Authority.
The word echoed in Zayel's mind.
The one in front raised a hand slightly, and the enforcement units stopped beside him. He didn't look at Zayel's face when he spoke, only at the data hovering near his own wrist interface.
"Error correction confirmed," he said, voice flat. "Subject flagged for delayed compliance."
Zayel's chip tried to regulate his breathing. It lagged. Fear rose too fast, too real, and for a second it felt raw, unfiltered.
Then the regulation arrived late, like it always did.
EMOTIONAL STABILITY ASSIST — ACTIVE
FEAR: SUPPRESSED
SUBJECT: CALMING IN PROGRESS
The suppression didn't make him calm.
It made him hollow.
The officer stepped closer, close enough for Zayel to notice how clean everything about him was. Clean seams. Clean posture. Clean hands. The kind of clean that only comes from never being touched by consequence.
"You're a delay risk," the officer said. "Your inefficiency increases volatility. Your presence lowers batch stability."
He finally looked at Zayel, eyes neutral like scanned glass. "We're correcting the pattern."
Zayel's tablet slipped in his grip.
He caught it.
The memory of laughter from earlier flashed through him, reflex delay, barely, waste of processing space. He wanted to forget it, the way other students forgot anything inconvenient.
But his chip didn't erase things like that.
It only delayed the part where he stopped feeling them.
The officer lifted his hand again.
The enforcement units moved first.
A thin restraint line snapped out and wrapped around Zayel's wrist, yanking him sideways. His shoulder hit the wall, and pain flashed bright enough to make him gasp.
His chip pulsed.
No immediate regulation.
The delay again.
The first strike landed on his ribs, not sharp enough to split skin, but heavy enough to drop breath out of him. The second hit caught his back, then his thigh, forcing him down to one knee.
The strikes were measured, clinical, like they were following a chart. Not rage. Not cruelty.
Procedure.
A prompt flickered into view as if the system wanted credit for what was happening.
ERROR CORRECTION — IN PROGRESS
RESISTANCE DETECTED: MINOR
CORRECTION INTENSITY: ADJUSTING
Zayel tried to lift his arm to shield his head. The restraint line tightened and forced it down, like even defense was considered disorder.
He heard a soft system tone.
The same tone that played after a successful upload.
A sound meant for achievement.
His chip finally stabilized his emotions.
Or tried to.
A clean wave flattened everything inside him, pushing his panic down until it became distant. It didn't remove the pain. It removed his ability to react like a person should.
PAIN RESPONSE: MUTED
PANIC: REDUCED
SUBJECT: FUNCTIONAL
Functional.
That was the word the system used when it didn't care if you suffered, as long as you didn't disrupt the environment.
Zayel's head hit the floor. The tablet slid out of his grip and clattered beside him, loud and stupid in a world that pretended paper didn't exist.
The officer crouched slightly, not close enough to touch him. Close enough to make it feel like instruction.
"You're not being corrected for failing," he said. "You're being corrected because your delay allows unstable emotion."
Zayel's jaw trembled.
For a moment, anger rose, pure and sharp, because even numb people can still hate. His chip lagged again, and that tiny delay let the anger exist uncrushed for the first time.
Then the suppression finally arrived and flattened it.
AGGRESSION: SUPPRESSED
ANGER: REDUCED
SUBJECT: COMPLIANT
The strikes continued.
Measured. Rhythmic. Accurate.
Zayel lost track of time because pain stopped being a sensation and became a countdown. He tried to crawl, not to escape, but to prove his body still belonged to him.
The restraint line snapped tight and dragged him back like movement itself was a violation.
His breathing turned shallow. His vision dimmed at the edges.The corridor lights above him blurred into pale streaks, and he thought only one thing: I don't want to die here.
A prompt loaded slowly, glitching at the edges.
VITAL SIGNS: DECLINING
CORRECTION LIMIT: APPROACHING
NON-LETHAL OUTCOME: PREFERRED
The system still called it preference.
It still wrote it like choice.
The officer checked his interface. His expression didn't change. He didn't look angry, or pleased, or even interested.
"Continue," he said.
One of the authority figures hesitated, just a fraction. A human delay.
"The limit—" he began.
The officer cut him off without raising his voice. "The subject baseline is abnormal," he said. "The system will adjust."
The system will adjust.
Zayel had heard that line his whole life, in softer voices. Teachers. Counselors. Parents trying to sound hopeful. It always meant the same thing.
Not that the system would adjust to him.
That he would be adjusted out of the system.
His chip pulsed weakly.
Orange. Fading.
A final prompt crawled across his vision, delayed and broken, like even the interface didn't know how to explain what it was witnessing.
ERROR CORRECTION STATUS: COMPLETE
COMPLIANCE:—
ERROR
The word ERROR blinked once, then froze.
Zayel coughed, and something warm filled his throat. He swallowed it because instinct still existed, even when the system tried to flatten him into a statistic.
His fingers twitched once, then went still.
The officer stood, stepping back as if the work was finished. "Log the session," he said. "Mark the subject stabilized."
One of the enforcement units chimed.
A calm system tone.
Success.
Zayel's chip flickered.
Once.
Twice.
Then everything went dark.
For a moment, there was nothing. No prompts, no notices, no regulation, no system voice deciding what he was allowed to feel.
Just silence.
Real silence.
And in that silence, something deep inside his chip moved.
Not the control layer. Not the compliance layer. Not the routines designed to erase anger and smooth fear into obedience.
Something else.
Something that had been waiting under the system's skin like a secret it couldn't delete.
A new interface flashed into existence behind Zayel's eyes.
It wasn't clean academy UI. It wasn't government-approved design. It looked rough, fragmented, like it had been carved into the chip and buried on purpose.
Text appeared.
Not in the system's calm voice.
In something colder.
Something that felt like it belonged to him.
NEXUS CORE — FATAL EVENT DETECTED
OVERRIDE CONDITION MET
CONTROL LAYERS: BREACHED
PROTOCOL: SYSTEM MANIPULATOR — ACTIVATING
A pause.
Then one final message wrote itself across the dark.
CONGRATULATIONS, ZAYEL ANZ.
SYSTEM MANIPULATOR: ACTIVATED.
The cursor blinked once.
Like it was waiting for consent.