Chapter 175: An Unauthorised Mental Probe

Chapter 175: Chapter 175: An Unauthorised Mental Probe

I watched Giselle close the door.

The hydraulic seal cut off the last of the corridor noise and left only the low electrical buzz of the dampeners.

Suddenly the room felt smaller.

Laila Thornsworn and me.

No audience or competing feeds.

Just the teacher who had failed me in public for preferring my own anchors and the support who had just been caught with an Empress-line core under his tongue.

She walked slowly.

Each boot heel struck the floor with deliberate clarity, counting out the distance between the door and the second chair.

When she sat opposite me, the cuffs on my wrists suddenly felt heavier.

"Are you hurt?" she asked.

"No... ma’am."

Laila nodded once, as if the answer had been expected, and took out a slim holographic pad.

Light from the screen painted the underside of her jaw in blue.

"Your results are quite... unstable, Revien."

I didn’t trust my voice, so I only nodded.

"Are you always unstable?"

"Only when I push myself."

"And when is that?"

"When I am cornered."

"You didn’t train to keep it under control?"

"Oh, I trained."

The laugh that came out was short and humourless.

"I just didn’t expect twenty of them to jump me at the same time while my primary was being thrown at a rupture."

Laila’s eyes stayed on the pad, stylus moving in small, precise notes.

"Your class?"

Silence.

She didn’t push.

The question simply hung in the air like a blade that had not yet been permitted to fall.

After a moment, she set the stylus down and looked at me directly.

"You’ve forced yourself on one of our most promising candidates, Revien. Not only that—she is Empress Yelena’s daughter, and the Empress herself watched the test. Your punishment will not be lenient."

"I did what I had to do to win."

"And does winning require sexually assaulting a participant?"

"I was cornered. Desperation can make you do stupid things."

"Hmm."

Laila’s head tilted a fraction.

"You seem to be a good kisser. A lot of women kissed you today alone."

I let out a small, tired laugh.

"They are my supports. It isn’t weird."

She lowered the pad completely and studied me the way she had studied the biscuit—measuring weight, trajectory, the exact amount of force required to break something.

"You are lying about the kiss. Something about your ability enhances their power, correct?"

"Close enough."

"I noticed Lawless’s body brimming with energy after you kissed her. Yet Giselle’s output plummeted when you did the same thing. Why?"

"She wasn’t a support. Maybe something happened. The compatibility ratings are important, no?"

"Or you drained her."

Laila tapped one finger against the arm of her chair, once, twice, then stood.

She walked around the table until she was close enough that I had to look up to keep her face in view.

The suppressors on my wrists hummed louder, as if they could sense the shift in proximity.

"Your power is compressed right now, isn’t it?"

Her single index finger rose and touched my temple, light as a thought.

"Don’t mind me."

"Wai—"

The system screamed.

[External Mental Probe Detected]

[Source: Laila Thornsworn — SS-signature telepathic]

[Host defences: Compromised under restraint]

[Override Reacting]

[Warning: Core memory strata exposed]

My mind blanked.

One moment I was in the chair with cuffs biting my wrists and Laila’s finger against my skin.

The next I was standing in a dark hall that had no walls, no ceiling, no floor I could feel, only endless black and the simple fact of existing inside it.

In front of me stood a figure I had tried very hard to forget.

Black hair.

Brown eyes.

A plain white shirt that still carried the faint crease lines of a life that had ended under different lights.

My own face from before the transmigration.

My own body.

The version of me that had bills and a failing mother and a street he never should have stepped into.

"You..." I whispered.

The figure didn’t move at first.

It simply regarded me with the same tired brown eyes I used to see in every mirror.

Then, slowly, it tilted its head.

The brown bled out of the irises and was replaced by a thin, familiar yellow ring.

"Oh," it said, and the voice was mine and the Hunger at the same time.

"...You’re here."

The yellow brightened.

Something vast and patient looked out through the face that had once belonged only to me—

—and then a knock slammed through the darkness like a physical blow.

My consciousness was yanked backward so hard the dark hall shattered into white static.

I sucked in a breath that tasted of metal and recycled air and found myself back in the chair, cuffs still locked, heart trying to climb out of my throat.

Laila’s focus had wavered.

Her finger was no longer on my temple.

She had turned toward the door, expression tight with the first real surprise I had seen from her all day.

Jenna Everheart stood on the other side of the observation glass, one hand still raised from knocking, eyes locked on Laila with the particular fury of a guildmaster whose investment had just been touched without permission.

I sat there panting, the after-image of my own yellow-eyed face still burned across the inside of my skull.

What the fuck?

Laila recovered first.

She stepped back from me, smoothed the front of her coat, and spoke without looking away from Jenna.

"Guildmaster Everheart. The confinement interview is not yet concluded."

Jenna’s voice came through the intercom, flat and absolute.

"It is now. You placed an unauthorised mental probe on a contracted support under my house’s sponsorship while he was restrained and compromised. That is a breach of every inter-sector protocol the academy still pretends to respect. Open the door, or I will open it for you."

For a moment the two women simply stared at each other through the glass.

Then Laila exhaled through her nose, crossed to the panel, and released the lock.

The door slid open.

Jenna entered like she owned the temperature of the room.

She didn’t glance at the cuffs or the blood still drying on my jaw from Giselle’s nails.

She looked only at me, once, long enough to catalogue the yellow still fading from my eyes and the fact that I was still breathing.

"We’re leaving," she said.

"No, you’re not," a voice interrupted.