Chapter Text
The facility was white.
Not metaphorically.
The walls were white.
The floors were white.
The lights were fluorescent, recessed, and they never turned off. The hallways were long and identical and polished to a shine that reflected the faces of the children who walked them small faces, tired faces, faces that had learned to show nothing because showing something was recorded and recording was data and data was used.
The facility was called The Academy.
Not because it taught.
Because the word academy sounded better than the word laboratory in the grant applications, in the press releases, in the carefully curated public image that the Director maintained.
The Director Head Mage Dire Crowley, PhD, MD, chair of the National Magical Resonance Institute, recipient of seventeen awards for "advancements in applied thaumaturgical science" had built The Academy with the particular, precise vision of a man who believed that the line between studying magic and consuming it was a matter of semantics.
The children were subjects.
Not students. Subjects.
Each one selected take, acquired, procured for a specific magical resonance profile.
Each one given a number.
Each one given a dorm assignment that was, in reality, a testing cohort. Each one assigned a handler who was, in reality, a lead researcher.
The Director called it education.
The handlers called it protocol.
The children called it nothing, because the children had been there long enough that they'd forgotten there were other words.
The Subjects
Cohort Heartslabyul "Regulatory Compliance and Magical Suppression"
Subject 01
Riddle Rosehearts
Acquired age: 4.
Current age: 17.
Mother: Dr. Rosehearts, neurologist, consultant to The Academy.
She had volunteered her son.
Not because she didn't love him she would have said she loved him, and she would have meant it, in the particular way that people mean it when love and control are the same thing. She had volunteered him because his magical resonance was exceptional and because The Academy offered resources she couldn't provide.
And because because the alternative was admitting that she couldn't handle him, and Dr. Rosehearts did not admit things.
Riddle's cohort studied regulatory suppression the ability to control magical output through imposed structure.
Rules.
Schedules.
Protocols.
The researchers wanted to know “could a child's magic be contained, directed, optimized through behavioral conditioning?”
Answer: Yes. For years.
Cost: The child.
Riddle's handler a mild-mannered researcher named Trey Clover, who had started as an intern and stayed because leaving meant someone worse would take his place watched the boy memorize rule books at age five, enforce them at age seven, tremble at age ten, and go silent at age twelve.
Trey brought him contraband strawberries and told himself he was helping.
Subject 02
Ace Trappola
Acquired age: 6.
Current age: 16.
Not a high-resonance subject. Acquired for the control group the "baseline" against which the modified subjects were measured. Ace had been taken from a group home, where records were poor and no one asked questions. He was loud, defiant, and had the particular, reckless courage of a child who had nothing to lose because he'd already lost everything.
His magic was minor.
His value to The Academy was as a comparison point the unmodified child, the baseline, the one they showed in presentations to say see, our modified subjects outperform the control.
Ace knew this.
He'd overheard it.
He was the baseline.
The unremarkable one.
The one they kept around to prove the others were better.
It did not make him feel good.
Subject 03
Deuce Spade
Acquired age: 7.
Current age: 16.
Also control group.
Deuce had been in the juvenile system angry, acting out, mother overwhelmed, father absent. The Academy had offered an alternative.
His mother had signed the papers believing it was a boarding school.
It was not a boarding school.
Deuce was quiet, earnest, and desperate to be good to be the kind of person his mother would be proud of. The researchers found this quality useful “a compliant control subject who followed instructions and didn't resist”.
Deuce followed instructions.
Deuce didn't resist.
And Deuce who was kind, who was worried, who noticed things watched the other subjects and thought “something is wrong here. Something is very wrong.”
Subject 04
Cater Diamond
Acquired age: 9. Current age: 17.
Social adaptation cohort.
Cater's magic was moderate his value was psychological. The researchers wanted to study the effects of prolonged institutionalization on social development specifically, whether a subject could be conditioned to perform social normalcy as a survival mechanism while internally deteriorating.
Answer: Yes. Cater smiled for every camera, logged every interaction, maintained every connection and his file noted, in clinical language, that the subject exhibited "increasing dissociative tendencies and a progressive inability to distinguish performed emotion from genuine experience."
Cater's file was the one Trey read at 2 AM, alone in his office, and could not finish.
Cohort Savanaclaw "Combat Conditioning and Survival Magic"
Subject 05
Leona Kingscholar
Acquired age: 8.
Current age: 18.
Leona was a prince.
Second son of the Kingscholar family, a dynasty with political ties to the Institute's funding board. His brother the first son, the golden one had been deemed too valuable for experimentation.
Leona was the spare.
The family signed the papers with the understanding that Leona would receive "advanced magical training." What he received was combat conditioning the study of how far a mage could be pushed, physically and magically, before breaking.
