School let out with the same tired groan of old hinges and dragging feet.
Doors banged open.
Voices spilled into the street.
Heat rose off the pavement in soft waves, carrying the smell of fried food from a cart across the road and the faint burnt-metal stink that never left this part of the city.
Even on good days, the air tasted like something had caught fire a long time ago and never fully stopped burning.
Jup slung his bag over one shoulder and headed down the steps.
The benchmark result followed him out of Phoenix Academy even after he dismissed the public notice: Unresolved.
Students had already shortened it to U — Unranked.
Some said it like an insult.
Others said it as though the machine had refused to touch him.
The amber crystal Nia had given him rested in the safest pocket of his bag beside the camera assembly from the contractor cage.
One gift, one theft — both felt heavier after the scanner failed.
“Yo, Jup. Hold up.”
Robert jogged through the crowd and fell into step beside him.
They walked half a block before either spoke.
Robert finally looked over.
“So are we going to talk about what happened in there?”
“I was hoping we could pretend it was a normal Friday.”
“It’s Tuesday.”
“See? It’s already working.”
A laugh caught in Robert’s throat before he could decide whether to let it out.
“I’m serious, Jup.”
Jup knew.
He kept walking.
Robert lowered his voice.
“That thing locked you to the floor.”
“I noticed.”
“And it said there was another—”
“I know.”
Robert stopped there.
Jup wished the words had stopped inside his own head as easily.
SECONDARY SIGNATURE DETECTED.
His next step landed slightly wrong, not enough for Robert to notice, but Jup felt it.
The crystal in his bag seemed heavier against his side, and a chill moved through him despite the heat rising from the pavement.
He shoved his hands into his pockets.
Robert glanced back toward Phoenix Academy.
“You scared?”
Jup hesitated.
“Moderately concerned.”
“That’s scared with extra syllables.”
“Sounds more professional.”
That got a laugh out of Robert, but it disappeared quickly.
Jup looked ahead.
“Yeah.”
The admission sat between them for a few steps.
Robert nodded.
“Me too.”
Jup glanced at him.
“You weren’t the one stuck to the platform.”
“No, I was the one watching my friend get stuck to the platform while every door in the room locked.”
“Fair.”
They kept walking.
After another block, Robert nudged his shoulder against Jup’s.
“You still messing with that little drone?”
“Yeah.”
“Still tilting left?”
Jup adjusted his bag.
“Yeah.”
“Maybe it’s political.”
Jup looked at him.
Robert shrugged.
“Everything in this city leans one way or another.”
This time Jup laughed.
They crossed the corner by the old pharmacy, where metal shutters still covered half the windows.
A group of older boys leaned against the wall nearby with their colors displayed openly, claiming the corner without needing to say it.
Jup’s laugh died.
Their voices dropped as he and Robert passed.
One of them looked Jup over, then glanced deliberately at his comm band, where the unresolved status still sat buried beneath the notifications Jup hadn’t bothered clearing.
The boy’s eyes came back to his face and stayed there.
Jup kept walking.
“Don’t look at them,” he muttered.
“I’m not,” Robert said, immediately looking anyway.
“Robert.”
“I’m just saying, if staring was a profession, these dudes would be rich.”
The boy near the pharmacy didn’t laugh with the others.
He kept watching until Jup and Robert were halfway down the block.
Jup could feel the attention without turning around, the way some corners felt like questions with the wrong answers waiting behind them.
Robert lowered his voice.
“They’ve been out more.”
Jup said nothing.
“My cousin said they’re pushing harder now. Trying to pull in younger kids. Money, rides, protection. Same pitch, uglier packaging.”
Jup had heard that word before.
Protection usually came with terms nobody mentioned up front.
The walk home cut through a district still undecided between rebuilding and giving up, clean glass giving way within a block to scorch marks, stitched concrete, and a bright mural already cut through with black tags.
A security drone drifted above the next intersection, its lens dipping toward the street before moving on.
Robert noticed it too.
“Creepy.”
“They’re everywhere now.”
“Yeah, but that one looked at you like it knew your middle name.”
Jup didn’t answer.
Something about the way it had paused bothered him more than it should have, especially after the cameras in the CMAS room had done almost the same thing.
When they reached the split where Robert’s block branched off, Robert clapped a hand against Jup’s shoulder.
“Saturday.”
Jup looked at him.
“What about it?”
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“That thing where you act like you forgot because you’re hoping I’ll stop talking. Saturday. You’re coming with me.”
“To do what?”
“You’ll see.”
