Chapter 12
1000 Words
The morning after my meeting with Drayke, the academy’s bells sounded different.
Slower. Heavier. Like the building itself was thinking.
I woke to the faint hum of the wrist-band and a new message blinking across the display.
“Unranked?” I said aloud. “That’s not even on the course list.”
Leo, half-asleep on the other bed, groaned. “You get reassigned again? What did you do this time?”
“Apparently I impressed the wrong people,” I muttered, already pulling on my jacket.
---
Block E-13 sat on the edge of the campus—half-buried in the cliffside where maintenance tunnels and old laboratories connected. The air grew colder the farther I walked. When I finally reached the door, it didn’t even have the academy crest—just a rusted plate that read Authorized Personnel Only.
I swiped my ID. The lock clicked, the door slid open, and a blast of recycled air hit me.
Inside were about a dozen students. No uniforms matched; ranks either didn’t display or flickered with broken signals. They all looked up when I entered.
A girl with short silver hair smirked. “Another transfer. Let me guess—someone important decided you were inconvenient.”
“Something like that.”
The instructor arrived a moment later: a middle-aged man in a threadbare coat, his ID showing no rank at all. He wrote his name on the board—Instructor Halden.
“Welcome to the Unranked,” he said. “You’re here because the academy doesn’t know where else to put you. Fail enough tests, cause enough anomalies, or make the wrong people nervous—this is where you land.”
A few students laughed bitterly. One coughed.
Halden’s gaze moved to me. “Palmer, correct? The Headmaster requested that I observe you personally. Congratulations—you’re already special.”
“Lucky me,” I said.
He grinned faintly. “We start with a simple exercise. Pair off.”
---
The room expanded as the training field activated—old tech, glitching around the edges. My opponent ended up being the silver-haired girl who’d mocked me earlier.
“Name’s Kira,” she said. “Don’t hold back. I won’t.”
Kira moved first—fast, using compressed air bursts to close the distance. I barely sidestepped her strike. The impact left a crater where I’d stood.
“Nice,” I said. “Subtle.”
“Still alive? You’re better than the last one.”
Her next attack came low; I caught her wrist and used her momentum to throw her off balance. She landed smoothly, eyes gleaming.
The ground beneath her shifted—a stray energy ripple from the malfunctioning field. She stumbled, momentarily off guard. I stopped before landing the counterblow.
The system pinged.
Halden nodded from the sidelines. “Good enough. Both of you stand down.”
Kira straightened, brushing dust from her sleeve. “You pulled that on purpose.”
“I didn’t pull anything,” I said.
She narrowed her eyes. “Right. Sure you didn’t.”
---
After training, Halden gathered us around a flickering projector. A map of the academy appeared, dotted with red markers.
“These are access points to the lower tunnels. Officially, they’re sealed. Unofficially, the Headmaster’s research teams still use them. Our job is to map interference patterns and retrieve whatever data we can without getting noticed.”
One of the students raised a hand. “So… we’re spies?”
Halden smiled. “We’re unranked. No one cares what we do—as long as we don’t succeed too loudly.”
His eyes flicked toward me. “Mr Palmer, you’ll take the eastern sector tonight. Alone.”
“Alone?”
“You have protection seals. Use them. And if you find something that hums, don’t touch it.”
---
By evening, the academy was quiet. I slipped past the outer barriers and descended into the service tunnels. The smell of rust and ozone hung thick. My wrist-band mapped faint energy lines across the walls—traces of experiments long abandoned.
I followed the signals until I reached a sealed hatch marked Sub-level 3. Exactly what Drayke had mentioned. The lock was newer than the rest of the structure—someone still used this place.
The mark on my hand began to pulse.
“So this is where they’re keeping them,” I whispered.
A faint sound echoed from behind the hatch—footsteps, deliberate and heavy. I pressed myself against the wall. The door slid open, light spilling into the tunnel.
Two figures in black armor stepped out, carrying crates that glowed faintly blue. Fragments.
Their visors turned briefly in my direction. I held my breath.
The soldiers passed without noticing. Once the echo faded, I slipped closer to the door and peered inside. The room beyond glimmered with containment pods—each holding a shard of light floating in suspension.
So the Headmaster hadn’t been lying. He really was collecting fragments.
I stepped back into the tunnel, sealing the hatch quietly. The air felt heavier now, charged with the kind of danger that never needed shouting.
When I finally emerged above ground, dawn had started to break. The campus was still silent, unaware that half its secrets sat humming under its feet.
---
At the dorm, Leo sat waiting by the door, worry written all over his face. “You were gone all night. What happened?”
“Extra credit,” I said.
He frowned. “You really think they put you in the Unranked just for that?”
“No,” I admitted. “They put me there to watch what I’d do when no one was watching.”
The mark on my hand still glowed faintly through the sleeve. Somewhere in the tower above, Drayke was probably already reviewing the data feed.
Let him watch. The more he saw, the more he’d underestimate me.
I smiled faintly. “Time to make the Unranked live up to its name.”
- Writer