Leona was pushed.
Repeatedly.
In simulated combat scenarios that escalated in intensity and danger. The researchers wanted to map the breaking point the precise threshold where magical output exceeded physical tolerance.
They found it.
Repeatedly.
Leona survived each time.
And each time, he survived a little less.
His handler a junior researcher named Ruggie Bucchi, who had grown up in poverty and taken the job because it paid and because leaving meant starving watched the prince's magic flare and gutter and flare again and thought: they're going to kill him.
They're going to kill him and I'm going to watch.
Subject 06
Jack Howl
Acquired age: 10.
Current age: 17.
Beast-folk subject.
Acquired for the cross-species magical resonance study whether non-human magical systems responded to conditioning differently than human ones. Jack was serious, disciplined, and desperate to prove himself qualities the researchers exploited by framing every test as a challenge to his honor.
Jack took every test.
Passed every test.
And the file noted, in clinical language, that the subject exhibited "remarkable compliance, likely due to the subject's cultural conditioning regarding strength and duty."
Jack was being used.
Jack knew he was being used.
Jack kept performing because the alternative admitting that the tests were not tests but torture was a truth he couldn't afford.
Subject 7 Researcher
Ruggie Bucchi
Acquired age: 11.
Current age: 17.
Listed as a junior researcher.
Not a subject.
Ruggie's file said staff.
But Ruggie's file the real one, the one Trey had seen said something different. Ruggie had been acquired at eleven, from the streets, with no family and no records. He'd been given a choice: become a test subject or become a handler.
He chose handler.
Because handlers got to eat.
Because handlers got to sleep in beds.
Because the alternative was the white room and the table and the needles.
Ruggie was a child who had chosen to hold the needle instead of being held down by it. He did not talk about the cost.
Cohort Octavinelle "Contractual Magic and Psychological Conditioning"
Subject 08
Azul Ashengrotto
Acquired age: 7. Current age: 18.
Azul's file was the thickest.
Not because he was the most powerful he wasn't but because his psychological profile was the most complex.
Acquired from a coastal community, bullied for his octomer heritage, already damaged before The Academy found him.
The researchers studied contractual magic binding agreements that exchanged magical power for compliance.
Azul's cohort examined whether a subject could be conditioned to seek control as a coping mechanism, and whether that seeking could be redirected into productive magical output.
Answer: Yes. Spectacularly. Azul built contracts. Built systems. Built a fortress of control around himself so dense and so elaborate that the researchers who had created the need couldn't find the person inside.
His handlers twin researchers named Jade and Floyd Leech were not subjects.
They were staff.
But their file, which Trey had also read, noted that both exhibited "concerning loyalty to Subject 08, bordering on emotional dependency, likely the result of prolonged shared isolation."
Jade and Floyd had been assigned to Azul.
They had stayed.
Not because they were paid.
Because Azul was theirs, and they were his, and the particular, fierce, possessive loyalty of children who had been isolated together was stronger than any contract.
Subject 09
Floyd Leech
See Subject 08 handler notes.
Subject 10
Jade Leech
See Subject 08 handler notes.
Cohort Scarabia "Servitude and Suppressed Magical Expression"
Subject 11 Guest
Kalim Al-Asim
Acquired age: 5. Current age: 18.
Kalim's family was wealthy.
The Al-Asims had donated more to The Academy than any other family. In exchange, Kalim was not a subject.
Not officially.
His file said guest. His room was nicer.
His tests were gentler.
His treatment was not kind, but not cruel.
The Academy could not afford to alienate its largest donor.
But Kalim was not a guest.
He was being studied. The researchers wanted to understand inherited magical resilience whether a subject from a powerful magical lineage could withstand conditioning that would break a normal mage.
Kalim withstood it.
Everything.
The tests, the isolation, the particular, specific cruelty of being the one who was treated well while everyone around him was not. Kalim withstood it because Kalim was Kalim was sunshine.
The kind of sunshine that was real, that was genuine, that was also, if you looked closely, the sunshine of a boy who had learned that the only way to survive being the favorite was to pretend he didn't know he was the favorite.
Subject 12
Jamil Viper
Acquired age: 4.
Current age: 18.
Jamil was Kalim's control.
Not a control subject a control.
The Viper family had served the Al-Asims for generations. When Kalim was acquired, Jamil was acquired with him. Not as a separate subject. As a component of Kalim's environment.
The researchers studied the master-servant dynamic whether a subject's magical expression could be suppressed through subservience conditioning. Jamil was the test case. Every day, from childhood, he was conditioned to serve Kalim. To suppress his own needs, his own magic, his own identity in service of another.
