Chapter 20: Welcome to the Academy
Levi’s eyes blinked sluggishly against the harsh, fluorescent light that hovered overhead. The cold metal of the table beneath him pressed into his back, his wrists and ankles locked in restraints that hummed faintly with some kind of dampening energy. It kept his powers in check. It kept him still.
But it didn’t matter.
He had been here for days—maybe weeks—though time had lost meaning in this place. He didn’t bother counting the hours. There was nothing to mark the passing of time except the faint buzz of the lights above him and the muted whispers of the scientists as they worked around him.
They never really spoke to him. He was just a specimen, a test subject—a thing to be poked and prodded, measured and recorded.
Subject L-4. That was what they called him. Not Levi. Not even Blackwell. Just L-4, as if his identity had been scrubbed clean along with the dried blood they occasionally found on his skin.
He watched the ceiling, his vision swimming in the blinding light, and felt the cold bite of another needle sliding into his arm. He didn’t flinch. It wasn’t worth the effort. The surge of emotion that followed was almost immediate—artificial panic flooded his veins, making his heart race, his breath hitch in his throat.
It wasn’t real, though. He knew that. He could feel the edges of it, the way it scratched at the surface of his mind like a bad dream, but it never dug deeper than that. It was just stimulus, something the scientists used to see how far they could push him.
Levi let out a slow breath, staring up at the light, feeling the faint tremor of fear that didn’t belong to him. He knew it wasn’t real, and yet it was there, lurking in his mind, gnawing at the edges of his thoughts.
“Increase the dosage.”
The voice was cold, detached, coming from one of the scientists he had long since stopped trying to distinguish. They all sounded the same to him—clinical, uncaring, like they were discussing the weather rather than running tests on him.
Levi felt the pressure in his chest tighten as they injected more of the artificial fear into him. His heart pounded, his breathing quickened, his muscles tensed. His body was reacting as it should, but his mind remained numb. Distant.
He should be terrified. He should be angry. But he wasn’t.
All he could feel was a faint, detached curiosity. Why don’t I feel anything real? That was the question that lingered in his mind, like a splinter he couldn’t pull free. After everything that had happened—the explosion, the deaths, the Academy’s brutal containment—why was he so empty?
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He was supposed to be an empath, wasn’t he? The one who felt everything? But ever since Galewood, it was like the switch had been flipped off. He still sensed emotions, could still manipulate them when he wanted, but it was like observing something from a distance. He was outside himself, watching his own reactions like a spectator.
The scientists didn’t seem to care about that, though. They weren’t interested in what he was thinking or feeling. They just wanted to know how far they could push him before something broke.
Levi’s body jerked slightly as the next wave of artificial emotions slammed into him—panic and pain, this time. He could feel his heart rate spike again, his breath coming in shallow gasps. His fingers twitched against the restraints, but his mind remained disconnected, floating somewhere above the chaos his body was enduring.
He blinked slowly, his red eyes tracing the ceiling. It was the only thing he had to look at during these sessions. The blinding light, the smooth steel walls, and the faint reflections of the scientists moving around him. He could hear them—murmurs, the occasional scratch of a pen against a clipboard—but they were never directed at him.
They were watching him die, over and over again, in a way. Watching his body react to stimuli, his heart rate spike, his breathing falter, and then… nothing.
Levi wondered how long they’d keep pushing. He had already been killed once—several times, in fact—and he’d come back every time. That’s what they were studying, after all. Why he kept coming back.
Sometimes they’d inject him with something to stop his heart, just to watch him restart. They’d note the exact moment his eyes opened again, the exact time his body responded. He could see them, just barely, through the fog of his mind as they scribbled their observations.
But even then, through the haze of pain and artificial emotions, Levi still didn’t feel anything real.
Eventually, the session ended. The emotions they had injected into him ebbed away, leaving him in the same empty, silent place he always returned to. The restraints around his wrists and ankles loosened, and the steel table hummed as it tilted upright, forcing him to stand on shaky legs.
The scientists didn’t look at him as they filed out of the room, already muttering to themselves about the results, about the next session. They didn’t care if he could stand, didn’t care if he was barely functioning after what they had done. They would be back tomorrow. Or whenever they wanted.
Levi stood there, his body aching, the faint chill of the room seeping into his bones. He lifted one hand to rub his wrist where the restraints had left red marks. His skin was pale, almost translucent in the harsh light, but it didn’t matter. It would heal, just like everything else.
He didn’t bother thinking about why he was here anymore. He knew why. The Academy wanted to study him, to figure out what made him tick, what made him different from the others. And they were relentless.
But even as they tried, even as they pushed him further each day, Levi’s mind remained untouched by their efforts. After all… they couldn’t break something that was already broken.
They led him back to his cell—a small, barren room with nothing but a slab of metal for a bed and a single light overhead. The walls were thick, reinforced steel, and there were no windows. Just containment.
Levi sat on the edge of the slab, staring at the wall in front of him, his thoughts drifting back to Jake. He hadn’t seen him since they were taken. Didn’t know if he was alive, if he was being put through the same hell. Probably. It wouldn’t surprise Levi.
He found it almost ironic. After everything that had happened, after dying, coming back to a land of death and destruction most likely due to jake, after feeling the emotions of hundreds of thousands of people die all at once, Levi wasn’t angry. Not at Jake. Not at anyone.
He should be, shouldn’t he? But he wasn’t. There was nothing but curiosity now. How did I survive? That was the real question. He had been shot, even felt the searing pain of the bullet, and yet he was alive. Alive after that, alive after a massive explosion. Why?
No one had explained it to him, least of all the Academy. And maybe they didn’t know either.
Levi lay back on the slab, staring up at the ceiling, the light buzzing faintly above him. His red eyes glowed softly in the darkness, but there was no one there to see it. No one but him.
It was strange, he thought, to feel so disconnected from everything. His powers still worked—he could sense the emotions of the guards, the scientists, even through the walls of his cell—but they didn’t reach him. They were like shadows, flickering at the edge of his mind, but they never touched him.
He wondered how long it would be.
But that thought, too, was distant. Faint. Unimportant.
For now, there was just silence.