Alex noticed the cold.
’What is this’
It came up through the metal chair and into his spine. His wrists were heavy, and when he looked down there were cuffs on them, chained to a ring in the table in front of him.
’Where am I?’
He tried to remember. He couldnt recall anything about how he got here.
He flexed his fingers. They were thicker than he remembered, the knuckles scarred. His arms were broader. His hair fell in his eyes and he could not push it back because of the chain.
’What happened to my hair’. He also noticed he was much taller than he should have been.
Before long he came to the realization that he had transmigrated.
’This is not my body.’
The thought did not bring panic the way it should have. He pulled at the memories that did not belong to him and found them thin and torn. A name, Alex, same as his own. A courtroom. A judge reading out a sentence. A word that repeated in fragments.
’Execution’
’Great. I woke up in a soon to be dead man’s body.’
He looked around. There were a couple others at the table, all cuffed the same way, all wearing the same faded orange. Some stared at the surface in front of them. One rocked slightly. A big man near the end grinned at nothing, and Alex looked away from him quickly.
The door at the far end opened with a heavy clank.
A man in a gray uniform stepped in, thick through the middle, with a face that looked like it had been set in a frown decades ago and never taken out.
Two guards followed and took positions on either side of the door. The man stopped at the head of the table and let the silence stretch.
"My name is Warden Reyes," he said. "You are here because the Beast Foundation has made a request. You do not have to like it. I dont even like it."
Nobody spoke.
"Every person in this room was convicted of a crime that carries the death penalty. Murder. Arson. Things I will not repeat. The state was ready to see you through it. And then the Foundation came to us and said they had a use for you."
He walked slowly down the length of the table, boots loud on the floor.
"I will be honest, because none of you are worth the effort of lying to. I frankly do not like the idea of monsters like you receiving pardons. Fifty years ago the gates opened and real monsters came through, and people died by the thousands. Now we are going to hand the ones who kill for pleasure a way out of a cell. It does not make you any less of a murderer."
The big man near the end chuckled.
’I’m not a murderer,’ Alex thought. He caught himself gripping the chain. ’I didn’t do any of it. I only got here- what about an hour ago at best.’
But the body had a file, and the file said otherwise. Whatever the man before him had done, the world had already decided. Saying it out loud would only get him laughed at or worse.
The warden stopped in front of him and looked down as though he had heard the thought.
"Some of you will beg. Some of you will pray. I have seen it all, and I want you to understand that once you walk out of this building, whether by pardon or some other way, you are the Foundation’s problem. Not mine. So let me say one last thing about what it means to be..."
"Warden."
The voice came from the door, calm and clear. The warden stopped with his mouth still open.
A woman walked in. She was tall, dressed in a white coat over a dark fitted suit, with a tablet under one arm and her hair tied back tightly. Her eyes moved across the table once, like she was counting. A badge at her collar carried the Foundation’s crest.
"Thank you," she said. "I can take it from here."
He looked at her, then at the room, he stepped aside. He was not the one in charge of this room anymore, and everyone could see it.
"Good morning," the woman said. "My name is Dr Hela. I work with the Beast Foundation’s . I will be brief, because you do not have long, and I would rather you spend your time thinking than listening to me."
She set the tablet on the table and tapped it. A screen unfolded from the ceiling behind her, showing a simple chart of seven letters.
"You have been offered something no other convict in this country has been offered. The chance to synchronize with a Ravager suit."
A murmur ran around the table.
"For those of you who do not know, the suits are the only technology we have that can stand against a Beast. Missiles do not scratch the higher levels. Soldiers die before they get close. A suit bonded to the right person can do what an army cannot. That bond is called synchronization."
She turned to the screen.
"Synchronization is measured as a percentage. It is how much of the suit’s power a pilot can draw out. That percentage decides rank."
She touched the chart and the letters lit one at a time.
S Rank: 95–100%
A Rank: 85–95%
B Rank: 70–85%
C Rank: 60–70%
D Rank: 45–60%
E Rank: 30–45%
F Rank: 29% and below
’So the higher the number, the stronger the suit,’ Alex thought. He kept his face still and listened.
"Most people who awaken to a suit begin at F rank," Hela continued. "That is normal. It is barely enough to use the suit at all. Our regular recruits are accepted from D rank and above, and we expect them to climb with drills, training and field work. Rank can grow. It is not fixed."
She let that sit, and then her voice cooled.
"You are not regular recruits."
The room went quiet in a different way.
"You have been given the opportunity to awaken, but the condition is different. You must begin at C rank or higher. Anyone who does not meet that standard will be returned to the schedule they were on before I walked in."
They all knew what they were scheduled for.
Someone at the far end swore under his breath. The rocking man began to rock faster.
"To prepare you, the Foundation has authorized an accelerated program. It runs for one month. Its purpose is to speed up the rate at which a candidate can synchronize. Conditioning, controlled exposure, neural training. It will not make you strong. It will only make it slightly more likely that the suit accepts you."
She looked over the group.
"I want to be very clear. This month may only be a delay. Most of you will not awaken at a high enough percentage. That is not a threat. That is a simple fact."
She tapped the tablet again, and the screen changed to a set of numbers.
"Here are the figures. Of everyone who attempts synchronization, eighty percent awaken at all. That is the good news."
Alex almost let out a breath.
"Of that 80%, 65% begin at F Rank. Those people cannot enlist. About 10% begin at E Rank. Fewer than 5% make it to D."
The numbers on the screen shrank as she spoke, each one smaller than the last.
"And the chance of beginning at C rank or higher is roughly point one percent."
Nobody said anything.
Alex stared at the figure glowing on the wall. Point one. One in a thousand. He did the math in his head and did not like the answer. In this room there were less than a hundred of them. Even if they all somehow went through the program, the odds that any one of them would clear the line were nowhere close to comfortable.
’We were never getting out of this,’ he thought. ’They just want to make it look like a choice.’
The big man at the end stopped grinning.
"That can’t be right," someone whispered. "That’s basically nothing."
"It is not nothing," Hela said. "It is small. There is a difference, and I suggest you keep it in mind."
She straightened and picked up the tablet.
"The Foundation is under no illusion. We do not expect much from this group. But we are short on pilots, and the cost of trying is low. If one of you succeeds, we gain a pilot. If none of you do, the state proceeds as planned. Either way, nothing is lost on our side."
She looked around the table one last time. Her eyes rested on Alex for a fraction of a second longer than the others, or maybe he imagined it.
"There are papers in front of each of you. Those who sign will begin the program . Those who do not may leave through that door, and your original sentence will resume."
She pointed at the door, where the guards stood waiting.
"You have five minutes."
A sheet slid across the table toward Alex, pushed by a guard he had not noticed. It was thin and white. At the bottom there was a line, and beside it a pen, chained to the table like everything else.
Around him, people were already reaching. The big man grabbed his pen and signed without reading. The rocking man stared at his page and did not move. Someone else was crying quietly.
Alex looked at the sheet, then at the door.
’Point one percent.’
The guards did not look at him. The warden stood in the corner with his arms folded, watching like he wanted someone to refuse.
’I don’t know who this man was. I don’t know what he did. But I know what walks through that door if I say no.’
He lifted the pen, and his hand did not shake.
’One in a thousand is still more than zero.’
He pressed the tip to the paper and signed.