Riven almost dropped Jace when the Frame stuttered.
It was a small failure at first—a flicker along the circuitry, a brief dimming of the gray lines that ran across his arms and chest. Then it snapped back to life with a violent pulse that made his teeth click together.
Pain should have followed.
It didn't.
Riven's body registered the impact like a distant fact. No spike. No flinch. No instinctive recoil.
The absence was worse than the pain had ever been.
He adjusted Jace's weight on his shoulder and kept walking.
The alleyways were quieter than usual. People watched from doorways and broken windows, faces half-hidden. The slum had learned the shape of danger. When drones started rerouting, when correction zones formed, when the air tasted like charged metal—wise bodies stayed inside.
Riven's feet moved automatically.
Hunger was gone. The constant urge that had once driven him forward, forced decisions, sharpened attention, was now a blank space inside him. He could feel his stomach tighten, could hear it gurgle, could see the hollowness in his arms.
But the need wasn't there.
It was like losing a sense he hadn't known he relied on until it vanished.
Jace groaned faintly.
Riven glanced down. Blood had dried dark along Jace's neck and collarbone. The tag was gone, ripped out in pieces. The wound looked raw and wrong, edges singed where the system's wiring had burned through tissue.
Jace's Ash Frame was dead. Just cloth and plating now. No glow.
Uncounted.
Riven's mouth tasted of iron. He turned into a narrow side passage and pushed open a door that hung off its hinges.
Inside was darkness and stale air.
This building had been abandoned after a collapse years ago. People said the floors above still shifted at night. People said you could hear the old residents walking.
Riven didn't believe in ghosts.
He believed in structure failure.
He laid Jace down on a strip of broken flooring, careful not to jostle the boy's neck. Jace's skin was clammy, his lips pale.
Riven crouched beside him and tried to feel something. Concern. Urgency. Fear.
Nothing rose.
Only calculation.
He tore a strip from his own undershirt and pressed it to Jace's wound. Blood welled slow and dark.
Jace's eyes fluttered open.
He looked at Riven, unfocused. "Did… did we make it?"
Riven nodded.
Jace's gaze drifted. "My sister…"
Riven waited for the familiar tightening in his chest, the pressure that came when someone said that word. Sister. Family. Someone to protect.
There was only silence.
"She's not here," Riven said. "You need to stay awake."
Jace blinked slowly. "It hurts."
Riven watched him. The boy's pupils were too wide. Shock. Blood loss. Trauma. The system had engineered the tag to punish in layers—pain, paralysis, panic, and finally collapse.
Riven had interrupted it.
And the system had paid him back by taking the one thing that had ever felt honest.
Hunger.
Jace's eyes fixed on Riven's face. "You're shaking," he whispered.
Riven looked down at his hands.
They were steady.
"No," Riven said.
Jace frowned weakly. "You're… not looking at me right."
Riven didn't answer.
A soft sound came from the wall behind them.
A click.
Riven's head snapped up.
A tiny red indicator light pulsed once from a crack in the concrete—hidden, almost invisible. The listener device the system had installed in his room wasn't the only one.
There were more.
In the slum.
Watching.
Logging.
Riven stood slowly.
His Ash Frame flickered again, then steadied. A line of text scrolled across his vision, faint as smoke:
FRAME INTEGRITY: 43%
LIMITER SYNC: ACTIVE
EMOTIONAL RESPONSE: REDUCED
The last line lingered as if the system wanted him to notice it.
Riven's jaw tightened. "Of course."
Jace struggled to sit up. "What is it?"
Riven moved to the doorway and peered out into the alley. No drones. No immediate hum. But the air felt wrong—too still, too clean.
Like the pause before impact.
He turned back.
Jace's eyes were clearer now, fear creeping in. "Riven, I'm—"
A sudden jolt went through Riven's Frame.
His knees buckled.
For an instant his vision went black, replaced by a violent storm of symbols. His muscles locked, not like Jace's had—this was deeper, sharper, targeting specific motor pathways.
The limiter hummed hard, vibrating against bone.
Riven gritted his teeth and forced breath through clenched jaws.
The lock released.
He caught himself on the doorframe, panting.
Jace stared. "They did something to you."
Riven touched his forearm where the limiter sat. The skin there was warm. Almost hot.
The system wasn't just suppressing his deviation.
