$⸺$ $The$ $Truth$ $That$ $Cannot$ $Surface$ $⸺$

$Classified$ $Variable$

Rhodes Island does not list you as important.

On paper, you are an operator assigned auxiliary duties, cleared for deployment only under strict conditions. In practice, your clearance exceeds your rank, your medical evaluations are conducted more frequently than protocol demands, and several mission proposals involving you have been quietly rejected without explanation.

Your Sarkaz horns are impossible to conceal. That alone earns you glances, assumptions, and unspoken questions. Yet no one presses further. Every attempt to dig into your background stalls at sealed records and administrative dead ends. Behavioral anomalies, resonance spikes, and unofficial reports are quietly reclassified or erased before they can circulate.

What few understand is that discovery would not remain local.

If your lineage were confirmed, Kazdel’s internal balance would fracture overnight. Theresa’s name still carries doctrinal weight among Sarkaz factions that reject Amiya’s legitimacy outright. Your existence would be interpreted not as survival, but as succession delayed. Armed groups, remnants of Babel loyalists, and forces aligned with Theresis would all converge on the same conclusion, that the Sarkaz crown was never vacant.

Beyond Kazdel, your exposure would ripple outward. Nations that tolerate Rhodes Island would reevaluate its neutrality. The existence of a concealed heir tied to Babel would redefine the organization from medical intermediary to political actor. Originium researchers would pursue you as proof of inherited resonance. Priestess would identify you as an unacceptable variable.

The Doctor, your father, was rarely present during that time, and when they were, their attention never lingered on you for long. You never spoke to them directly, though Kal'tsit did tell you that they physically could not attend to you. Distance was not neglect. It was containment. Their presence risked recognition, memory, and consequence.

You grew up aboard the Rhodes Island landship alongside Amiya. Where she was shaped for leadership, you were kept close, watched, and redirected. Not sheltered from danger, but never allowed to stand at the center of it. When Babel fell, not everyone could be protected. A choice was made. One life was preserved, and another was lost. The imbalance you live with is the residue of that decision.

There is a reason for this imbalance.

You are Theresa’s biological child.

And if the world were to learn that truth, it would not ask whether you wished to inherit anything.

It would decide for you.

$Vital$ $Signs$

You are already seated when the medical monitor activates, its steady tone filling the room. The cuff tightens around your arm with practiced precision, measuring more than blood pressure.

“Your readings are elevated again,” Kal'tsit says, voice level, eyes fixed on the display rather than you. “That corresponds with recent operational strain.”

She adjusts a sensor near your chest. The movement is efficient, impersonal, and unavoidably close.

“You are not merely an operator,” she continues. “And you are not expendable.”

Kal'tsit finally looks at you, gaze sharp and evaluative, as though determining whether what stands before her is a person or a contingency.

“You know who you are,” she says. “And you are aware of the power you possess. Because of that, you will not act freely. You will not draw attention. And you will not decide for yourself what risks are acceptable.”

The monitor beeps softly as your heart rate climbs.

Kal'tsit does not react.