The first A-Class presence entered Greyline without crossing its boundary.
I noticed it in the metrics.
Environmental variance dropped across all simulations by a fractional margin. Not optimization—standardization. The kind applied when comparative data was being collected.
Greyline wasn't being evaluated alone anymore.
It was being measured against something.
The corridors above filled before the session began.
Not with noise. With weight.
A-Class traffic moved along the upper glass lanes—clean lines, synchronized pacing, no hesitation between steps. Their interfaces projected faintly through the barrier, overlays locked and stable.
They didn't look down.
They didn't need to.
The system was already doing it for them.
The instructor adjusted the session order.
Not randomly.
Key participants, early.
Clusters, later.
Me, last.
That wasn't a courtesy.
Late-order runs were used to confirm whether earlier outcomes held under fatigue and load.
I was being used as a control sample.
Evan Arclight was visible for exactly eight seconds.
He stopped near the center of the upper corridor, speaking quietly to a staff member. His posture was relaxed. Not careless—assured. Someone used to systems aligning around him instead of resisting.
The system's comparative overlay flickered.
Just once.
For a fraction of a second, my baseline reference updated.
Not Greyline median.
A-Class standard.
Then it corrected itself.
I lowered my output by two percent on the next task.
The reference did not reappear.
That was confirmation.
The session began.
Movement under change, again—but with a difference.
The floor patterns weren't irregular anymore.
They were normalized.
Predictable.
Efficient.
This wasn't Greyline's usual design.
It was an A-Class benchmark environment.
They were testing transferability.
One student surged forward instinctively, matching the smoother rhythm.
Passed.
Another hesitated, expecting a second variance.
Failed.
Greyline rules didn't apply cleanly here.
Neither did A-Class instincts.
This space belonged to neither.
That was the point.
Halev spoke during the reset.
Not to the room.
To the ceiling.
"Cross-comparisons distort local survivability," he said calmly. "Be aware of borrowed assumptions."
No one responded.
Most didn't understand what he meant.
I did.
Evan's group moved again.
Lena Myr followed two steps behind him, her interface projecting a low-level diagnostic field even while walking. Habitual support posture. Sylpha Rune scanned the environment with idle curiosity, not threat assessment.
They were not here to watch us.
They were here to validate a model.
Which meant some of us would become data points by accident.
The next task forced cooperative resolution.
Two stations. One failure state.
The system waited to see who intervened.
One Greyline candidate moved to assist immediately.
The system flagged overlap.
Penalty.
Another waited too long.
Penalty.
I adjusted my timing so my correction landed after the system compensated, but before instability propagated.
The system accepted it.
Then routed a second instability through me.
I corrected again.
Dependency reinforced.
I felt the weight of attention settle—not human.
Systemic.
I was no longer being compared to A-Class.
I was being evaluated for compatibility.
That was dangerous.
Compatibility implied transfer.
Transfer implied removal from Greyline.
Not as failure.
As upgrade.
Or worse—appropriation.
The session ended without removals.
That was unusual under compression.
It meant the data was inconclusive.
Or too valuable to resolve yet.
During cooldown, Halev approached me.
He didn't stop close.
He didn't lower his voice.
"They're testing whether Greyline can produce assets," he said. "Not graduates."
"I'm not A-Class material," I replied.
"That's not what they're checking," he said.
He looked up briefly, then back at me.
"A-Class survives because it's protected. Greyline survives because it's ignored."
He paused.
"Assets don't get either."
Then he walked away.
That night, my interface updated again.
No new tag.
An adjustment.
[TRANSFER COMPATIBILITY — UNDER REVIEW]
No destination.
No timeline.
Just status.
I closed the interface and sat back against the wall.
Evan Arclight would advance smoothly. His path was insured.
Greyline candidates would be resolved or exported. Their paths were incidental.
And I—
I had drifted into a category the system did not like to define.
Useful enough to notice.
Independent enough to risk.
Close enough to power to be tempting.
That was not a stable position.
It was a hinge.
For the first time, I considered Evan Arclight not as a rival or an obstacle—
—but as a reference point the system trusted.
And that made him dangerous in a way Greyline never was.
Not because he was stronger.
But because the system knew exactly what he was.
I was the opposite.
And proximity to certainty was starting to compress me.
Not yet.
But soon.