“That sounds like a trap.”
“It’s not a trap. It’s barely even illegal.”
Jup stopped walking.
“Barely?”
Robert started backing away with a grin.
“That’s not the point. You need to leave your room and interact with living people before you turn into one of your machines.”
“I’ve had enough people for one week.”
“That’s not how friendship works.”
“Seems poorly designed.”
Robert’s grin faded just enough for Jup to notice.
“I’m serious.”
Jup almost said no again.
The scanner flashed through his head instead: locked doors, Crawford’s face, the room backing away from him.
Saying yes felt less like agreeing to go somewhere and more like proving the machine hadn’t changed anything.
He hated that reason enough to refuse it.
“Ask me Saturday.”
“I am asking you about Saturday.”
“Then ask me again when it’s Saturday.”
Robert stared at him.
“You are exhausting.”
“I’ve been told.”
“Be ready anyway.”
“I didn’t agree to anything.”
Robert turned away.
“That’s never stopped me before.”
Jup watched him go, shaking his head once before turning toward home.
The apartment was loud in the familiar way: pipes ticking in the walls, somebody arguing two units over, a television playing too loudly downstairs.
The low-grade Aether cell beneath the kitchen heat regulator clicked twice before settling into its usual hum.
Jup dropped his bag by the door, changed, and worked through push-ups, sit-ups, and squats until his muscles burned and his breathing turned rough.
After a machine had spent the afternoon returning questions, the strain in his body was almost reassuring — muscle either held or failed, breath steadied or didn’t, and Ki responded when he asked it to.
He kept the Ki out of the first sets and let his body carry the work on its own.
Only when his arms started to shake did he settle a thin reinforcement through his shoulders, wrists, and core, enough to keep his form from breaking without letting the Ki carry the repetitions for him.
Training both mattered; using one to avoid training the other didn’t.
His father used to say the body told the truth faster than the mouth did.
Tonight, Jup preferred that kind of honesty.
Later, he sat at his desk beneath the yellow light with the drone spread out in front of him — rotor arms, wiring, and the cracked casing he refused to replace because he wanted to prove he didn’t have to.
He adjusted one rotor by a hair, checked the balance, and thumbed the switch.
The machine lifted, hovered, then tilted left.
“Come on.”
The rotor whined, overcorrected, and clipped the edge of the desk before clattering to the floor.
Jup shut his eyes, let the irritation pass, then picked it up and set it back in front of him.
Machines failed honestly.
They didn’t pretend, threaten, or smile while deciding what you were worth.
A bad rotor couldn’t hide its imbalance; sooner or later, the machine leaned and showed you exactly where the problem lived.
CMAS had looked harder than any machine Jup had ever worked on and somehow come back with a question instead.
He wasn’t sure what bothered him more — that it had failed or that something inside him had apparently given it a reason to.
Outside, the city pressed through the walls: traffic in the distance, voices rising and falling, a siren far off, then gone.
Jup reached for the stabilizer ring.
A low hum slipped through the room.
He stopped.
It sounded like metal singing somewhere too far away to be real and too close to ignore.
Jup stood slowly, the tool in his hand suddenly colder than it should have been.
He crossed to the window and looked over the neighborhood.
Orange streetlights layered the rooftops below, one weak crystal strip flickering at the end of the block before catching again, while farther out the ruined section of the district sat half-swallowed in darkness.
He narrowed his eyes.
Something was there.
Two faint points glinted deep in the black, like light catching in a pair of eyes.
Jup’s heartbeat stumbled.
Something deeper answered with a single heavy pulse.
Not Ki.
Nothing in his familiar pathways moved, yet the sensation pushed outward through his chest as if something deeper had recognized the attention before Jup understood what he was seeing.
The two lights remained fixed on him.
Jup had the impossible certainty that whatever stood in the ruins had felt him notice it.
Then the hum thinned, and the glint vanished.
Only darkness remained.
Broken walls.
Dead windows.
Nothing moving.
Jup stayed at the window, waiting for the lights to return.
They didn’t.
He shut it harder than he meant to and turned back to the desk.
The drone sat where he had left it, silent beneath the light.
Jup lowered himself into the chair and reached for the stabilizer ring, but his fingers trembled enough that the tool clicked against the desk instead.
He stopped, flexed his hand once, and waited.
Only when the tremor passed did he set the tool down rather than pick it up again.
Old metal.
Bad wiring.
Shadows playing games with distance.
Any of those explanations should have been enough.
None of them were.
The feeling stayed.