Riven woke to the sound of someone breathing in his room.
Not his.
He didn't move.
He lay on the floor with his eyes half-open, staring at the ceiling slats, listening. The breath was careful—controlled. Whoever it was knew he might be awake. The air smelled like damp cloth and sweat and the faint metallic tang of a Frame that had been powered too long.
Riven's Ash Frame rested against the wall, dull and silent. He'd peeled it off hours ago, or maybe days. Time blurred when pain sat in your bones.
The breath shifted.
A soft scrape. A boot on concrete.
Riven's hand slid toward the shard of metal he kept under his pillow. He'd slept with it since he was a child. Not because it made him feel safe. Because it reminded him safety wasn't real.
He rolled in one motion and sat up.
The intruder froze.
It was a boy. Thin. Dirty. About sixteen, maybe younger. The boy's eyes were too wide, whites bright against grime. A gray glow leaked from under his torn shirt—Ash circuitry, weak and uneven.
Not a thief, then.
A condemned.
"You're Riven," the boy whispered.
Riven kept the shard pointed at him. "Get out."
The boy swallowed. His throat bobbed hard. "They said… they said you survived the trial."
Riven's side flared with pain when he shifted. He hid it by staying still.
"Who said?"
The boy hesitated. "The drones. When they… when they sorted us back. Your name was on the wall. For a second. Then it was gone."
Riven's grip tightened.
The system didn't show names. Not in the slums. Not for Ash.
Unless it wanted people to see.
"Why are you here?" Riven asked.
The boy's hands shook. "I—I need help. My Frame—" He tugged at his shirt. The lines beneath flickered, then sparked. He winced like it had bitten him. "It's burning. It keeps locking my joints. I can't—"
Riven's gaze flicked to the boy's collarbone. There was a small black mark there. A registration stamp, still fresh. But it wasn't just a stamp.
It had teeth.
Tiny prongs embedded under the skin, pulsing faintly.
Correction hardware.
Riven's stomach turned.
"They tagged you," he said.
The boy nodded quickly, desperate. "They said periodic review. If I miss it, they correct me. But I can't go like this. I won't even make it to the checkpoint. Please."
The boy stepped forward.
Riven's shard touched the boy's throat.
"Stop."
The boy stopped instantly, eyes filling.
Riven held him there, blade barely pressing skin, and tried to think through the pain and the hunger and the new weight in his skull that came with being counted.
Help was expensive in the slums. Help was dangerous.
Help got you noticed.
"What's your name?" Riven asked.
"Jace," the boy said. "It's Jace."
Riven didn't like how quickly he answered. Like the name was rehearsed. Like he'd said it to the system already.
"Sit," Riven said, nodding toward the floor.
Jace lowered himself carefully, wincing as his knee locked halfway down, then released with a jerk. He breathed through clenched teeth.
Riven watched the movements. The pattern. Lock. Pain. Release.
"Ash Frames aren't supposed to do that," Riven murmured.
Jace laughed once, bitter and shaky. "Ash Frames aren't supposed to work at all."
Riven didn't answer. He reached for his own Frame in the corner.
The moment his fingers touched it, text flickered across his vision.
DEVIATION FLAG: ACTIVE
PROXIMITY EVENT LOGGED
Even here. Even now.
Riven's jaw tightened. He forced the interface away and knelt in front of Jace.
"Show me," he said.
Jace lifted his shirt. The circuitry along his ribs glowed a weak gray, but it was uneven—patches of dead line and then sudden bright pulses like a heartbeat gone wrong. The correction tag at his collarbone pulsed in time with it.
Riven felt a cold, sick understanding settle in.
The tag wasn't responding to the Frame.
The Frame was responding to the tag.
"You missed a review," Riven said.
Jace's face crumpled. "I couldn't go. I was—" He stopped, eyes darting. Shame tightened his voice. "I was stealing food. If I went, I'd lose it. And my sister—"
Riven's shard twitched in his hand. He lowered it slowly. Not because he trusted Jace. Because he understood him.
Hunger was a constant.
It didn't care about rules.
Riven pressed his thumb against the tag. Jace flinched hard, teeth bared.
"Don't touch it," Jace hissed. "It hurts when—"
Riven's thumb slid along the edge. The prongs under the skin were deeper than they looked. A small device, embedded, half-organic, half-machine. A parasite with a purpose.
Riven's Ash Frame hummed faintly in his hands. He hadn't powered it on, but it reacted anyway, like it could smell the tag.
The system liked its own kind.
Riven exhaled slowly.
"You can't take it out," he said.
Jace stared at him. "Why not?"
