CHAPTER 5 — FIRST CLASS

---

The alarm sounded at 0600, a shrill electronic chirp that had probably been installed when the East Wing was built. Wei Hongzhan opened his eyes, counted to three, and sat up. The motion was smooth, automatic, fifteen years of military conditioning asserting itself over unfamiliar muscles.

Shen Liuqing was already awake, sitting on the edge of his bed with the stillness of someone who had learned to rise without noise as a survival mechanism. His dark hair was loose, falling past his shoulders, and he was looking at Wei Hongzhan with an expression that took three seconds to identify: concern.

"You didn't sleep," Shen Liuqing said. Not a question.

"I slept adequately." Wei Hongzhan swung his legs over the side of the bed, tested his weight on cold floorboards. "Four hours is sufficient for cognitive function."

"Four hours is—" Shen Liuqing stopped. Reconsidered. "The suppression. In the lab yesterday, you were holding your breath during the resonance exercises. I noticed."

Wei Hongzhan paused in the act of reaching for his uniform. Shen Liuqing had noticed. Of course he had noticed—this was someone who had spent eighteen months observing every micro-expression of a roommate, learning to read danger in the set of shoulders, the rhythm of breathing. Wei Hongzhan had been careless, or rather, he had been observed by someone trained to see carelessness as threat.

"It is a technique," he said carefully. "For managing... expectations."

Shen Liuqing's eyes narrowed, dark and assessing. "The machine yesterday. It should have registered something. Even E-class produces a baseline reading. You produced nothing."

"Nothing is also a reading."

"Nothing is impossible."

Wei Hongzhan held his gaze for four seconds, long enough to establish that he was not afraid, not hiding from Shen Liuqing specifically, but not explaining either. "I will be more careful today," he said. "Thank you for the observation."

Shen Liuqing blinked, as if surprised by the gratitude. "You'll exhaust yourself."

"Likely."

"You'll make mistakes if you're tired."

"Unlikely." Wei Hongzhan allowed a small curve at the corner of his mouth, not quite a smile. "I have had extensive practice functioning under suboptimal conditions. But I appreciate the concern."

They dressed in parallel silence, the rhythm of the room already established after only two days—Shen Liuqing faster, more efficient, Wei Hongzhan methodical, checking seams and badges with automatic precision. Yínchén stirred on the pillow, chirped, and climbed onto Wei Hongzhan's shoulder, settling into the hollow of his collarbone with the familiarity of a creature that had done this for years rather than days.

"Mecha Theory first," Shen Liuqing said, shouldering his bag. "East Wing lecture hall. Then Combat Fundamentals in the North Arena. Then Resonance Lab."

"I have memorized the schedule."

"I know." Shen Liuqing paused at the door, looked back. "The Combat Fundamentals instructor is Instructor Ma. He was a front-line assault pilot. He doesn't tolerate... anomalies."

Wei Hongzhan pinned his E-rank badge to his collar, adjusted it until it sat straight. "I will endeavor to be unremarkable."

"You're never unremarkable," Shen Liuqing said quietly, and opened the door.

---

The East Wing lecture hall smelled of dust and old sweat, tiered seating rising from a central demonstration platform where a middle-aged beta instructor was arranging holographic circuit diagrams. Wei Hongzhan filed in with the other E and D-class students, taking a seat in the back row where the lighting was poorest and the sightlines to the instructor's podium were obstructed by a structural column.

He had chosen this seat deliberately. In his experience, the back row of a classroom provided three advantages: visibility of all entrances, reduced probability of being called upon, and the psychological comfort of wall support.

The student beside him—a D-class alpha with nervous hands and a habit of tapping his stylus against his tablet—glanced over, did a double-take at the crimson hair, and leaned away slightly. Not hostile. Just uncertain. Wei Hongzhan filed the reaction and opened his notebook.

"In today's session," the instructor began, voice carrying the particular monotone of someone who had delivered this lecture approximately four hundred times, "we will review the basic principles of spiritual circuit routing in standard mecha frames. This material is foundational. You will be tested on it. You will build upon it for the next three years. If you do not understand it now, you will fail later."