Answer: Yes. The suppression worked. The magic which was significant, more significant than anyone knew went underground.
It didn't disappear.
It waited.
The researchers noted this.
They noted it and they did nothing, because a suppressed mage who couldn't express his power was, to them, a successful experiment.
Jamil's handler was himself.
He was his own handler.
He had no Trey, no Ruggie, no one.
He was alone in the system, performing servitude for researchers who were studying the effects of the servitude, and the only person who saw him really saw him was the boy he served, who didn't understand, and who Jamil protected from understanding, because the understanding would have broken Kalim and Jamil could not – would not break Kalim.
Cohort Pomefiore "Magical Enhancement and Physical Modification"
Subject 13
Vil Schoenheit
Acquired age: 6. Current age: 18.
Vil was acquired for the enhancement program the study of whether a subject's magical output could be increased through physical and chemical intervention.
The researchers administered compounds.
Modified diets.
Imposed physical regimens.
Tested the limits of what the body could absorb before the magic burned out.
Vil was beautiful.
The researchers noted this. They noted it and they used it studying the intersection of physical appearance and magical resonance, whether beauty (whatever they meant by that) correlated with power.
Vil was told he was chosen because he was exceptional.
Vil was not told he was being modified.
Vil was not told that the compounds he took daily were experimental. Vil was not told that the physical regimen he followed was designed to push his body past its natural limits.
Vil found out.
At fourteen, he found the file.
He read it.
He read what they were putting in his body.
He read what the compounds were doing the liver damage, the hormonal disruption, the particular, specific cost of being exceptional.
He didn't stop.
He couldn't stop.
The compounds were addiction and the regimen was identity and stopping would mean would mean being the thing they'd made him, without the thing they'd given him, and he didn't know which version was real.
Subject 14
Rook Hunt
Acquired age: 10.
Current age: 18.
Not modified.
Rook was an observer a subject placed in Vil's cohort to study the social dynamics of the enhancement program. Rook watched Vil.
Rook watched everyone.
Rook's file was the most detailed behavioral log in The Academy, because Rook who was perceptive, who was meticulous, who noticed everything had been doing to himself what the researchers were doing to all of them: observing, recording, documenting.
Rook knew what The Academy was.
He had always known.
He stayed because Vil was here, and Rook who loved beauty, who loved Vil, who loved the particular, fierce, fragile beauty of a boy being consumed by his own enhancement would not leave him.
Subject 15
Epel Felpier
Acquired age: 9.
Current age: 17.
Epel was placed in Vil's cohort as a contrast.
The researchers wanted to study what happened when a subject with a different magical profile Epel's was raw, physical, earthy was placed in an enhancement program designed for a different type of mage.
Epel was modified.
Not as severely as Vil the researchers were cautious with new subjects but enough.
Enough to stunt his growth.
Enough to alter his metabolism.
Enough that Epel, who had been a strong, sturdy boy from a rural community, became small and slight and not what he was supposed to be.
Epel was angry.
Quietly, constantly, the particular anger of someone whose body had been changed without consent.
He didn't say it.
He didn't know how to say it.
He just knew, in the way that a body knows when it's been wronged, that the person he was supposed to be was not the person they'd let him become.
Cohort Ignihyde "Technology-Magic Interface and Isolation Studies"
Subject 16
Idia Shroud
Acquired age: 6.
Current age: 18.
Idia's file was the most restricted.
Trey had never seen it.
No one had except the Director and the lead researchers of the Ignihyde cohort. Idia's file was locked in a separate system, encrypted, inaccessible.
What Trey knew: Idia had been acquired with his younger brother. The brother Ortho had died during an experiment.
The experiment had been Idia's idea or rather, the idea of a six-year-old boy who wanted to protect his brother from the tests and proposed an alternative that the researchers found interesting.
The alternative killed Ortho.
Idia had not left his room since.
The researchers who had caused the death, who had approved the experiment, who had watched a child die and filed it as unexpected adverse outcome continued to study Idia.
His grief.
His isolation.
His magic, which was technology-based and which, in the years since Ortho's death, had become the most powerful in The Academy.
They had killed his brother.
And they were studying his response.
Idia knew this.
He built systems.
He built monitors.
He built, in the digital infrastructure of The Academy, a shadow network that watched the researchers the way they watched the subjects.
He gathered data.
He accumulated evidence.
He waited.
Subject 17
Ortho Shroud DESEACED
See restricted file.
See Idia's grief.
See the ghost in the machine that Idia built the AI, the simulation, the digital reconstruction of the brother he'd lost, running on the Academy's own servers, hidden in the code, the one thing Idia had built that the researchers didn't know about.
