trained forward. The sound of boots becomes a single mechanical pulse until the corridor opens into the yard and the pulse breaks into air.
The morning is wet and uncommitted, the sort of gray that erases distance. Mist drifts low to the ground; it hides nothing, but it makes everything look temporary. The world smells of rain left unfinished.
Albert waits by the transports. His coat is buttoned to the throat, his gloves dark with dew. When he looks up, the motion is minimal, as if gravity obeys him. Behind him, the instructors stand like punctuation marks: solid, final, not meant to be read twice.
"Today you leave the Hunter Academy," Albert says. His voice carries evenly across the yard, thin but precise. "This is your first live assignment. Observation and retrieval."
The words slot into my head like pieces that were already shaped for them. Observation. Retrieval. Two nouns that could mean anything.
He walks the line while he talks, eyes moving over us like a scanner. "Coordinates seven-A, northern forest, Nerava perimeter. You'll locate the abandoned survey outpost and recover the black box left by the last team. Contact is not expected."
The pause that follows is deliberate. It leaves room for imagination, and imagination is the most efficient teacher of fear.
"You'll move in fives. Stay in sight of your lead. Maintain communication. Return by nineteen hours. After that, you're counted as lost."
Lost, not dead. The difference matters here. Lost means they can still pretend you're data instead of consequence.
They divide us into teams with the same efficiency they use for everything else—quiet, methodical, without room for hesitation.
Five names per list. Five people who will have to breathe the same air and trust that it won't kill them.
When Albert reads mine—Bill, Julian, Mara, Kae, Anna—the sound of it feels distant, as if he's naming someone who only resembles me. My name doesn't sound like identity anymore. It sounds like grocery list.
We gather near the transport yard, where the fog curls low and the ground shines wet with morning. The silence between us is thick enough to touch. It feels like we're all listening for something that hasn't happened yet.
Bill stands a step ahead of us, built from certainty. His stance is the kind that doesn't ask questions—it issues them. Everything about him is measured: the way his shoulders square, how his eyes never drift, how even his breathing seems practiced. He doesn't look cruel, just adult. As if there's nothing left in him that could still change.
I envy that. Or maybe I'm afraid of it.
Julian is motion disguised as stillness. He slouches against the cold like it offends him personally, and yet he smiles—crooked, small, but real. It feels wrong here, in this place built to erase warmth, and maybe that's why it matters. He laughs sometimes under his breath, like he's saving pieces of rebellion just to prove he still can.
Mara stands to my right, neat as a note on a page. Her gloves are always perfect, her sleeves always pulled to the same height. She blinks too often, as if the world hurts to look at directly. But when her eyes fix on something, they don't miss. There's precision in her stillness, the kind that feels almost merciful—until... realized mercy isn't part of the equation.
Kae is the only one who looks older. None of us are supposed to have a before, but he wears sunglasses anyway. His face is calm but carved by absence; he moves like a man who's learned the cost of every step. Even in silence, I can feel the gravity around him, the weight of things he'll never say. His steadiness unsettles me, maybe because it feels earned.
And then there's me. Standing among them, trying to remember what it means to belong anywhere.
The word team doesn't sound like safety. It sounds like proximity—like being forced close enough to see each other's fractures. Yet there's something quietly human about it, this closeness. The faint awareness of other lives moving beside mine, breathing the same sharp air. After months of orders and isolation, it feels almost alive.
Albert finishes the lists and says, "Team Three—Bill in command."
Bill steps forward as if gravity pulls him toward authority. No hesitation, no pride, no visible emotion—just motion executed perfectly. His eyes pass over us, steady and unreadable, and that's enough to make everyone follow.
The transport waits like an open mouth, breathing steam into the morning.
We climb in one by one, swallowed by metal. The air inside is colder than outside, as if it has never learned the warmth of lungs. The walls hum faintly, an artificial heartbeat waiting to replace our own.
Julian murmurs as we fall into step, voice barely a whisper. "Guess that makes him the saint in charge of sinners."
Bill ignores him, though I catch the faint muscle twitch at his jaw. Mara glances sideways but doesn't react. Kae lingers behind us, moving like a shadow that doesn't need to be seen to lead.
Bill takes the front seat, posture perfect, every muscle tuned to attention. Julian folds himself onto the bench opposite him, lazy grace disguising restlessness. Mara sits beside me, silent, her gloves perfectly smooth. Kae settles last, in the far corner, his gaze turned inward, as though whatever he's watching isn't here at all.
The door seals with a hiss, cutting off the fog and the last trace of Albert's presence. The noise of the world shrinks to the low vibration of the engine. The red emergency light flickers once, then steadies, painting the interior in shades of pulse and shadow.
No one speaks. The silence between us feels alive—something with teeth, prowling just under the noise of the engine.
I stare at the floor. The metal trembles beneath my boots, the motion traveling up through my bones like the whisper of a machine trying to remember how to breathe. Through the narrow viewing slit, the landscape slides by in fragments: concrete giving way to soil, fences melting into fields, the outline of the forest swelling closer. The city disappears the way a wound closes—slowly, then all at once.