The hologram flickered to life: a three-dimensional model of a mecha arm, copper resonance wire highlighted in glowing blue. The instructor began tracing the standard routing pattern, explaining junction points, explaining feedback loops, explaining the importance of maintaining consistent spiritual channel width to prevent energy turbulence.

Wei Hongzhan wrote notes.

His handwriting was different from the previous Bai Yaoling's—tighter, more angular, military abbreviations mixing with the standard technical terminology. He had taught this material to adults for fifteen years, had refined the curriculum based on battlefield data, had watched students die because they misunderstood concepts this instructor was explaining with the urgency of someone reading a grocery list.

Standard routing creates 12% efficiency loss at elbow joint, he wrote. Alternative: cross-channel bridge, reduces loss to 3%, increases response time by 0.4 seconds. Trade-off acceptable for close-combat configurations.

"Any questions?" the instructor asked, at the exact moment he always asked it, approximately three seconds before the end of the lecture period.

Wei Hongzhan did not raise his hand. He had no questions. He had corrections, but this was not the venue.

The student beside him—the nervous D-class—was staring at his notebook. "You wrote all that?" he whispered.

Wei Hongzhan closed the cover. "I type quickly."

"But he was just—" The student gestured at the fading hologram. "That was basic stuff. You wrote like... like you were correcting it."

"I have an active imagination."

The student looked at him for three seconds, opened his mouth, closed it, and gathered his bag with the speed of someone deciding this conversation was not worth the uncertainty. Wei Hongzhan watched him go, noting the reaction, filing it under anomalous competence observed, dismissed as eccentricity.

Good. Eccentricity was safer than capability.

---

The North Arena smelled different—sweat and ozone and the particular metallic tang of training weapons that had been used too hard for too long. It was a large space, high-ceilinged, the floor covered in impact-absorbing matting that still managed to feel unforgiving underfoot.

Wei Hongzhan lined up with the other first-years, E and D-class on the left, C and B in the center, A and above on the right. The hierarchy was visible in posture—the left side hunched, defensive, the right side relaxed, expansive. He stood in the back left corner, Yínchén hidden in his jacket pocket, and waited.

Instructor Ma entered through a side door, and the room went quiet.

He was not a large man—medium height, compact build, gray hair cut close to the skull—but he moved like someone who had never learned to waste motion. His eyes, scanning the assembled students, were the color of old steel, and they missed nothing.

"Combat Fundamentals," he said, voice carrying without apparent effort. "You think you know what this means. You think it means fighting. It does not. It means efficiency. It means economy. It means killing someone who wants to kill you before they realize the fight has started."

He walked down the center line, between the confident A-class and the uncertain E-class, and his footsteps were silent on the matting.

"Today, basic stances. I will demonstrate. You will replicate. I will correct. You will improve. Or you will not, and you will die in your first real engagement, and I will not remember your names."

He stopped at the front, turned, and assumed a stance—feet shoulder-width, knees bent, weight distributed forward, hands raised in a guard position that was simultaneously defensive and preparatory for strike. It was textbook. It was also, Wei Hongzhan noted, slightly outdated—the weight distribution favored stability over mobility, a style developed for older mecha models with slower response times.

"Replicate," Instructor Ma said.

The students moved. Wei Hongzhan moved with them, copying the stance with deliberate imperfection—knees not quite bent enough, weight slightly too far back, hands positioned a centimeter too high. Errors visible to a trained eye, invisible to a casual observer. The performance of someone trying hard but lacking innate talent.

Instructor Ma walked the lines, correcting with short, sharp gestures—a hand on a shoulder to lower it, a tap on a knee to bend it further. He moved through the C and B-class without pause, through the A-class with minimal adjustments. He reached the E and D-class section and slowed, his expression tightening with the particular frustration of someone who saw potential being wasted.

Then he reached Wei Hongzhan.

The instructor stopped. For three seconds, he did not move, did not speak, simply stood in front of Wei Hongzhan and looked at him with the focused attention of a diagnostic scanner encountering an unexpected reading.

