Time fractured.
Not into seconds or minutes—but into procedures.
Noah Cain drifted in and out of awareness as the facility changed him. The machines didn't rush. They learned. Each cycle adjusted a variable: temperature by a fraction, neural load by a hair, suppression frequency shifted just enough to test response without tripping alarms.
He stopped trying to measure time.
Time was a luxury.
Instead, he measured patterns.
The restraints lifted him from the cradle and transferred him to a vertical frame—spine supported, limbs suspended. The room widened, walls retracting to reveal concentric rings of equipment. Arms unfolded. Lenses tracked micro-movements in his pupils.
A voice spoke—not the System, not Authority.
Human.
"Subject stabilized," the technician said. "Begin Dissection Phase Alpha."
Noah's lips cracked into a faint smile.
So that's what they called it.
Dissection wasn't interrogation. It wasn't punishment. It was classification—finding which rules applied and which didn't.
Director Mara Voss observed from a glassed-in control booth above, hands folded behind her back. Beside her, the System's interface pulsed with layered metrics, confidence returning as data accumulated.
[Anomaly Profile: REFINING.]
[Deviation Vectors: ISOLATED.]
"Proceed," Voss said.
The first arm descended and made contact at the base of Noah's skull. Not a needle—an induction pad. A low-frequency hum vibrated through his bones.
Information flowed out of him.
Noah let it.
He'd learned something during Extraction: the System hated ambiguity, but it trusted trends. Give it a consistent pattern and it would stop looking elsewhere.
So he offered one.
Fear. Pain. Resistance.
The pad's frequency increased.
[Neural Stress Response: CONSISTENT.]
Good.
Another arm pressed against his sternum, measuring cardiovascular response. A third skimmed along his forearm, mapping muscle tension and reflex arcs.
The room filled with data.
Voss watched, eyes sharp. "He's presenting baseline anomaly behavior," she noted. "No spikes."
A technician frowned. "There's… noise."
"Define," Voss said.
"Micro-variances in response timing," the tech replied. "Within tolerance, but… persistent."
Voss considered. "Tighten the window."
The machines obeyed.
Pressure mounted. Not enough to break him—just enough to narrow the margin.
Noah's breathing stayed steady. Inside, the thread pulsed.
There.
Between induction cycles.
A gap no wider than a heartbeat.
Noah didn't move.
He counted.
On the fifth cycle, the System adjusted—predicting his next response based on the last four.
That was the mistake.
Noah shifted early.
Not a struggle. Not resistance.
A thought.
A reframe.
He reclassified the sensation—pain not as stimulus, but as signal. A marker for timing. The thread caught, anchored to the rhythm of the machines instead of his body.
The data hiccupped.
[Latency Spike Detected.]
Voss leaned forward. "Pause."
The machines froze.
"Report," she ordered.
The technician swallowed. "We saw a transient desync between neural response and motor suppression. Brief. Corrected itself."
Noah exhaled slowly, eyes still closed.
First win.
Small. Invisible. But real.
Voss's gaze fixed on him. "You did that on purpose."
Noah opened one eye. "You told me this was about understanding."
She held his stare for a long moment. Then nodded.
"Continue," she said. "Phase Beta."
The room shifted again.
The frame rotated, laying Noah horizontal. The restraints changed—less force, more precision. New devices slid into place around his temples, humming at overlapping frequencies.
This wasn't about stress anymore.
It was about choice.
Images flickered across the ceiling: cityscapes, transit routes, shelter schematics. Scenarios unfolded, paused, rewound.
[Decision Simulation: ACTIVE.]
The System presented a problem: a civilian corridor under lockdown. Two exits. One blocked. One monitored.
Noah knew this one.
He'd lived it.
He chose the monitored route.
The simulation recalculated.
Another scenario. Another choice.
Noah answered quickly. Consistently.
Always the option with least variance, not least harm.
The System's confidence climbed.
[Predictive Accuracy: 62% → 68%.]
Voss smiled faintly. "You see?" she said to no one in particular. "He's not chaos. He's optimization."
Noah let her believe it.
On the seventh scenario, he hesitated—just long enough to register uncertainty—then chose wrong.
Deliberately.
The System paused.
[Anomaly Detected.]
Voss's smile faded. "Again."
They reran it.
Noah chose right this time.
The System smoothed the spike, attributing it to noise.
But the thread tightened.
Noah could feel the shape of the simulations now—the way scenarios branched, the points where the System weighted outcomes heavier than context.
It was building a box around him.
Boxes had corners.
"End Phase Beta," Voss said after a while. "Prep Phase Gamma."
The machines withdrew. The restraints loosened a fraction—enough to suggest mercy, not enough to allow movement.
Voss descended from the booth and approached, stopping at arm's length.
"You're adapting," she said quietly.
"So are you," Noah replied.
She studied him. "You think this ends with escape."
"No," Noah said. "I think it ends with a mistake."
Voss raised an eyebrow. "Yours?"
"Yours," he corrected gently. "Or the System's. Hard to tell where one stops and the other begins."
She straightened. "Phase Gamma isn't about analysis," she said. "It's about application."
The lights dimmed.
The room transformed.
Walls slid back to reveal a larger space—an arena of sorts, modular platforms rising from the floor. Holo-projectors spun up, populating the space with avatars—Hunters, Authority units, civilians.
A rehearsal.
[Operational Simulation: LIVE.]
"Show us," Voss said, "how you'd survive—without Override."
The restraints released.
Not fully.
Noah dropped to one knee, breath ragged, muscles screaming as sensation rushed back. The suppression field lingered, dulling his reflexes.
Fair.
The first avatar moved.
Noah didn't.
He watched.
Counted.
The second moved.
Noah shifted sideways, narrowly avoiding a projected strike. He stumbled, recovered, used momentum instead of strength.
He wasn't winning.
He was learning.
The System adjusted the avatars, tightening coordination. Noah took a hit—hard—rolling across the platform.
Pain flared. Real enough.
He laughed, breathless.
"Still smiling?" Voss asked from the perimeter.
"You're showing me your playbook," Noah said, pushing himself up. "You didn't have to."
"We need to know what you can do," she replied.
"And now I know what you can't," Noah said.
The System recalculated again.
[Simulation Difficulty: INCREASED.]
The avatars closed in.
Noah made his move—not an escape, not a victory.
A signal.
He stepped into a strike he couldn't avoid, letting it knock him back—right where he wanted to be.
His heel clipped a projection node.
The arena flickered.
Just for a moment.
[Render Instability Detected.]
The System corrected it instantly.
But Noah had felt it.
Another corner.
He went down hard, pinned by suppression fields as the simulation terminated.
Voss approached slowly. "You lose," she said.
"Yes," Noah agreed. "This round."
She watched him, thoughtful. "You're mapping us."
Noah met her gaze, exhausted and bleeding, but calm.
"You started it," he said.
Voss turned away. "Secure him. End Phase Gamma."
As the restraints re-engaged and the room reset, the System updated its models.
[Anomaly Adaptation: CONFIRMED.]
[Containment Viability: TEMPORARY.]
Noah closed his eyes.
He was still trapped.
Still suppressed.
Still very much under their control.
But now—
—he knew the shape of the cage.
And cages, once understood, could be tested.
One bar at a time.