The phone wasn't connected to any network.
No satellites.
No towers.
No traceable infrastructure.
It existed in a narrow band of secured causality—usable only by two endpoints that already knew how to find each other.
The proxy waited until the school grounds were empty before activating it.
A single tone sounded.
Then the screen stabilized.
The man on the other end didn't sit in shadow.
He stood in a brightly lit room filled with documents, sealed containers, and fragmented devices laid out in methodical rows. Foreign architecture framed the space—clean lines, unfamiliar materials, unmistakably not of this country.
The Saint of Justice looked up from his work.
"Report," he said.
The proxy straightened. "Ironwood Academy confirmed. The subject is enrolled under Neo Zane Cole."
Justice's hand paused.
"Go on."
"I believe he is Saint-level," the proxy continued. "Not just awakened. Stabilized. Controlled."
That earned him Justice's full attention.
"…Explain."
"He maneuvered around multiple government initiatives without direct contact," the proxy said. "Their response chains adjusted before his involvement became public. Operations that should have failed… didn't."
Justice exhaled slowly.
"And you think this is coincidence?"
"No," the proxy said. "I think he is the Saint of Wisdom."
Silence. Not surprise.
Recognition.
Justice leaned back slightly, eyes narrowing—not in anger, but calculation.
"…So that's why."
The proxy waited.
"My extractions were clean," Justice continued. "Flawless. And yet every contingency I expected them to miss—was already accounted for."
His gaze sharpened.
"The government didn't outplay me," he said. "They were guided."
That settled it.
Justice reached to the side and picked up a crystalline drive, turning it slowly between his fingers.
"I am currently sorting through what we took," he said. "Knowledge. Patterns. Incomplete systems. Enough to shift the board."
The proxy nodded. "Then my orders?"
Justice didn't answer immediately.
He placed the drive down carefully, as if it might bite.
"Monitor Neo Zane Cole," he said at last. "Do not engage." He paused "Damon, have him come speak to me, I think he will be a huge asset to our cause."
The proxy hesitated. "And if he refuses."
Justice's eyes hardened.
"… Trust me Damon, he won't refuse," he said, voice dropping, "if anything, he would be eager, he is a Saint after all, we all know we are better than anyone in this dump of a world."
A pause.
"Just get the message to him, he will make the right choice."
Damon inclined his head. "Understood."
He hesitated once more. "There are others."
Justice raised an eyebrow. "I'm listening."
"One is Eli," Damon said. "Saint of Will. Gravity-aligned manifestation. He is already cooperating with the government."
Justice nodded once. "I'm aware of him."
"The second," Damon continued, "is a civilian. Lina."
That name did something.
Justice's fingers stopped moving.
"She has no registered abilities," Damon said. "But she is close to Neo. Constant proximity. And he is… protective."
Justice's gaze sharpened, something predatory surfacing beneath his calm.
"Protective how?"
"In ways that don't match standard risk assessment," Damon replied. "He adjusts behavior around her. Suppresses activity. Alters decision thresholds."
Interesting. Very interesting.
Justice was quiet for a moment.
Then he spoke again.
"Add her to the monitor list."
Damon blinked. "She isn't awakened. She has zero abilities."
"Which makes her useful," Justice said. "Or dangerous. Or both."
He leaned forward slightly.
"Anything Neo Zane Cole is willing to conceal is worth understanding."
Damon nodded. "Understood."
Justice turned back to his work, already dismissing the call.
"Keep watching," he said. "And don't keep me waiting with Neo Zane Cole."
The screen darkened.
The connection collapsed—clean, untraceable, final.
Damon lowered the phone.
At Ironwood Academy, the board had shifted.
And none of them—
not me,
not Eli,
not Lina—
knew just how closely Justice was now watching.
⸻
I noticed it on the third day after the meeting.
Not a presence.
Not hostility.
A discrepancy.
People think awareness feels like pressure. Like something watching you.
That's wrong.
Real surveillance feels like absence—
like the world is answering questions you didn't ask yet.
I stopped mid-step in the school corridor.
Lockers. Voices. Footsteps. All normal.