"Again," Instructor Ma said quietly.

Wei Hongzhan adjusted his stance, maintaining the deliberate errors, the performance of effort without achievement.

"Again."

He repeated the stance. The instructor's eyes narrowed.

"Your weight distribution," Instructor Ma said, not loud enough for other students to hear, "is wrong. Specifically, it is wrong in a way that suggests you are correcting for a mecha model with gyroscopic stabilization rather than neural-linked balance systems. That correction is not taught until third year. It is not in any tutorial available to first-years."

Wei Hongzhan held the stance, held the instructor's gaze, and said: "I watched tutorials. Online. Old pilot recordings."

"Old pilot recordings," Instructor Ma repeated.

"Yes, sir."

"Which recordings?"

"Captain Lian Zhou's lecture series. From the border conflicts. He emphasized gyroscopic compensation for uneven terrain."

Instructor Ma stared at him. The name was correct—Lian Zhou had indeed taught that technique, in recordings that were technically public but practically obscure, buried in archival databases that few students would think to access. It was a plausible explanation. It was not a likely explanation.

"Your stance," the instructor said finally, "is textbook perfect despite your claim of self-instruction. Your muscle memory suggests a decade of training, not two days of video study."

"I practice extensively, sir."

"I see." Instructor Ma held his gaze for four seconds longer, then stepped back. "Adjust your weight forward. You are too far back."

"Yes, sir."

The instructor moved on. He did not write anything down. He did not call for additional testing. But Wei Hongzhan noted the way he paused at the door before exiting, the way he looked back once, the way his hand lingered on the frame as if considering whether to return.

He had been flagged. Not identified, not exposed, but marked as anomalous. The first week had barely begun.

---

The Resonance Lab was underground, accessible by a staircase that spiraled down through reinforced concrete, the walls humming with dampening fields that prevented spiritual energy from affecting the upper levels. It was cold, perpetually, the temperature maintained at precise levels to prevent equipment drift.

Wei Hongzhan stood in line with the other E-class students, waiting for his turn at the calibration machines. The devices were standard Academy issue—white cylindrical pods just large enough to accommodate a standing human, sensors embedded in the interior walls, readout screens mounted on the exterior.

The student ahead of him—a D-class beta—entered his pod. The door sealed. Thirty seconds later, the screen displayed: D-7, Stable, Within Expected Parameters.

The door opened. The student exited, looking relieved.

"Next," the lab technician called, not looking up from her tablet.

Wei Hongzhan entered the pod.

The interior was cramped, the walls cool against his shoulders. He positioned his feet on the marked plates, placed his hands on the sensor pads, and closed his eyes.

Suppress, he told himself. Contract. Fold.

It was not a technique taught at the Academy. It was not a technique taught anywhere, as far as he knew—it was something he had developed during his years as an instructor, when he had needed to demonstrate proper form to students without overwhelming them with his full output. The ability to compress his spiritual frequency, to fold it into a smaller space, to present a false reading to sensors designed to detect truth.

It was exhausting.

The machine hummed, sending gentle pulses through his body, searching for resonance. He felt it probing, testing, attempting to map the boundaries of his spiritual signature. And he felt himself resisting, compressing, maintaining the illusion of emptiness where there was actually... too much. Far too much.

The pod grew warm. His hands, on the sensor pads, began to sweat.

Hold, he thought. Three more seconds. Two. One.

The machine beeped. The screen, visible through a small interior window, displayed: E-0, Null Reading, Within Expected Parameters for Non-Resonant Designation.

The door opened.

Wei Hongzhan stepped out, walked to the registration desk, and signed his name with a hand that did not shake. The lab technician took his tablet, noted the reading, and waved him on without interest. Another E-class null. Nothing remarkable. Nothing to report.

He found a bench in the corner of the room, sat, and allowed himself thirty seconds of closed eyes. The suppression had lasted six minutes and forty-three seconds. His spiritual channels felt raw, scraped, the metaphysical equivalent of skin rubbed too hard with coarse cloth. He wanted water. He wanted sleep. He wanted to stop pretending to be less than he was.