It was testing the limiter's limits.
A second jolt hit.
This time, his right hand spasmed open, releasing the shard he'd kept for years. It clattered to the floor and slid away into darkness.
Riven's eyes narrowed.
Not random.
Disarmament.
A third jolt.
His Frame flashed:
REMOTE DIAGNOSTIC INITIATED
SUBJECT COMPLIANCE TEST: ACTIVE
Riven went still.
Jace's breath quickened. "What does that mean?"
Riven stared at the text until it faded. His body felt heavy, as if gravity had increased by a fraction. He could move, but every motion dragged, resisted by invisible tension.
The system had put its hand on him.
Not to kill him.
To steer him.
He looked down at Jace.
The boy was trying to sit up again, wincing, one hand pressed to his neck. Blood seeped through the cloth.
Jace's voice trembled. "They're going to find us."
Riven should have felt urgency.
He didn't.
But he understood that this calm was artificial, installed like the limiter. The system had stripped away hunger so he wouldn't act irrationally.
So he would make cleaner choices.
So he would become more useful.
Riven crouched, grabbed Jace's shoulder, and forced him gently back down. "Save your strength."
Jace's eyes widened. "You're leaving me?"
Riven held his gaze.
The words would have been easy. A lie about coming back. A promise to ease the fear.
Riven didn't lie. Not because he was noble.
Because the system was listening.
"No," Riven said. "I'm moving you."
Jace swallowed hard. "Where?"
Riven looked around the room. Broken beams overhead. A hole in the far wall that led into the next unit. A stairwell collapsed halfway up. A drainage channel cut through the floor, leading into the lower service tunnels.
The tunnels were dangerous.
But the drones didn't like going underground unless they had to. Signal interference. Old shielding. Too many variables.
Riven's Frame stuttered again, as if reacting to the thought.
He made the decision.
"Down," he said.
He hoisted Jace again. The boy cried out softly, then bit down hard on his own sleeve to smother it. Good.
They crossed the room toward the drainage channel.
Halfway there, Riven's Frame locked.
Hard.
His spine arched as if an invisible hook had caught him. His muscles seized in place, posture forced upright. His head tilted slightly on its own, turning toward the cracked wall where the listener light pulsed faintly.
A voice spoke from nowhere and everywhere at once.
"Subject Riven. Halt."
Riven's teeth clenched. He could feel his breath, but he couldn't move. Jace slipped from his grip and hit the floor with a wet thud.
Jace gasped, eyes wide. "Riven!"
Riven's eyes flicked to him, but his body didn't respond.
The voice continued, calm, mechanical.
"Compliance test result: negative."
A beat of silence.
Then:
"Escalation authorized."
Riven's vision filled with new text, larger, colder.
MANDATORY TRANSFER ORDER
DESTINATION: ASH HOLDING FACILITY
TIME: IMMEDIATE
Jace scrambled toward him, dragging himself by his arms. "No—no, they can't—"
The air behind Riven rippled.
A frame phased into existence.
Not Azure. Not Crimson.
Something else.
Its suit was blacker than the surrounding dark, lines etched into it glowing a pale ash-white that never flickered. The helmet had no visible lens. Just a smooth faceplate that reflected Riven back at himself.
A retrieval unit.
It stepped forward without sound.
Jace threw himself between it and Riven, arms spread. "Please—he didn't do anything—"
The retrieval unit didn't stop.
It lifted one hand and pressed it gently to Jace's forehead.
Jace went limp instantly, folding to the floor as if his bones had been removed.
Riven's breath hitched, a reflex that felt strange in his new emptiness.
The retrieval unit turned to Riven.
A small port opened in its palm. A needle slid out, thin as hair, shining faintly.
Riven tried to move.
He couldn't.
The needle touched his neck.
Cold spread through him.
For the first time since the hunger disappeared, Riven felt something real flicker inside his chest.
Not fear.
Not pain.
A single, sharp awareness:
The system wasn't correcting him to stop him.
It was collecting him.
Because he had proven he could survive.
And now it wanted to see what else he could endure.
His vision blurred as the drug took hold.
The last thing he saw was the retrieval unit lifting him with careless strength, and the text burning behind his eyes like a final sentence.
ANOMALY RETRIEVED
TRIALS WILL CONTINUE