Riven didn't answer immediately. Because the truth wasn't kind.
Because saying it out loud would make it real.
"Because it's not a shackle," Riven said finally. "It's a trigger."
Jace's eyes widened.
"If you pull it," Riven continued, voice low, "it won't just bleed. It will signal. And then it will correct. Not you. Everything around you."
Jace's breath hitched. "That's—"
"Designed," Riven finished.
Silence filled the room.
Outside, the slum shifted. Footsteps in the alley. A distant shout. The low hum of drones orbiting the sector like flies.
Jace's voice cracked. "So I'm just… done?"
Riven looked at him.
He saw himself in the boy. Not the name. Not the face. The raw, trembling refusal to accept that the system had already decided his ending.
Riven's side burned. He could feel the dried blood pulling at the wound every time he breathed. He should have been resting. Resting was a lie, too. The slums didn't allow it.
He reached behind him and grabbed a strip of cloth from his pile of rags.
"Hold still," he said.
Jace blinked. "What are you doing?"
"Buying time."
Riven wrapped the cloth tight around Jace's upper chest, just below the collarbone. Not over the tag—around it. Compression. Limiting blood flow. Dampening the pulse.
Jace hissed as the pressure tightened.
Riven pulled harder.
The tag's glow dimmed slightly.
Jace stared. "It… it slowed."
"It's not healing you," Riven said. "It's suffocating the signal. Your Frame locks because the tag tells it to. If the tag can't pulse properly—"
"It can't control me," Jace whispered.
"Not fully."
Hope flared in Jace's face like a small, dangerous fire.
Riven felt something twist in his chest.
He hated that feeling. Hope was how you got killed here.
He released the cloth and stood. The room swayed. Hunger scraped at his skull.
Jace stood too, shaky. "So I can make the review?"
"Maybe," Riven said. "If you don't run. If you don't panic. If you keep pressure on it."
Jace nodded frantically. "I can do that. I can—"
A chime cut through the room like a blade.
Not from outside.
Inside Riven's head.
Text flooded his vision, sharp and clean:
NOTICE
DEVIATION EVENT: UNAUTHORIZED INTERFERENCE WITH CORRECTION HARDWARE
SUBJECT: RIVEN
REPORT TO REVIEW POINT WITHIN 2 HOURS
FAILURE WILL RESULT IN CORRECTION
Riven went still.
Jace's face drained of color. "What—what did you do?"
Riven stared at the words until they burned into him.
He hadn't powered his Frame. He hadn't cut anything. He'd only—
Touched.
Helped.
The system didn't need much. It didn't punish actions. It punished intent.
Riven swallowed hard. His mouth tasted like metal.
Two hours.
The review point was three sectors away. Through alleys controlled by slum gangs and monitored by drones. With an open wound and an Ash Frame that liked to glitch at the worst time.
Jace took a step back, fear rising. "They're coming for you."
Riven's eyes snapped to him.
"No," Riven said. "They're coming for both of us."
Jace's lips trembled. "I didn't mean—"
Riven grabbed his Frame and shoved it toward Jace. "Put it on."
Jace blinked. "Why?"
"Because you're tagged," Riven said. "And now I'm flagged. If we go separate, they'll correct you in the alley and they'll correct me in my room. Either way, we die."
Jace's hands shook as he took the Frame. "But I—"
Riven yanked his own cracked Ash Frame from the wall and pulled it over his body. It sealed with a hiss, cold and biting. The circuitry flared gray.
Pain punched through him. His side screamed. His vision flickered.
He clenched his jaw and kept moving.
Jace fumbled with the Frame, struggling to lock it into place.
Riven grabbed the boy's collar and forced him still. "Listen," he said, voice tight. "You said you have a sister."
Jace nodded, eyes wet.
"If you want her to live," Riven said, "you do exactly what I say. No questions. No noise. No panic."
Jace swallowed hard. "Okay."
Riven stepped to the broken window slats and looked out.
The alley below was empty.
Too empty.
Then a soft hum rose in the distance—closer than it should be. The kind of sound you didn't notice until you learned what it meant.
A drone patrol adjusting its route.
Already.
Riven's hands tightened into fists.
He'd survived the trial.
He'd been counted.
And in less than a day, the Spectrum had made its next point clear:
Ash didn't get to help.
Ash didn't get to fix.
Ash only endured—until the system decided it was time to stop.
Riven turned back to Jace.
"Move," he said.
They climbed out into the alley.
Behind them, in the dark of the room, a small red light blinked once on the wall—silent, patient, and newly installed.
A listener.
A marker.
A promise.
And somewhere above, the drones changed course, coming straight for them.