Julian leans forward, elbows on his knees, a faint smile ghosting across his mouth. "You ever wonder what they expect us to find out there?" he asks. His voice sounds too alive for this space—like color in a grayscale world.
No one answers. The Hunter Academy never trains us to talk about why. Only how.
But the question stays, hovering like static in the air. I think about it even after the others look away. Maybe we weren't chosen for how we fit together. Maybe we were chosen for how we break.
Outside, the city has already fallen away. The window shows only a blur of gray fields and the ghost outlines of old towers in the distance. The hum changes again—lower, rougher—and I feel the transport leave the road. The wheels jolt over uneven ground, and the vibration becomes more human, less mechanical, as though the earth has begun to take us back.
Mara speaks for the first time. "What do you think happened to the last team?" Her voice is level but thin, like a wire drawn too tight.
Bill doesn't turn. "Irrelevant."
Julian laughs softly, no amusement in it. "You don't ask that unless you already think you know."
Mara doesn't answer. Her fingers, still sheathed in immaculate gloves, tighten just once in her lap.
Kae finally looks up. "They probably saw something they shouldn't have." His tone isn't warning. Then his gaze shifts to the window again, and whatever thought lived there goes with it.
The engine hum fills the silence that follows. I stare at their faces in the dim red light—shadows, all of them, edges and outlines pretending to be solid. For a moment I want to say something—anything—to break the weight between us. But the words die before they form. This place has taught me the danger of sound.
Albert's voice bursts through the comms suddenly, distorted but unmistakable.
"Thirty minutes. Recover target. Return safely."
The connection clicks off. No static. No farewell.
The forest appears a few minutes later. It doesn't arrive gradually: it's just there all at once, a wall of darkness rising out of mist. The transport slows to a crawl, the sound of the engine straining against mud. I can smell it now through the vents—wet bark, rotting leaves. The scent is heavy enough to taste.
When the vehicle stops completely, the sudden quiet feels alive. The engine cuts out, and the air rushes in with a low hiss, thick and cold. I can hear my own pulse again.
Bill is the first to move. "We're here," he says, though we already know.
The doors unlatch with a hiss. Cold air rolls in—wet, mineral. We step out one by one, our boots sinking into soft ground. The forest stretches ahead, dense and soundless, its breath heavy with decay and rain. The light barely touches the soil; it filters through the branches like something hesitant, already tired.
For a long moment, no one speaks. The mist clings to us as if trying to decide whether we belong.
Julian breaks the silence first. "Looks like the edge of the world."
Mara lifts her head, studying the tree line. "Edges don't hum."
I listen then—and she's right. Beneath the drip of water, beneath the quiet rhythm of wind, there's another sound. Low. Continuous. A vibration you feel before you hear. It reminds me of the walls back at the Hunter Academy—how they used to tremble at night, as if the building itself were breathing.
Bill's hand goes to the comm on his collar. Static. Then nothing.
He frowns but doesn't comment. "Check your gear," he says. His voice is steady, but something beneath it isn't.
The words feel like instinct. I touch each piece as I've been taught: the collar comm pressed against my throat, the rifle strap aligned across my chest, the sidearm holstered tight against my thigh. The sensor tablet hums faintly against my hip, its display blinking in pale blue pulses, already straining to connect. Behind me, I hear Mara adjusting the straps of her pack, the soft click of her field knife locking in place. Julian tests his rifle trigger once, the sound a dry whisper of precision.
Kae turns his head toward the trees. His sunglasses catch what little light there is, reflecting it back as silver. "We should move."
Bill nods once, and that's enough to start us forward. The forest accepts us without resistance, the mist parting in slow spirals as we pass. Each step feels louder than it should, as though sound here is a trespass. The air smells of copper and sap, like something wounded nearby.
I keep my eyes forward, but every so often I feel the weight of something at my back. Not following. Waiting.
After a few minutes, the trees begin to thin. Through the fog I can just make out the dark outline of the survey outpost—small, crooked, half-swallowed by vines.
Julian exhales a slow breath. "Home sweet home."
Bill motions for silence. We spread out, scanning the perimeter. Nothing moves, yet I can't shake the sense that we've interrupted something that was never meant to end.
The hum grows stronger as we approach the structure. It's not mechanical. It's deeper, almost subterranean. It vibrates through my boots and settles somewhere behind my ribs, faint but insistent, as if syncing to my pulse.
Then it stops. Just like that. The air drops heavier, colder.
Bill glances at his wrist monitor. The screen flickers once and dies.
Julian laughs quietly, nervous, breath misting the air. "Looks like someone doesn't want company."
No one answers. The silence that follows is thicker than the fog.
And then, from somewhere inside the outpost, a light flickers. Dim. Red. A single pulse, slow as a heartbeat.
For an instant I think it's the black box Albert mentioned. Then it flickers again—brighter this time—and I realize it's coming from deeper underground. Through the cracks in the floorboards, the light seeps upward, painting the mist the color of warning.
Bill gestures for us to hold position, but my body moves before my mind agrees. I take one step closer, drawn by something I can't name. The air hums again, low and steady, matching the rhythm beneath my skin.
"Anna," Bill snaps. "Wait."