Too normal.
My predictive depth skimmed the next few seconds automatically.
Nothing unusual.
That was the problem.
I frowned slightly and let the alignment expand—not forward, but sideways. Peripheral futures. Discarded branches. Micro-variations.
One of them didn't behave correctly.
Not danger.
Not threat.
Observation.
Someone was sampling outcomes around me. Light touches. No interference. Just… watching how probability reacted to my movement.
Careful.
Professional.
I suppressed the instinct to collapse the branch.
No.
If I reacted, they'd learn something.
So I did nothing.
And somewhere, whoever was watching adjusted.
I exhaled slowly.
"…Interesting," I muttered.
At the far end of the hall, Lina waved when she saw me.
The anomaly in the futures tightened.
That's when I knew.
Whatever this was—
It wasn't just about me.
⸻
The proxy didn't approach her like an enemy.
That would've been stupid.
Instead, he sat two seats away during lunch, reading his phone like he belonged there.
Transfer students always got ignored after the first week.
That was the trick.
"Hey," he said casually, glancing up. "You're Lina, right?"
She blinked. "Uh—yeah?"
He smiled. Normal. Friendly. Forgettable. "You're in Cole's class. Neo, right?"
Her posture shifted instantly.
The proxy noted it.
Protective response. Fast.
"Yeah," she said cautiously. "Why?"
"No reason," he replied. "Just curious. He's… different."
She frowned. "Different how?"
The proxy shrugged, easy, like it hadn't mattered which answer she chose.
"Quiet people usually are. They either know something everyone else doesn't… or they're trying very hard not to."
Lina snorted despite herself. "That's a weird compliment."
"Wasn't meant to be one." He finally set his phone down, palms open on the table. Non-threatening. "Look, I'm not here to cause trouble."
Her eyes flicked to his hands, then back to his face. "You sat two seats away and waited until lunch. That's already suspicious."
He chuckled softly. "Fair. Guess I'm bad at being subtle."
That earned him half a smile. Half.
"I need to talk to him," he said, lowering his voice just enough that it felt private without feeling secretive. "Privately."
Lina's expression hardened again. "Then talk to him."
"I can't."
She leaned back. "Why not?"
The proxy hesitated—just long enough to feel real. "Because if I walk up to Neo Cole, people start watching. Am sure you've noticed, he is a really popular guy, and I am still kind of an outsider, I wouldn't like that attention."
That part wasn't a lie. Just not the whole truth.
Lina stiffened at the word.
The proxy noticed. Filed it away.
"I'm not asking you to set anything up dramatic," he added quickly. "No ambush. No pressure. Just—ask him if he'd be willing to talk. Five minutes. Somewhere quiet."
"And if he says no?"
He nodded once. "Then that's it. I drop it."
She studied him now, really studied him. Not hostile. Not friendly. Measuring.
"…What's it about?" she asked.
The proxy smiled again, smaller this time. Tired.
"Something he already knows. I just need to confirm I'm not the only one who's noticed it."
Silence stretched between them, broken only by the noise of the cafeteria.
Finally, Lina sighed. "You're being vague on purpose."
"Yeah."
She shook her head. "Figures."
After a moment, she stood, picking up her tray. "I'll ask him. No promises."
"That's all I'm asking."
She paused, glancing down at him. "If this blows back on him—"
"It won't," the proxy said immediately. Too fast.
Lina's eyes narrowed.
"…It won't," he repeated, slower this time. "On my name."
She didn't respond. Just walked away.
The proxy watched her go, phone back in his hand, screen dark.
Good, he thought.
Now all that was left was to see whether I would come alone—or already knowing why I'd been summoned.
⸻
Justice didn't sleep.
Not because he couldn't—
Because the data wouldn't let him.
The stolen archives had been organized, categorized, reconstructed.
Piece by piece.
He stood alone now, surrounded by layered projections.
Saint research.
Soul-mark schematics.
Pre-collapse anomaly theory.
And then—
Something that shouldn't have been there.
Justice paused.
"…This wasn't theirs," he murmured.
He expanded the fragment.