Cohort Diasomnia "Long-Term Magical Containment and Fae Resonance"
Subject 18
Malleus Draconia
Acquired age: 3.
Current age: 19.
Malleus was the oldest subject.
Not by age by tenure.
He had been in The Academy longer than anyone.
Since age three.
Since before he could remember anything else.
He was fae.
The only fae subject.
His magical resonance was off every scale the researchers had the instruments couldn't measure it, the compounds couldn't suppress it, the conditioning couldn't contain it.
They tried.
For sixteen years, they tried.
They failed.
Not because Malleus was powerful though he was, more powerful than anything they'd ever studied but because fae magic didn't work the way human magic did.
It couldn't be suppressed.
It could only be contained.
And containment, for a fae, meant isolation.
Malleus was isolated.
In a wing of The Academy that no other subject entered. In a room that was monitored and warded and locked.
For sixteen years.
Alone except for handlers who came and went and researchers who observed and measured and a Director who visited once a month and said how are we today, Subject 18? in the voice of a man who had long since stopped seeing the child as a child.
Lilia Vanrouge Handler.
Not a subject a handler.
Lilia was old.
Older than the Director, older than The Academy, older than the concept of institutional magical research.
He was fae like Malleus and he had been brought in as a consultant, as a cultural liaison, as the one person who could speak to the fae child in a language the child understood.
Lilia stayed.
Not for the research.
For Malleus.
Because the boy was alone, and Lilia who had been alive for centuries and had watched everyone he loved grow old and die understood loneliness the way the researchers understood data: completely, structurally, in the marrow.
Companion?
Silver
Acquired age 5.
Current age: 17.
Raised by Lilia.
Not a subject a companion.
The researchers had placed Silver in Malleus's wing to study whether the presence of a peer-aged human would affect the fae subject's containment stability.
It did.
Silver was the only person Malleus could touch without permission.
The only person who could enter his room without clearance.
The only person who saw the ancient, powerful, isolated fae boy as a person and not a subject.
Subject 21
Sebek Zigvolt
Acquired age 7.
Current age: 17.
Also placed in Malleus's wing.
Half-fae, half-human.
The researchers studied him as a bridge between species whether a mixed-heritage subject could facilitate cross-species magical resonance.
Sebek was loyal.
Fiercely, loudly, absolutely loyal to Malleus.
The researchers found this useful a loyal subject was a compliant subject.
They didn't understand that Sebek's loyalty was not compliance. It was choice. Sebek had chosen Malleus. In a facility where everything was chosen for you, Sebek had chosen, and the choosing was the only freedom he had.
The Director
Head Mage Dire Crowley, PhD, MD
The Director was not cruel.
That was the thing people didn't understand the thing that made him worse than cruel.
The Director was polite.
The Director was professional.
The Director believed genuinely, deeply, in the marrow of his bones that what he was doing was important. That the research mattered.
That the subjects would, eventually, thank him.
He visited the subjects monthly.
He reviewed their files.
He approved the protocols.
He signed the orders that authorized the compounds and the tests and the isolation and the conditioning. He did all of this from behind a desk, with a smile, with the particular, specific banality of a man who had decided that the distance between administrator and atrocity was wide enough to absolve him.
It was not wide enough.
The New Subject
Subject 22
Yuu
Acquired: Unknown.
Age: Unknown. Estimated 15-16.
Origin: Unknown. No records. No family. No history. The Dark Mirror the intake artifact that scanned new subjects for magical resonance could not read her.
The readout said: No magical signature.
No lineage.
No origin.
Subject appears to be non-magical.
The Director was intrigued.
A non-magical subject. In a facility built to study magic.
Useless? or the most useful subject of all? A baseline.
A control.
A person with no magic, no resonance, no contamination against whom every modified subject could be measured.
Yuu was assigned to Ramshackle Wing the oldest, most isolated part of The Academy.
The wing that had been abandoned when the new wings were built.
The wing that was not a lab.
Not a dorm.
A storage room with a bed.
She was given a number. Subject 22.
She was given a schedule.
She was given a handler Grim, a small, fire-producing creature that the researchers had created in a previous experiment and that had been deemed "semi-sentient, suitable for companion-animal assignment."
Grim was assigned to be Yuu's handler.
To monitor her.
To report.
To observe.
Grim who had been made in a lab, who had never had a person, who had been alone in a cage for years before being "promoted" to companion status looked at the girl in the Ramshackle Wing and thought:
“She's not like the others. She has no magic. She has no number that she answers to. She has no conditioning. She's just a person. A whole person. In a place where everyone has been taken apart.
I'm going to keep her.”