Isolation wasn't announced.
It never was.
Kael realized it the moment the door closed behind him and didn't reopen.
The quarters were identical to before—same bed, same pale walls, same faint frost crawling like veins across the floor—but the hum was different. Thicker. Closer. As if the Freezer had leaned in.
He waited.
Five minutes.
Ten.
No chime. No instructions.
No voice.
They've separated me, he thought. Not physically. Not yet.
He pressed his palm to the wall. The cold bit deeper than usual, sharp enough to sting. His fire stirred reflexively, then stilled when he forced it down.
"Observation without stimulus," he muttered. "Psychological pressure."
The Freezer was changing tactics.
Instead of breaking him, it was letting him sit with himself.
Time stretched.
Memories crept in—uninvited, vivid.
His mother's voice calling him in for dinner. His father's rough hands correcting his stance when he practiced fire control as a kid, laughing when Kael singed his own sleeve.
They don't know I'm here, Kael thought.
Or maybe they do.
The idea settled uneasily.
A chime finally sounded.
"Subject F-117," the voice said. "Report to Training Hall C."
The door slid open.
Hall C was smaller than the others. No viewing panels. No other subjects.
Only one person stood at the center.
F-061.
He turned slowly when Kael entered, lips curling into a smile that didn't reach his eyes.
"So," he said. "You too."
Kael stopped a few meters away. "Too what?"
"Too interesting," F-061 replied. "They've been watching you. I can tell."
Kael said nothing.
The temperature dropped.
Not as violently as before—but steadily, insistently.
A test.
F-061 rolled his shoulders, flames licking up his arms. "You know what they want, right?"
Kael's gaze stayed on him. "To see which of us breaks."
F-061 laughed. "No. They already know that."
He raised a hand, fire coalescing into a dense, rotating mass. "They want to see which of us replaces the other."
The realization hit Kael like a shard of ice.
They're pruning.
"Begin," the voice announced.
F-061 attacked first.
His fire was aggressive, overwhelming—raw heat compressed into explosive arcs that tore through the air. Kael dodged, feeling the scorch pass inches from his face.
F-061 had grown stronger.
But stronger wasn't smarter.
Kael watched the fire's structure as it moved—the turbulence, the inefficiencies, the wasted energy bleeding off as light and sound.
He's forcing it, Kael thought. Burning too much.
Kael countered with restraint.
A narrow band of heat, shaped and timed to intercept, dispersing F-061's attack without clashing directly. The collision hissed, steam erupting where energies canceled.
F-061's eyes widened.
"You're copying me," he snarled.
"No," Kael replied calmly. "I'm correcting you."
Rage twisted F-061's face.
He screamed and unleashed everything.
The hall became an inferno.
Kael didn't retreat.
He stepped forward.
Inside his chest, the fire unfolded—not outward, but inward, layering upon itself. He felt it then: the property beneath the flame.
Pressure.
Expansion.
Flow.
Fire isn't just heat, he realized. It's movement.
He altered it.
Kael's fire didn't burn brighter.
It burned denser.
When he released it, it wasn't an explosion—it was a wave. A controlled surge that swallowed F-061's flames, stripping them of momentum and leaving nothing but dissipating heat.
F-061 was thrown back, slamming into the far wall.
He slid down, gasping.
The temperature normalized.
"Assessment complete," the voice said. "Subject F-061—adaptive ceiling reached."
Kael stared.
That phrase felt… final.
Medical drones descended, lifting F-061's limp body.
As they carried him away, F-061's eyes snapped open.
He locked onto Kael.
"This isn't over," he rasped. "They'll make something that kills you."
Kael didn't answer.
He watched the doors close.
Silence followed.
Then—
[EVENT UNLOCKED: SYSTEM INITIALIZATION—PARTIAL]
Kael froze.
The text burned faintly into his vision, translucent and unreal.
"What…?" he whispered.
No voice accompanied it.
No explanation.
Only another line, smaller beneath the first.
[ERROR: ACCESS DENIED—POST-RANKER CONDITION NOT MET]
The text faded.
Kael exhaled shakily.
So I wasn't imagining it.
The Freezer wasn't the only thing watching him.
---
They didn't return him to the group.
Instead, Kael's schedule changed.
Solo drills. Independent assessments. Long stretches of nothing followed by sudden, intense tests.
Isolation worked differently than pain.
It made thoughts louder.
Doubts sharper.
He began talking to himself—not out loud, but internally, running arguments, replaying conversations that hadn't happened yet.
Sometimes, he caught himself responding to questions no one had asked.
Careful, he warned himself. That's how it starts.
During one such stretch, the door opened unexpectedly.
F-093 stepped in.
Kael blinked. "You're not supposed to be here."
She smiled faintly. "I know."
She sat on the edge of the bed, close enough that he could feel the warmth of her presence—a rare thing in the Freezer.
"They moved F-061," she said quietly.
"Where?"
She hesitated. "The freezer wing."
Kael's chest tightened.
"That's… worse."
She nodded. "They say it's for his own good."
Kael laughed softly. "They say that about everything."
Silence settled between them.
"You're different," she said finally. "You know that, right?"
He met her gaze. "Different how?"
"You're still… you," she said. "Most people start slipping by now. They forget small things. Names. Faces."
She reached out, hesitating, then took his hand.
"You remember."
Her touch grounded him more than he expected.
"I don't want to forget," Kael said quietly.
"Then don't do this alone," she replied.
For a moment, he considered it.
Then the door chimed sharply.
"Unauthorized interaction detected," the voice announced. "Subject F-093—return to assigned sector."
She stood reluctantly.
Before leaving, she leaned in and whispered, "If they try to turn you into something… remember who you're fighting for."
The door closed behind her.
Kael sat there long after.
Inside him, the fire stirred—steady, controlled, waiting.
Somewhere far above the Freezer, in offices that never felt the cold, a meeting concluded.
"Subject F-117 is diverging," a voice said.
"Good," another replied. "We'll need that divergence."
"For what?"
"For when the Post-Rankers come online."
Kael lay back on the bed, staring at the ceiling.
He didn't know what a Post-Ranker was.
But his instincts—those same instincts the Freezer had tried to strip away—told him one thing clearly.
They're building something to kill me.
And for the first time since entering the Freezer, Kael smiled.