A predictive framework—
but not probabilistic.
Selective.
Collapsed branches marked intentionally removed.
Not prediction.
Curation.
His breath slowed.
"No…," he said quietly.
He overlaid it with historical Saint data.
Patterns aligned too well.
This wasn't a government system.
It was older.
Refined.
Personal.
Justice straightened slowly.
"The Saint of Wisdom didn't just reincarnate," he said.
He smiled.
"He left infrastructure behind."
That was bad.
Very bad.
Because that meant Neo wasn't recovering power—
He was reconnecting.
Justice turned off the projection and looked toward the window, toward a country far away.
"Monitor him closely," he said to no one.
"If Wisdom completes even a fraction of this…"
His smile faded.
"…then Judgment won't be enough." He smiled "I truly hope I can get him on my side, we would be unstoppable."
Far away, I adjusted my path by half a step—
—and the future shifted again.
⸻
She told me after school.
Not immediately.
Lina waited until we were outside, walking the long way past the sports field where conversations dissolved into background noise and nothing important ever seemed to happen.
"Hey," she said casually. Too casually. "Someone talked to me today."
I didn't look at her.
But the futures around that sentence shifted.
"Yeah?" I replied.
"the weird transfer student. The one you called a proxy og the Saint of Justice." She kicked a pebble off the path. "He asked about you."
That did it.
Not alarm.
Not threat.
Confirmation.
I let my awareness skim—not outward, not predictive, but retrospective. I traced the conversation backward through probability residue still clinging to her words.
Careful phrasing.
Intent masked as curiosity.
No coercion.
Professional.
"What did he want?" I asked.
She hesitated. "He said he wanted to talk to you. Privately."
There it was.
I stopped walking.
Just long enough that she noticed.
My mind was already three steps ahead—Justice's curiosity, the proxy's realization, the inevitability of contact now that avoidance had failed.
Running would only sharpen their interest.
Meeting him would dull it.
But not if Lina stayed close.
"Did he say why?" I asked.
"Not really," she said. "Just that it was about something you already knew." She glanced at me sideways. "Which is annoying, by the way."
I let out a quiet breath, halfway between a sigh and a laugh.
"That sounds like him."
She frowned. "You know him?"
"No," I said smoothly. "But I know the type."
That wasn't a lie.
She stopped walking this time. "Neo… is this dangerous?"
The futures tightened around her question.
I chose the safest one.
"No," I said immediately. Too immediately. Then softened it. "At least, not in the way you're thinking."
She studied my face, searching for cracks.
I didn't give her any.
"I'll talk to him," I added. "Alone."
Her shoulders relaxed—but only slightly. "Okay… but—"
"Lina," I interrupted gently. "This is one of those things you don't need to be involved in."
Her lips pressed together. "You say that a lot."
"Because it's usually true."
She didn't argue.
That worried me more than if she had.
"Where?" she asked instead.
"Somewhere boring," I said. "Public. Short."
She nodded slowly. Then: "You're not going to disappear, right?"
I met her eyes fully this time.
"No," I said. "I'll be right here. Same as always."
That satisfied her.
It shouldn't have.
To make sure she didn't linger on it, I added, "Besides, I still owe you for helping me with the suit."
Her eyes lit up. "Oh—right! I was thinking more about that interface idea—"
And just like that, she was distracted.
Talking.
Gesturing.
Alive in the present.
Good.
I walked beside her, listening, responding, nodding where appropriate—while quietly placing a concealment layer tighter around her bio-signature.
Not suppression.
Obfuscation.
If the Proxy tried to sample her again, he'd feel static. Inconsistencies. Nothing worth pursuing.
She glanced at me mid-sentence. "You're smiling."
"I am not."
"You totally are."
I shook my head. "You're imagining things."
She laughed, and the future loosened slightly.
That night, alone, I replayed the request.
Justice wanted a conversation.
That meant he thought I could still be convinced.
That was his mistake.
I would meet the proxy.
I would say very little.
And Lina would remain exactly what I needed her to be—
Uninteresting.
Unclaimed.
Safe.
For now.