Chapter 4: Another
The air in the cavernous training hall was thick with the smell of synthetic rubber, stale sweat, and the faint, ever-present ozone of leaking energy conduits. Rain lashed against the high, arched windows, distorting the view of the blackened spires outside into watery grays. Forty cadets moved in a sluggish, groaning pack around the perimeter track, their boots pounding a rhythm of collective misery on the worn composite floor.
Ren kept his head down, his breathing measured. The dull ache from the locker door was a persistent ghost. Beside him, Kai matched his pace, his usual bounce subdued to a grim jog.
At the center of the hall, atop a rusting hydraulic platform that served as a supervisor’s dais, Instructor Gorou slouched in a battered metal chair. He was a bear of a man, his face a landscape of old scars, one eye replaced by a flickering red photoptic. His head was tilted back, a data-slate open and forgotten on his lap. A low, rhythmic snore vibrated from his direction, barely audible over the rain and footfalls.
“Clockwork,” Kai muttered, barely moving his lips. “Ten minutes into laps, he’s out. Gears in that old optic must be set to ‘nap.’”
They completed another circuit, watching. The pattern was consistent. A deep inhalation, a long, wheezing pause, then a rough snort. Gorou didn’t stir.
“Now,” Ren breathed.
On the next pass near the equipment lockers, they broke from the pack as one, ducking behind a stack of crumbling weight-training machines. The class, focused on their own discomfort, flowed past like a tired river. The space behind the machines was a cemetery of broken gear and dust. A service hatch, long disused, was set into the wall.
Kai was already pulling a multi-tool from his pocket. “He keeps it in Locker 12. Crimson piping, can’t miss it.” He wedged the tool into the hatch seam. With a sharp twist and a protesting screech of metal, the panel swung open, revealing a cramped, dark crawlspace of piping and wiring that ran behind the locker banks.
Ren went first, his slender frame an advantage in the tight space. The air was hot and smelled of hot metal and mildew. They inched along, counting the faint ribbons of light seeping through locker vents. Twelve. Through the slats, they could see it: the Imoshi haptic suit, hanging with a prim, expensive neatness. It was a matte black surface threaded with dormant fiber-optic lines, a stark contrast to the standard-issue gray polycloth around it.
Kai handed Ren a small, silver canister, no larger than a finger. “Contact binary. Non-conductive gel on the outside. The inner core is a concentrated ionic pulse agent. It’ll scramble the haptic feedback, turn it into pure, randomized neural static. Feels like your bones are vibrating into sand.”
Ren took it. His hands were steady. He slid the locker vent aside, the movement silent, deliberate. He reached in, the cool air of the locker washing over his skin. He didn’t touch the suit. Instead, he peeled the adhesive backing from the canister and pressed it deep into the padding of the suit’s lower back neural relay, where it would sit directly against Kenta’s spine. He smoothed the fabric back over it. It vanished.
He closed the vent. They retraced their path, quicker now, the dust sticking to their damp uniforms. Kai resealed the service hatch with a soft, final click.
They slipped back onto the track, falling into stride just as Instructor Gorou snorted loudly, blinked his good eye, and sat up. He glared at the class as if they’d disturbed him.
“Pick up the pace, you lot! You run like refugees from a dead zone!”
The Theoretical Applications hall was a steep amphitheater of scarred black wood and flickering holoscreens. Professor Vasu, a thin woman with voice like grating silica, droned on about ionic dissipation rates within anomaly fields. The room was warm, the air close with the scent of ozone and bored students.
Kenta Imoshi sat in the third row, center aisle, a picture of attentive privilege. Mio was beside him, taking neat, pointless notes. Midway through the lecture, as Vasu diagrammed a particularly dry energy decay model, Kenta smoothly reached into his bag and withdrew the haptic suit’s control unit—a sleek, black disc. A few nearby cadets glanced over with envy. It was an unspoken ritual; the rich prepped their neural pathways during theory, gaining an edge for the practical sims.
He attached the disc’s leads to his temples with practiced ease, closed his eyes, and activated it. A soft, blue glow emanated from the disc.
Ren and Kai watched from the shadowed alcove just outside the open doorway, hidden by a massive, wilted potted fern whose fronds were tinged with chemical yellow.
For a moment, nothing. Kenta’s expression was one of focused serenity.
Then, a twitch. A tiny spasm at the corner of his right eye.
His serene frown deepened into a confused line. His shoulders stiffened. The blue glow of the disc stuttered, flashing to a sickly green for a nanosecond.
Kenta’s eyes flew open. They were wide, unfocused. A sharp, choked gasp escaped him, audible even over Vasu’s monotone. He jerked in his seat as if slapped by an invisible hand.
“The feedback calibration is… aggressive today,” he whispered hoarsely to Mio, his voice strained. He tried to adjust the disc.
It was the wrong move.
His entire body went rigid. A violent, uncontrollable tremor seized him, rattling his teeth. The disc fell from his temples and clattered onto the floor. His hands clamped onto the edges of his desk, knuckles bone-white.
“Imoshi?” Professor Vasu paused, peering over her spectacles. “Is there a problem?”
Kenta tried to speak, but his jaw was locked. A low, pained whine hummed in his throat. The neural static, designed to simulate system failure, wasn’t just pain. It was a total betrayal of bodily control. His nervous system screamed in a dozen contradictory directions.
His eyes, bulging with panic and humiliation, darted to Mio, then to the professor, then to the classmates now staring openly.
A dark, spreading stain appeared on the gray fabric of his trousers, starting at his thigh and rapidly growing. The sharp, acrid smell of urine cut through the room’s stale air.
A stunned silence descended, broken only by the drip of liquid onto the wooden floor and the hum of the holoscreen.
Mio recoiled, her hand flying to her mouth, not in concern, but in instinctive disgust.
Someone in the back row snorted, then tried to stifle it into a cough. It was a dam breaking. A wave of muffled laughs, whispers, and open stares crashed over Kenta. He was a statue of perfect shame, paralyzed, soiled, exposed in the one place he believed was his throne.
Professor Vasu’s lips pursed. “Cadet Imoshi. The infirmary. Now.”
Kenta didn’t move. He couldn’t. He was trapped in the prison of his own failing body and the weight of a hundred eyes.
From the alcove, Ren watched the rigid line of Kenta’s back. The heat from the locker room was gone, replaced by a cold, still emptiness. There was no triumph in it. Only a hollow completion.
Kai nudged him with an elbow, his face unreadable. “Wallpaper,” he murmured, echoing his own words from the locker room.
They melted back into the dim hallway, the sound of rising chaos following them like a distant echo. The rain against the window at the end of the corridor fell in relentless sheets, washing the world in a blur of gray. They walked without speaking, the plan executed, the score settled. But the air between them was charged, not with victory, but with the quiet, certain knowledge of a line crossed, and the awaited repercussions now set in motion, ticking forward like a live charge in the dark.
(Author note: little does ren and Kai know, they are late to class. Next chapter will serve as exposition and explain information about the lore from the guest speaker).