The blade hovered just off my chest. Not quite touching. But the air between us felt carved—like it had already made the cut.
"You’ll tell me," she said.
"How you got your Job Title."
I didn’t flinch. Couldn’t afford to. Instead, I met her eyes—mismatched, scar-split, watching not just me but the cracks in everything I stood for.
"I don’t know," I said.
The fire popped again, spitting heat. She didn’t blink.
"I’m serious. I didn’t earn it. Didn’t inherit it. Didn’t steal it. The night it happened..." I paused, the words grinding against old stone. "I tried to kill myself."
The wind pulled through the trees like it wanted to hush me, but I kept going.
"I’d just had a really, really bad day. All I had was a D-Rank Laborer title. No skills. No opportunities. Nothing. I can promise you that."
"I looked over the bridge, stood in the dark and then I got the notification."
Her face didn’t change. But her hand flexed slightly on the hilt. The blade wavered.
"When I woke up... it was still there. That damn notification. Jobmaster. SSS-Rank. No context. No reason."
I held her stare. "I didn’t even believe it was real until I opened the interface the next morning and saw the skills. I thought it was a glitch. A sick joke."
Still she didn’t lower the knife.
"I’m trying to find out," I said. "Same as you."
For a long, aching moment, she said nothing. Then—
Not dropped. But tired.
Exhausted in a way I knew too well.
"You know nothing of what they did to us," she murmured. "What they did to me."
The knife tilted again. Lower.
"You asked for my title," I said. "What’s yours?"
Then her mouth moved, as if the word hurt just to say.
My eyes narrowed. "I’m assuming that’s not your job."
"It’s not," she said. "It’s my Job Title. They gave it to me because I was failing out of everything else. It wasn’t built for combat. Wasn’t built for techniques. It was built for observation. Dissection."
She exhaled slowly. "I can see titles. Jobs. Skill types. I can see what people are made of. Or what they’ve been turned into."
Camille’s voice, soft but unyielding, cut through the tension. "He’s not lying. Reynard wouldn’t lie about this."
"She’s right," Alexis added. "He has every reason to lie, and he hasn’t. Not once."
3830 looked at them, then back at me. Her eyes had stopped burning. Now they just smoldered.
Evelyn shifted, her blindfold facing the scarred woman. "You think he’s the product of their success," she said evenly. "But what if he’s the only one trying to undo it?"
Alexis took a cautious step forward. "And If he’s the result of your pain... shouldn’t he be the one held responsible for ending it?"
Her lips parted like she wanted to argue. But nothing came out.
I pushed myself upright, breath grinding through my ribs. Every joint in my body screamed. My legs barely held. But I stood.
I faced her—wobbling, raw, but standing.
"I’m not asking for forgiveness," I said. "I’m asking for information."
"I doubt NovaCore’s finished... We are still fighting against them and the government, we don’t have time to be on opposite sides. I need your help."
Her eyes flicked to the forest behind us.
But she didn’t leave.
The silence that followed wasn’t comfortable—but it wasn’t sharp anymore. It was something else. A truce made of fatigue.
Camille finally sat back down, brushing her fingers over a cracked cup. Alexis exhaled and crouched by the fire. Sienna returned to her seat near me, but she didn’t lean in—not yet. And Evelyn turned her head upward, the wind shifting across her face.
I looked at 3830 again.
"Subject 3840," I said carefully. "What happened to her?"
The scarred woman—3830—froze.
Her arms, which had only just begun to slacken, locked again like muscle memory triggered by ghosts.
The firelight caught on her scars, throwing jagged shadows across her face. For a second, she didn’t look like someone from the present. She looked carved from everything that had already gone wrong.
"She didn’t die," she said quietly.
"But she didn’t live either."
A weight settled in the pit of my stomach. "What does that mean?"
3830 didn’t answer at first.
Her gaze drifted—not to me, not to the fire, but beyond both. Past the beach. Past the trees. Into a past so loud I could almost hear it through her silence.
"She was the closest they ever got to stabilization," she murmured. "The miracle that almost worked."
She took a breath that didn’t steady her.
"She could hold three jobs. Not the scraped-together basics either—high-ranking. Artificially boosted S-Ranks. They pushed her to four. She didn’t flinch. For a while."
"But something in her mind—something snapped."
The air thinned around the fire.
"She stopped sleeping. Stopped speaking. Ate only when ordered. Moved like she wasn’t sure her body belonged to her anymore. They thought it was side effects—processing load, stress fractures in cognition, something minor."
She looked at the fire, not through it now, but into it. Searching for something the flames didn’t have.
Her hands clenched in her lap.
"She started humming."
Alexis frowned. "Humming?"
3830 nodded. Once. Like a heartbeat stuck in reverse.
"All the time. Same pitch. Same pattern. Like a lullaby without mercy. Same twenty seconds, looped over and over until you could hear it through the walls."
Camille’s face tensed. "What happened next?"
"She collapsed. No warning. Just dropped mid-task. They thought she was dead at first. But her vitals kept running. Brain activity stayed high. Too high. Like she wasn’t asleep. Just... gone."
"She’s alive?" Camille asked cautiously, quietly.
"If you call that living." 3830’s mouth twitched. "They called it the ’final threshold.’ The point when a subject reaches the absolute edge of system compatibility. The moment something inside them separates."
"Separates from what?" I asked.
"From everything. From language. From pain. From people. From self."
A shiver slid under my skin. Cold despite the fire.
"I don’t know," 3830 whispered. "I heard they moved her. Special facility. Deeper. Quieter. They stopped calling her by number. Just... ’Asset.’"
Her gaze dropped to the sand.
"I’d already escaped by then."
The silence that followed was fragile. Like the air didn’t dare move.
Before anyone could speak again—
In one smooth motion, she stood.
Every line of her body sharpened.
Not to her knife this time—but to a long, hooked staff she had carved from blackened driftwood and scavenged scrap. She raised it like a conductor tuning the air.
"Someone’s watching us."
The fire cracked again, louder than before.
The jungle had thickened again behind us—mist curling through the underbrush, leaves damp and still. A pale fog blurred the edges of everything green and gold.
But there was no movement.
A sound with no right being in nature.
Camille was on her feet before the echo finished.
Sienna’s hand dropped to her belt—blade already drawn.
Alexis took two quiet steps forward, putting herself half in front of me again. Shielding.
Reckless. Brave. Predictable.
My eyes locked with 3830’s.
Her voice dropped low, cold as the wind off the sea.
"That’s not one of mine."
My ribs ached as I stood. But I stood.
Blood suddenly louder in my ears.
"Then who the hell is watching us?"