Crown stood at ease across from Blake Rogers, hands loosely folded behind his back. The room was sealed—no observers, no feeds. Just protocol walls and authority pretending to be absolute.
"There's something else," Crown said calmly. "You should widen surveillance."
Blake looked up from the display. "On who."
"The girl," Crown replied. "The one always beside Neo."
Blake frowned. "How would you know that?"
A beat.
"Have you made contact with him?" Blake's tone sharpened. "Because you weren't authorized to engage yet."
Crown turned his head slightly, eyes half-lidded. "Authorization isn't your concern," he said evenly. "And what I do with my time shouldn't be what you're focused on right now."
That did it.
Blake stood. "Watch your tone," he snapped. "You answer to me. You report to me. Don't start thinking you can operate outside command just because—"
Crown raised a hand slowly.
"…My apologies," he said, flat and reluctant. Not sincere. Just compliant enough.
Then he continued, unbothered. "Regardless. The girl should be added to the radar."
Blake hesitated.
His mind went back—too fast, too clearly.
Neo stepping between them.
Neo's immediate hostility.
The way his attention sharpened whenever she was even mentioned.
Blake exhaled slowly. "Lina," he muttered. "She's registered. Normal. Clean scans. No bio-mark. She passed."
Crown sighed quietly.
Not in frustration.
In disappointment.
He didn't say what he was thinking. Didn't point out the obvious flaw. Didn't mention that tests only worked on what they were designed to detect.
Instead, he asked, "What's my next move, Leader?"
The word was polite.
The tone was not.
Blake didn't notice.
"Keep an eye on her," he said after a moment. "Same as the others. No escalation."
Crown nodded once.
"Yes, sir."
And as he turned to leave, the thought lingered unspoken in his mind—
If that girl was truly normal…
Neo wouldn't guard her like a fault line.
They weren't just missing something.
They were standing on it.
⸻
Crown didn't report in again after that.
That alone was enough to make the decision final.
Instead, he moved the way Apex were designed to move—quietly, efficiently, without permission. Surveillance grids shifted by fractions of a percent. Civilian cameras glitched for less than a heartbeat. School security logs rewrote themselves around gaps that looked like routine maintenance.
No alarms.
No flags.
Just absence.
He observed first.
Lina walked through her day unaware—laughing with classmates, arguing softly with Eli, glancing at Neo when she thought no one noticed. Ordinary motions. Ordinary expressions.
But Crown wasn't looking at motions.
He was watching the space around her.
Every Apex unit perceived energy differently. Crown's specialty wasn't force—it was pattern collapse. He saw where systems failed to describe reality.
And around Lina—
Reality hesitated.
Not flaring.
Not leaking.
Just… refusing to resolve.
He narrowed his perception, letting the foreign energy inside him press closer. The same energy harvested from that other dimension. The same energy meant to overwrite Saints.
It pushed back.
Hard.
Crown stopped walking.
For the first time since his awakening, something had denied him access.
He tried again, carefully this time—probing not her, but the echoes she left behind. Residual probability. Emotional afterimages.
Truth.
The realization didn't arrive as a word.
It arrived as a correction.
She isn't hidden, Crown understood.
She's unmeasured.
Registered as normal. Passed every scan. Clean history.
Because no system built by the Axis State knew how to define her. Or she just had a late awakening.
Crown exhaled slowly.
"So that's it," he murmured under his breath.
He finally understood Neo's posture. The way he placed himself between Lina and the world without looking protective—because protection implied weakness.
This wasn't protection.
It was containment. That's what he thought.
Crown disengaged his perception just as Neo glanced in his direction.
For half a second, their eyes met across the crowd.
Neo didn't react.
Didn't signal.
Didn't warn.
Which meant he already knew.
Crown turned away, disappearing into the flow of the city like he'd never been there.
He didn't update Blake.
Didn't notify command.
Instead, he filed a private internal note—locked behind Apex-only cognition keys.
SUBJECT: SAINT OF TRUTH (UNCONFIRMED)
STATUS: ACTIVE
RECOMMENDATION: DO NOT PROVOKE
Then, after a pause, he added one more line.
NOTE:
Neo is not guarding her because she is vulnerable.
He is guarding the world from what happens if she decides to speak.
For the first time since his creation—
Crown smiled.
Not because he had found a target.
But because he had found a variable the Axis State could not control.
And that meant—
The board was no longer theirs.
⸻
It wasn't dramatic.
Crown didn't believe in dramatic.
He adjusted a variable.
A small one.
On a quiet afternoon, while Lina sat outside with Neo and Eli, Crown—several blocks away—let a thin thread of foreign energy slip into the city's causal fabric.
A nudge.
Not toward Lina.
Around her.
A localized probability distortion—subtle enough that no sensor would flag it. A loose construction beam several stories up. A micro-fracture. A gust of wind at the exact wrong angle.
The beam shifted.
People below screamed.
Neo's head snapped up instantly.
But Lina—
Didn't move.
She didn't react with panic.
She looked up.
And the world paused.
Not time.
Not visibly.
But intention.
The falling beam hesitated mid-drop—not stopping, not freezing—just losing conviction. As if gravity had suddenly begun reconsidering its argument.
Lina blinked.
And softly—almost absently—said,
"That's not true."
The beam corrected.
Shifted sideways.
Crashed harmlessly into scaffolding instead of the street. It was an illusion.
No one noticed what had actually happened.
Except two people.
Neo.
And Crown.
Miles away, Crown felt it.
Not power.
Correction.
The foreign energy inside him flared instinctively—and recoiled.
He exhaled slowly.
"So it speaks," he murmured.
Truth hadn't overpowered the distortion.
It had invalidated it.
And that was far more dangerous.
