Nobody breathes right for a second.
It's not even fear at first. It's the way a room forgets how to be a room.
Buzz.
The clippers are still pressed to Desto's scalp. Teeth resting on skin like a threat that decided to wait.
The barber's hand is frozen. His wrist is locked mid-motion. His eyes are on the display like he's watching someone fall off a roof in slow motion.
3067.
It sits there calm. Like it belongs.
Desto's throat tightens. He swallows and it does nothing.
A chair squeaks somewhere. Tiny. The only sound in the world for a beat.
Then the room explodes into whispers that aren't allowed.
"What the fuck—"
"No, no, no, that's not—"
"Did it just—"
A woman in a white coat snaps, "Shut up."
Not yelled. Not screamed.
Just said like a rule.
The whispers die mid-syllable.
Desto's eyes track her without him meaning to. She's not a medic. Not intake staff either. Too still. Too clean. Hair pulled back like it's pinned into place. Gloves on, but not the soft clinic kind—thicker. The kind you wear when you can't afford skin contact.
She's already moving.
She walks straight to the display without rushing, like rushing is how you trip and die in a bad hallway. She raises a handheld reader and holds it under the screen.
A little beep.
Then another.
Her jaw tightens. Barely.
Desto watches her face like it's a test. He wants her to laugh and say it's a prank.
She doesn't.
She turns, eyes sweeping the room.
"Intake stops," she says. "Now."
The barber finally moves again. Not finishing the cut. Pulling the clippers away like they burned him.
Desto's scalp feels half-naked. Cold. Humiliating.
Tristo's knee stops bouncing. He's staring at the display like he's trying to bully it back into 3068 with his eyes.
A cadet two seats down lets out a shaky breath. The woman's gaze snaps to him.
He clamps his mouth shut like a kid caught talking in church.
Desto's fingers curl under his thighs. Slow. Controlled. He feels his heartbeat in his palms.
"Bags," the woman says. "Under your feet. Don't touch anything that isn't yours."
Tristo whispers, barely air, "Is that Seed Bureau?"
Desto doesn't answer. He doesn't want to say anything in this room, even if there's no silence rule posted. Not after that number moved.
Someone in the back laughs. A sharp little bark of it. Too loud for the moment.
Desto looks.
Draco.
He's standing near the intake line now, shoulders hunched, hands in pockets like always. He's smiling like he heard a joke nobody else did.
He murmurs at the floor. "Shut the fuck up."
Tristo sees it too and his face twists. "Bro, what's wrong with him?"
Desto keeps his voice low. "Don't start."
"Don't start what? I'm just—"
The woman in the coat cuts across the room like she heard every word anyway.
"Call-sign discipline," she says, eyes not on Tristo but still somehow aimed at him. "You don't use real names outside. You don't practice using them inside either. You want to survive longer than a week, you start now."
Tristo's mouth opens.
Then shuts.
His cheek twitches like he's swallowing a comeback.
Desto almost respects it.
The woman points at the display again. "That number moved. That's all you need to know."
A boy near the wall finally cracks. "How is it moving? It's the year—"
"Silence," she says, and this time it is sharp.
The boy goes pale and stares at the floor like it's safer.
The barber steps back, rubbing his palms on his apron. "Ma'am. That's not our system. We don't control—"
"You don't control shit," she replies. Flat. Not insulting. Just accurate.
Desto's stomach flips.
Because she said "we" earlier.
Intake stops.
Now.
This isn't merc school deciding. This is something higher walking in and taking the room.
The woman lifts her wrist and speaks into a small comm pinned to her sleeve. "Academy Belt intake—confirm: public display change is real. Not local glitch. I repeat, not local."
A pause. Static. A voice too low for Desto to catch.
The woman's eyes go distant for half a second.
Then she nods once.
"Understood."
She looks at the cadets again. Her gaze is different now. Not fear. Not pity.
Assessment.
"Listen," she says. "You're going to stay seated until told otherwise. You're going to keep your mouths shut unless spoken to directly. If you feel sick, you raise a hand. If you feel like you need to pray, do it in your head. If you feel like you need to cry, do it quietly."
A few kids swallow hard. One girl's eyes are already wet. She wipes them fast like she's ashamed.
Tristo leans toward Desto, whisper-thin, "So it wasn't a prank."
Desto stares forward. "No."
Tristo's grin tries to show up. It can't find the door.
"Why would the year drop—"
Desto cuts him off, same way Link did earlier. "Don't. Not out loud."
Tristo's lips press together.
He nods once, sharp.
A door at the end of the intake hall opens.
Two more figures enter.
Not medics.
Black jackets. Mask straps hanging loose at their necks. One carries a sealed case. The other carries a rolled barrier tape and a canister with hazard stickers.
