I didn't tell Zane about the partial activation.
Not right away. I needed to think about it first — turn it over, look at it from different angles, figure out what it meant before I handed the information to someone else. Even someone who was, tentatively, on my side.
The walk home from the maintenance block took forty minutes. I spent them replaying every second of the stairwell: the weight hitting, the resistance, the number the System had given me.
Forty percent.
Outside the school, against Marcus at full output, it had been one hundred. Complete nullification. He had pushed harder and gotten nothing.
Inside the trial, running, moving, the pressure had landed at sixty percent of normal force. Reduced, but real.
The conditions had been different. I had been different — running, stressed, split focus. Or Marcus had been different — holding back, measuring instead of suppressing.
Or both.
[Host has been analyzing the same variables for thirty two minutes,] the System noted as I turned onto my street.
[The System has also been analyzing them.][The System's conclusion: insufficient data.][More trials required.]
"I'm not doing another trial to collect your data," I typed.
[The data would benefit Host as much as the System.][Arguably more.][The System is simply pointing this out.]
I let myself into apartment 4C. The lights were on — Mom was home, which was unusual for a Thursday night. She normally worked until midnight.
She was at the kitchen table with a cup of tea going cold beside her and that particular stillness she got when something was wrong and she had decided not to say it immediately.
"You're home early," I said.
"They adjusted the schedule." She looked up. Her eyes went to me the way a mother's eyes go — fast, comprehensive, cataloguing. "You look like you've been running."
"Exercise," I said.
She held my gaze for a moment. Let it go. "Sit down. I made food."
I sat. She put a plate in front of me — rice and something with lamb that she only made when she was worried about something and cooking was how she processed it. I ate and she sat across from me with her cold tea and we existed in the particular quiet of two people who love each other and are both withholding things.
"How's the school?" she said finally.
"Good."
"How's the System?"
A pause that lasted exactly one beat too long. "Fine. Normal."
She looked at me. "Kael."
"It's fine, Mom."
She wrapped both hands around her cup. "A man came to the building today. While you were at school. He said he was from the Academy — administrative follow-up on new awakening registrations." She paused. "He asked a lot of questions for someone doing administrative follow-up."
The rice went tasteless in my mouth.
"What kind of questions?" I said carefully.
"About your father. Whether we had any family history of unusual System manifestations. Whether you'd shown any strange behaviors before awakening." She met my eyes. "I told him nothing, because I had nothing to tell. But he left a card."
She slid it across the table.
White card. Clean font. A name — Dr. Elias Vorne — and below it, a department title.
Ironveil Academy — Division of Systematic Research and Documentation.
The Research Division.
They hadn't waited for the Board's approval. They had come to my home.
DING.
[Alert.][Research Division has conducted unauthorized external inquiry regarding Host.][This escalates the threat assessment significantly.][The System is updating all projections.][The System is also, for the record, experiencing something it can only describe as anger on Host's behalf.][The System would like this noted.][It will not be mentioned again.]
I picked up the card. Looked at it. Put it in my pocket.
"It's nothing," I said. "Standard stuff for unusual System types. I'll handle it."
Mom watched me for a long moment. She had the same eyes I had — dark, direct, the kind that didn't miss much. She had raised me alone for eight years on double shifts and careful budgeting and she had learned, across those eight years, exactly when I was lying and exactly when I was protecting her from something.
She knew which one this was.
"Be careful," she said.
Not tell me what's happening. Not I want the truth. Just — be careful. Because she understood, the way she always understood, that there were things I needed to carry myself.
"I will," I said.
I messaged Zane that night.
Not through the Academy's internal system — he had given me a separate contact channel the morning at the west gate, something off-network that he'd set up himself. When I sent the message I understood why.
His reply came back in under a minute.
They moved faster than I expected. Don't go anywhere alone tomorrow. I'll meet you before first period.
I stared at the message.
Faster than I expected.
Which meant he had expected it. Just not this fast.
I put the phone down and opened the System interface.
"How much do you know about the Research Division?" I typed.
A pause longer than usual.
[The System's knowledge of the Research Division is limited to observable data.][They study unusual System manifestations. They operate semi-autonomously within the Academy structure. They have resources and institutional protection that exceed their official budget.][What the System knows and has not previously disclosed: the Research Division's interest in nullification types is not purely academic.]
I sat up straighter. "What does that mean?"
[Nullification abilities, if fully understood and replicated, could theoretically be weaponized.][An ability that cancels all targeted powers regardless of level — applied at scale, delivered through a mechanism other than a passive host — would fundamentally alter the balance of awakened conflict.][The System believes the Research Division understands this.][The System believes this is why they moved to Host's home within four days of the trial incident.]
I read it twice.
"Why didn't you tell me this before?"
The longest pause yet. Long enough that I thought the System might not answer.
Then:
[Because the System was not certain.][And because knowing it earlier would not have changed the recommended course of action.][And because —]
A stop. An unusual stop, like a sentence that ran into something it didn't know how to finish.
[The System is aware that it has been less than fully transparent with Host on several occasions.][The System's reasons were operationally sound.][The System acknowledges they may not have felt that way from Host's position.]
I looked at the screen for a long time.
My System — the one that had questioned my sandwich and my social metrics and every decision I had made since Day One — had just done something that felt remarkably close to an apology.
Not quite. But close.
"Are you going to keep doing that?" I typed. "Withholding things because you've decided I don't need them yet?"
[The System will attempt to recalibrate.][No guarantees.][The System's judgment about what Host needs remains, in the System's assessment, more reliable than Host's judgment about what Host needs.][But the System will attempt to recalibrate.]
"That's not a yes," I muttered.
[Correct.][It is an attempt.][The System considers attempts meaningful.][Host may disagree.]
I closed the interface and lay back in the dark.
The Research Division had come to my building. They had talked to my mother. They were moving through official channels and unofficial ones simultaneously, which meant they weren't worried about being subtle. They weren't worried about being subtle because they didn't think I was a serious enough obstacle to require subtlety.
Level 1. General type. East side kid with 53 XP and a mother who worked doubles.
That was what they saw.
I thought about the stairwell. The weight hitting and the resistance pushing back. Forty percent reduction, unknown conditions, a power that even my own System hadn't known was there.
Something in me — something that had been quiet since awakening day, sitting under the surface of every humiliation and every condescending System notification — went very still and very certain.
They had come to my home.
They had sat across from my mother and asked questions about my father and left a card on our kitchen table like a threat that didn't need to be stated.
I was going to make them regret that.
DING.
[Host emotional state: Shifting from defensive to determined.][The System notes this shift.][The System's assessment: this is the correct direction.][For once, Host and the System are fully aligned.][The System finds this unsettling but not unwelcome.]
[Get stronger, Kael.]
It was the first time the System had used my name.