"I'm telling you, this is yours," Marcus said, holding up a plain black sock like evidence in court. "Mine have the little gray stripe."
The laundry room smelled of hot cotton and bleach, and for once the machines weren't the loudest thing in the room. A girl near the window was laughing at something on her phone. Real laughter, not the careful kind. Someone else was complaining about the detergent pods leaving residue. For five minutes, nobody checked their Thorne Score. Nobody glanced at the door. Kai had learned to love this room for exactly that reason. The dead zone. The only place the mountain forgot to watch.
Two third-years, Marcus and Priya, were arguing over a sock that had somehow ended up in the wrong basket.
Priya snatched it. "Your socks are sad and basic. Mine have personality."
"Personality? They're socks."
A couple other students laughed from the folding tables. Someone shouted, "Just burn it and move on!" The room felt strangely light, shoulders looser, voices louder, the usual Apex competitiveness dialed down a notch.
Kai stood at his own station, pulling warm shirts from the dryer. In here, people almost looked human. Just tired kids folding clothes and pretending for five minutes that they weren't being measured every second of the day.
Kai glanced up. Dylan was already watching him. Kai held eye contact for a second longer than necessary. Dylan looked away first. But his hand went to his pocket.
Kai reached for another shirt. A folded note landed in his basket.
He didn't react. He kept pulling clothes out one at a time.
The boy who had dropped it was already at the far machine, back turned, feeding sheets into the drum like nothing had happened. Kai clocked him, seventeen, maybe eighteen, quiet type, always sat at the back of the simulation room and never volunteered answers. He'd been at Apex longer than Kai. That was all Kai knew about him.
He palmed the note on the way out.
Back in the corridor he didn't open it immediately. He waited until the bathroom, second stall, door locked. Then he unfolded it.
The paper was small. The handwriting was tight. The writer had made it deliberately small to fit as much as possible into as little space as possible.
You are being profiled. Every suggestion you make in class goes directly to the Council. You are not a student. You are a prototype. Get out before the profiling phase ends. Dylan
Kai read it twice. He stood at the sink and ran the cold water and looked at himself in the mirror for a long moment.
Prototype. Not the first time he'd heard that framing. Thorne had danced around it in the auditorium. Voss had circled it without landing on the word directly. But seeing it written down by someone who had been here longer made it land differently than it had coming from the people running the program.
He almost flushed the note. Stopped himself. Folded it small and tucked it deep into his sock instead.
Back in the corridor he tried to walk normal. Lena was already leaning against the wall outside his door, arms crossed in that particular way she did when she was pretending to be casual.
"You went to laundry at an odd time," she said.
"Ran out of shirts."
"You had a clean shirt on yesterday."
Kai met her eyes. "You're keeping track of my shirts?"
She didn't smile. "I keep track of everything. You know that." She pushed off the wall and fell into step beside him, voice dropping. "Someone passed you something."
Kai didn't answer.
"I'm not asking you to confirm it," Lena said. "I'm telling you I saw it. Which means if I saw it, someone else might have."
"Or you're the someone else."
She stopped walking. Turned to face him fully. "What was that?"
Kai studied her. "It was a note."
She was quiet for a moment.
"You're the only person in this building who actually sees what it does to people." She paused. "That's either the most dangerous thing about you or the only thing worth keeping." Another pause, shorter. "I haven't decided which."
Kai kept his voice neutral. "That almost sounds like you care."
"Don't flatter yourself." But something in her jaw had shifted slightly. "Just don't trust whoever passed you that note. Not because they're lying. Because if they were brave enough to pass it, they're already on someone's list."
"That's a lot of words for someone who hasn't decided anything," Kai said.
Lena's eyes narrowed. "You think I like being this way? Watching everyone? Calculating?"
"I think you're good at it."
She stared at him. "That's not an answer."
"Neither was yours." He stepped past her.
She didn't move. He felt her eyes on his back the whole walk to his door.
He went back to the laundry room that evening with the intention of finding Dylan. Of asking one question — how long do I have?
The room was empty.
He checked the sign-in log on the door panel, the one that tracked which student ID had accessed which room. Dylan's ID had last logged the laundry room at 14:32. It was now 19:47.
Kai asked Marcus at dinner, casual, whether he'd seen the quiet boy from the back of the simulation room.
Marcus shrugged. "Reassigned, I think. Heard he was moving to a different track. Happens sometimes."
"When?"
"This afternoon sometime." Marcus was already looking at his food. "Didn't really know him. Quiet guy."
Kai set his fork down.
This afternoon. Same afternoon the note had landed in his laundry basket. Same afternoon Lena had clocked the exchange from a corridor away. Same afternoon Kai had stood at a bathroom mirror reading the word prototype in handwriting made deliberately small.
He picked his fork back up and finished his food and kept his face completely still.
Dylan was already gone.
And Kai hadn't even learned his last name.