The chamber rebooted.
White light flooded the training arena as the simulation walls dissolved back into polished chrome. Leo staggered to one knee, gripping his head. The number still flashed behind his eyes.
> TPS Rank: 999
Corrupted. Suppressed. Unknown.
> "No. No, that's wrong," Leo muttered.
His heart was still hammering. His visor display was blank now, frozen. The usual post-training data summary was gone. The system had locked him out completely.
He tapped the side of his visor, trying to re-sync.
Nothing.
> "Unauthorized access recorded," the system finally said.
"Memory file flagged. Reported to Admin: Clearance Level Black."
Leo's blood ran cold.
Clearance Level Black meant the Upper System Council. People he'd only heard rumors about. Ghost operators. Legacy tech handlers. The ones who maintained TPS behind closed doors.
The training room door slid open with a hiss.
A tall woman in a white coat stepped through, her face calm, too calm — like it had been practiced.
> "Leo Brandon," she said. "You've overextended your limits. TPS feedback loops can sometimes hallucinate anomaly ranks. Come with me. We'll run a neuro-sync scan."
Her voice was honey-sweet, but her eyes were scanning him like a weapon. She wasn't a medic.
She was containment.
Leo took a half-step back. "Why did it say Rank 999?"
Her smile didn't falter. "It didn't."
> She's lying, he realized.
And she wasn't alone.
Two League Enforcers stepped in behind her. Heavy armor. Pulse-binders on their arms. They weren't here to help.
They were here to take him.
---
⏳ Flashback Fragment: The Tower
Then it hit him—
A flicker of something that wasn't a memory, but wasn't a dream either.
A tall black tower, surrounded by red sand.
A voice: "You were never supposed to wake up."
A sigil: a spiral of flame within a triangle.
Leo blinked and it was gone.
---
> "You're not well, Leo," the woman said, stepping closer. "Come quietly. We'll make sure everything is… normalized."
Leo clenched his fists.
His blade was still clipped to his back. Training mode. Non-lethal. Useless.
But he wasn't just a blade fighter.
> If Rank 999 is real, he thought, then what else have they been hiding from me?
The lights in the hallway flickered.
So did his hands.
For a split second, they glowed with a strange, glitching energy — like the system itself was peeling around him.
> "Hostile TPS sync detected," the woman snapped. "Suppress him. Now!"
The enforcers lunged.
And Leo ran.
---
🧩 Chapter 2 Summary (So Far)
Leo is flagged as a system threat.
League agents try to contain him.
A mysterious image of a tower and a voice suggests hidden memories.
He escapes, his unstable powers beginning to surface.
For the first time, Leo is off the grid — no protection, no rank, no idea what's coming.
---