The transfer wasn't framed as an offer.
That alone told me it was optional only in theory.
The notice appeared during cooldown, embedded beneath my compatibility status. No priority flag. No expiration timer.
Just a routing preview.
[PROVISIONAL TRANSFER — EVALUATION TRACK]
No division listed.
Only destination tier.
Above Greyline.
Below A-Class.
A corridor that didn't officially exist.
I didn't accept it.
I didn't decline either.
I closed the interface and waited to see what changed.
Something always did.
Greyline reacted before I did.
The next morning, the schedule adjusted around me.
Not away.
Around.
My station shifted closer to the center. Support Operations routed through adjacent nodes instead of bypassing them. The system wasn't isolating me.
It was presenting me.
That presentation had side effects.
Evan Arclight's party returned the same day.
Not for evaluation.
For demonstration.
A-Class drills occupied the upper lanes again, visible through the glass, clean and efficient in a way that made Greyline's adaptive mess look unfinished.
That contrast wasn't accidental.
A-Class didn't apply pressure directly.
It distorted baselines.
The first Greyline candidate broke pattern before the second cycle ended.
He wasn't trying to outperform anyone.
He was trying to match what he'd seen above.
Cleaner movement. Faster correction. Sharper transitions.
Borrowed assumptions.
He passed the drill.
Then failed the next one when the system reintroduced irregularity.
Resolved before lunch.
By afternoon, the damage had spread.
Greyline candidates began correcting earlier. Moving cleaner. Holding posture longer than necessary.
The system adjusted.
Then narrowed.
Verification cascaded.
Two removals. One reassignment.
Not because A-Class interfered.
Because Greyline had started imitating certainty it couldn't sustain.
I compensated by doing the opposite.
I introduced noise where smoothness was expected.
Not sloppiness.
Variance.
The system accepted it from me.
Rejected it from others.
That wasn't fairness.
That was classification.
Halev spoke to me after the session.
"You see what they're doing," he said.
"Yes."
"They don't need to touch Greyline," he continued. "All they have to do is exist near it."
He paused.
"Certainty is contagious."
"And expensive," I said.
He nodded once.
The transfer notice resurfaced that night.
Not updated.
Recontextualized.
[TRANSFER — RECOMMENDED]
Still no expiration.
But the language had shifted.
The system wasn't asking if I wanted to move.
It was adjusting its expectation.
I ran projections.
If I stayed in Greyline:
Continued compression
Increased misclassification pressure
Eventual structural dissolution
If I transferred:
Immediate stabilization
Higher scrutiny
Hard classification
Greyline tolerated ambiguity.
Upper tiers consumed it.
The next day, Evan's party caused a system-level conflict.
Not deliberately.
They ran a cooperative drill that required resource prioritization. Their output was clean. Efficient.
Too efficient.
Greyline's parallel simulation tried to reconcile the discrepancy.
It couldn't.
The system flagged a contradiction.
Greyline's adaptive tolerance violated A-Class optimization assumptions.
For half a second, routing froze.
Again.
That hesitation escalated.
Not in Greyline.
Upward.
Oversight interfaces flickered.
Staff paused mid-step.
The system recalculated which environment represented the correct model.
A-Class won.
Greyline lost margin.
Halev found me afterward.
"This is the cost," he said.
"Of what?"
"Becoming an asset."
He leaned against the wall, tired for the first time since intake.
"When a system decides you're valuable long-term, it stops protecting the space that made you."
I didn't respond.
He continued.
"You don't get to stay ambiguous. You get extracted."
"And Greyline?"
"Greyline becomes inefficient redundancy."
Which meant disposable.
The transfer notice pulsed once.
Not a reminder.
A preparation.
I understood then.
The system wasn't offering me advancement.
It was saving what it could before pruning the rest.
Greyline's survival window was closing.
And I had been categorized as something worth salvaging.
I thought of Mira.
Of Joren.
Of how resolution always came disguised as opportunity.
I could accept the transfer.
Become clean.
Defined.
Safe.
Or I could stay.
Risk being optimized out with the structure that had tolerated me.
Neither option preserved what I was.
Only where I would end up.
That night, I left the transfer notice unanswered.
Not as defiance.
As delay.
Delay was still a lever.
For now.
But I knew something had shifted.
The system no longer needed to remove me.
It needed to move me.
And Greyline—whether it survived or not—would not be the place where the decision was made.
Not anymore.