⸻
Later that evening, in the Apex facility—
Nyx Ardent didn't knock before entering Crown's chamber.
"You altered a probability stream," she said softly.
Crown didn't look up. "Did I?"
"You masked it," Veil continued. "But not from me."
She leaned against the wall, arms crossed.
"You weren't testing Wisdom," she said. "You were testing the girl."
Silence.
Then—
"Yes."
Veil's eyes narrowed slightly. "And?"
Crown finally looked at her.
"She is not registered because she cannot be registered."
Veil studied him carefully.
"You didn't report this."
"No."
"Why?"
Crown's answer came without hesitation.
"Because Blake would escalate."
Veil smiled faintly.
"And you don't want escalation."
"No," Crown said calmly.
"I want observation." He said. "I find them… intriguing."
Veil pushed off the wall.
"You're developing preferences," she noted.
Crown didn't respond.
As she turned to leave, she added quietly—
"If you're wrong, Leader will punish you."
Crown's voice followed her out.
"If I'm wrong… then punishment won't matter."
⸻
Our first confrontation happened at dusk.
Not by accident.
Neo was alone this time.
Crown stood on a rooftop overlooking the city lights, hands resting casually at his sides.
"I was wondering when you'd stop pretending," Crown said without turning.
I stepped beside him.
"You nudged reality," I replied evenly. "Near her."
"Yes."
"You won't do that again."
Crown finally faced me.
"Or?"
My eyes didn't change.
"I won't treat you like an observer."
The air tightened.
Crown searched my expression—not for anger, not for fear—but for limit.
"You guard her," Crown said calmly. "But not because she's fragile."
I didn't answer.
"That means she is something worse."
Silence.
Then I spoke softly.
"You were created to regulate Saints."
"Yes."
"You weren't created to understand them."
For the first time—
Crown smiled without restraint.
"Understanding," he replied, "is the first step to regulation."
My voice lowered.
"And sometimes it's the first step to rebellion."
That hung between us.
Crown tilted his head slightly.
"You're not afraid of us," he observed.
"No," I said.
"But you should be."
The foreign energy within Crown stirred—responding not to threat, but to certainty.
For a moment, they stood there—not enemies, not allies.
Just two apex predators measuring the other's depth.
Then Crown stepped back.
"I will continue observing," he said calmly.
"Observe carefully, and keep it that way." I replied.
"or what?"
"Or escalation will be our only option to settle this, Crown."
As I gave my warning, I vanished, leaving Crown alone with his thoughts.
⸻
Unsealing Stage Five of my abilities was now lingering in the back of my head again.
It waits.
For days now, I've felt it at the edge of my awareness. Not demanding release. Not tempting me with power.
Just… present.
A door I could open.
And once opened—
I wouldn't close it again.
The Apex are starting to think. That's the real issue. Crown is observing. Veil is questioning. Oracle is calculating outcomes the government won't like.
They're evolving.
And Stage Five would let me stay ahead.
It would let me trace the portal. Decode their foreign energy. See further than Oracle ever could. Collapse outcomes before they breathe.
It would also draw me closer to the version of myself that didn't hesitate.
The version that optimized people like variables.
The version of myself that wasn't…. Human.
I leaned back in my chair, staring at the ceiling.
"W.I.S.D.O.M," I said quietly.
[STAGE FIVE UNLOCK PROBABILITY BENEFIT: SIGNIFICANT.]
[PERSONALITY DRIFT RISK: ELEVATED.]
Of course.
It would make me sharper.
Colder.
More efficient.
Closer to a god.
A soft knock came at my door.
Seraphine didn't wait long before stepping in.
She studied me once and immediately sighed. "You're thinking too loudly."
I almost smiled. "That's not possible."
"It is when you look like that."
She walked further into the room and sat across from me, calm as ever.
"You don't look so good, Neo," she said.
Not a question.
I didn't bother denying it.
"They're adapting," I replied. "If I don't increase my output, I risk miscalculation."
"And what does increasing your output cost you?"
Silence.
She leaned forward slightly.
"Neo," she said softly, "you're not afraid of power."
"No."
"You're afraid of who you become when you don't need anyone."
That hit harder than it should have.
I looked away.
Stage Five wasn't just perception. It was optimization dominance. The ability to prune futures aggressively. To compress probability fields until only the desired path remained.
It was efficient.
It was lonely.
Seraphine continued.
"You've changed," she said gently. "Not because you lost power. But because you gained perspective."
I frowned slightly. "Perspective doesn't stop wars."
"No," she agreed. "But it stops you from becoming the kind of person who starts them."
She stood and walked toward the window.
"You weren't alone before," she said quietly. "But you were isolated."
Her reflection met mine in the glass.
"Now you have Lina. Eli. Your mother. Even me. You don't see the world as a board anymore. You see people on it."
I didn't respond.
Because she was right.
Stage Five wouldn't erase that.
But it would make it… optional.
Seraphine turned fully toward me.
"You will always be Neo," she said firmly. "Not the Saint of Wisdom. Not the anomaly. Not the strategist."
She tapped her chest lightly.
"The people who changed you? They're not variables. They're anchors."
A faint smile touched her lips.
"And no stage unlock can take that away unless you let it."
The room felt quieter after that.
Stage Five didn't retreat.
But it stopped feeling urgent.
I closed my eyes for a moment.
The Apex were thinking.
Good.
Let them.
Evolution wasn't something I feared.
It was something I understood.
I exhaled slowly.
"Not yet," I said.
[STAGE FIVE REMAINS SEALED.]
It wasn't denial.
It wasn't refusal.
It just wasn't time.
If I opened that door, it would be because the world demanded it—not because I felt threatened.
And right now?
I still preferred seeing it through human eyes.
The door could wait.