They move like they've done this before.
One of them steps up to the woman in the coat and speaks quietly. She answers in the same quiet.
Desto catches a few words anyway.
"Silence order… local… witness count… school full…"
His skin prickles.
Witness count.
He hates that phrase. He doesn't even know why, but it hits like stepping on a needle you didn't see.
The man with the barrier tape looks up and his eyes land on the cadets.
He raises his voice just enough to carry.
"Phones," he says. "Off. Now."
A wave of rustling. Kids fumbling in pockets. Screens dying.
Desto doesn't have a phone. His family doesn't waste money on luxuries. Not when filters cost more than meat.
Tristo pulls his out and shuts it down without arguing. His hands are shaking.
Draco, across the room, doesn't move.
He's not holding a phone either.
He's watching the Bureau men like he's studying their breathing patterns.
The woman in the coat notices.
Her eyes narrow a fraction.
"What's your name?" she asks Draco.
The room goes even quieter.
Draco blinks. Slow. Then he drops his gaze like he's embarrassed.
"Draco," he says, soft. "Sorry."
The woman's nostrils flare. "Last?"
Draco hesitates. Just a beat too long. Then: "Black Iris."
It's said like he's reciting from a script. Like he practiced it.
Desto watches the woman's expression. She doesn't react the way normal adults react to weird cadet names. She just files it away.
"Stay seated," she says, and moves on.
Tristo's whisper hits Desto's ear. "That's not his real—"
Desto doesn't look at him. "Stop."
Tristo shuts up.
Good.
Because the barrier tape starts going up.
The Bureau man stretches it across the intake hallway, making a line like a cut across the building.
He posts someone at it.
Then the canister hisses.
A thin mist spreads low across the tiles. Not smoke. Not fog. More like a disinfectant cloud that wants to crawl into your lungs.
Desto's nose burns.
He tries not to cough. His eyes water anyway.
The woman in the coat watches them all, counting reactions.
Desto makes his face blank. He's good at blank.
The mist thins. Settles.
The air still tastes like it wants to erase you.
Tristo leans closer, voice barely there. "This is Link's type of weird."
Desto's jaw tightens. He thinks about the church door. The hum. The wet cloth sound. The way Link's laugh turned off like a switch.
He doesn't want to connect it.
He connects it anyway.
A cadet near the wall—short kid with freckles—raises his hand halfway, like he's in class.
The woman in the coat looks at him. "Speak."
The kid swallows. "Does this mean—does this mean we lose a year?"
The woman stares at him.
Long enough that the kid starts to shake.
Then she says, "Yes."
Just yes.
No comfort.
No explanation.
A girl makes a small choking sound. Covers her mouth too late.
Tristo's hand grips the edge of his chair. Knuckles white.
Desto feels something cold settle under his ribs.
Not panic. Not yet.
Math.
One year is a lot.
One year is schools staying open.
One year is lights staying on.
One year is his mother's scrub station getting supplies instead of being told to reuse gloves.
One year is his little sister not learning what hunger feels like.
The room shifts. People start thinking of their own homes. You can see it in their faces.
And then the strangest thing happens.
It's subtle.
So subtle Desto almost thinks he imagined it.
A soft sound.
Wet cloth. Somewhere down the intake corridor behind the barrier tape.
A slow hum follows it, like someone cleaning while they work.
Desto's neck hair rises.
He glances at Tristo.
Tristo heard it too. His eyes flick toward the tape line.
Draco is already staring that direction, head tilted like he's listening to a song he hates.
The Bureau man at the tape line stiffens. His hand goes to the case on his hip.
The woman in the coat doesn't move.
But her shoulders drop a fraction, like someone settling into a fight they didn't want but expected.
She speaks into her sleeve again. "We have audio confirmation. Repeat—audio. Hallway behind intake. Possible Normal Icon."
The word Icon doesn't get explained.
It doesn't need to.
Everybody in the room understands without understanding. The way a kid understands the dark without knowing what's in it.
The humming continues.
Closer now.
Still behind the tape.
The barrier tape trembles, just a little, like air is pushing against it from the other side.
The Bureau man at the line says, low, "Ma'am. It's at the threshold."
The woman's gaze sweeps the cadets.
"Eyes forward," she says.
Nobody listens.
They can't.
Desto turns his head slowly.
Past the chairs. Past the rules on the wall. Past the mist residue clinging to the tiles.
Down the corridor behind the barrier tape.
Something pale moves in the dim.
Not running.
Gliding.
A shape the size of a person, pushing something like a cart, wheels whispering.
The humming stops.
For one beat, the building holds its breath.
Then a voice—soft, polite, wrong—slides under the tape line like it belongs there.
"Dirty," it says.
And the lights go out.