"Host." Língquè's voice, private through their link, concerned despite the formal tone. "You suppressed your frequency for six hours."

Wei Hongzhan did not open his eyes. "Yes."

"That is not something an E-class student would know how to do."

"Correct."

"That is not something most SSS-class pilots know how to do."

"I am not most pilots."

Silence from the system. Then, quieter: "You are damaging your channels. Prolonged suppression causes micro-fractures in spiritual conduits. You are aware of this."

"I am aware."

"You are doing it anyway."

"I am completing the mission parameters." Wei Hongzhan opened his eyes, watched another student enter a calibration pod, watched the routine continue around him. "Exposure on day two would be premature. The calculation is simple: temporary channel damage versus permanent mission failure. The former is acceptable."

Língquè did not respond immediately. When the system's voice returned, there was something new in it—not quite respect, not quite resignation, but a recognition of parity. "You are not the first host to attempt this mission. You are the first to survive the second day without exposure or psychological collapse."

"Your previous hosts lacked relevant experience."

"Your previous experience was teaching, not subterfuge."

Wei Hongzhan allowed himself a small smile, tired and genuine. "Teaching is subterfuge. Every lesson is a performance, every explanation a translation of complex truth into digestible fiction. I have been pretending to be less knowledgeable than I am for fifteen years. This is simply... a more demanding classroom."

He stood, shouldered his bag, and walked toward the exit. His legs were steady. His hands were steady. Only the careful observer would notice the slight delay in his reaction time, the fractional hesitation before opening the door, the way he leaned against the wall of the corridor for one breath longer than necessary before continuing.

Shen Liuqing was waiting at the top of the stairs, reading a book in the afternoon light that filtered through a high window. He looked up as Wei Hongzhan emerged, and his eyes—dark, perceptive, too accustomed to reading danger—immediately identified the exhaustion.

"Resonance Lab," he said. It was not a question.

"Successful," Wei Hongzhan confirmed. "E-0. Null reading."

"You look like you fought a battle."

"I did. Against myself. I won, narrowly."

Shen Liuqing closed his book, tucked it under his arm, and fell into step beside him as they walked toward the East Wing. They did not touch. They did not need to. The parallel presence was sufficient, the knowledge that someone was watching, noticing, caring in the specific way of someone who understood what it cost to pretend.

"The suppression," Shen Liuqing said quietly, as they turned a corner into the dormitory corridor. "You can't maintain it indefinitely."

"No."

"You'll need to find another solution."

"Yes."

Shen Liuqing stopped at the door to Room 407, hand on the handle, looking at Wei Hongzhan with an expression that was still mostly unreadable but becoming less so—concern, curiosity, and something warmer that neither of them had words for yet.

"Tomorrow," Shen Liuqing said, "there is a mandatory assembly. All first-years. The student council president will speak."

Wei Hongzhan felt the weight of the letters in his inner pocket, the weight of the mission parameters in his mind, the weight of Jiang Mochen's name in the world he was learning to navigate.

"I am aware," he said.

"Be careful," Shen Liuqing said, and opened the door.

Inside, Yínchén chirped from the bed, and Língquè watched from the pillow with ancient eyes, and the afternoon light fell across two beds that were becoming familiar, becoming safe, becoming something that might eventually be called home.

Wei Hongzhan sat on his bed, removed his E-rank badge, and allowed himself to feel the full depth of his exhaustion.

Five days remained.

Author's Note:

Língquè: The host has sustained minor spiritual channel damage.

Wei Hongzhan: Noted.

Língquè: You will not seek treatment.

Wei Hongzhan: Treatment creates records. Records create patterns. Patterns create exposure.

Língquè: You are prioritizing mission security over physical integrity.

Wei Hongzhan: I am prioritizing mission success over comfort. There is a difference.

Língquè: Shen Liuqing noticed.

Wei Hongzhan: Yes.

Língquè: He did not report you.