Neo entered first, and the girl with the piercings ca in right after him.
The room was simpler than he had expected. Pale walls. A desk. A narrow bed pushed against one side. Cabinets with glass fronts. A monitor resting dark for now. It felt less like an office and more like the kind of place where people got opened up in quieter ways, through questions, scans, and notes written down by strangers who wanted pieces of you without spilling blood.
He had never been inside a clinic before. That kind of thing had cost money, and money had always belonged to sothing more urgent.
The older man inside turned toward him at once.
Cedric looked exactly like the sort of person who had spent his whole life among papers, formulas, and ideas that mattered more to him than sleep. His skin was a warm light brown, his hair white and abundant and going wherever it pleased, as if combing it had never risen high enough on his list of priorities. The mustache matched, thick and unruly. Nothing in him suggested physical force. Even so, the room tilted a little toward him the mont he spoke.
"Neo. Good to et you. I’m Cedric." He gave a small gesture toward himself, almost absentminded. "Psychologist, researcher, and one of the many fools trying to understand Breaches and the world we ended up with."
Neo answered with a slight nod. "Good morning. Nice to et you, Cedric."
Cedric’s mouth curved faintly. "Take a seat. No need to be tense."
Neo took the chair across from the desk.
The girl ca farther in and shut the door behind them, cutting off the hallway noise. Cedric gestured toward her next.
"This is Elara, my assistant, and a future scientist if the world doesn’t do sothing rude first."
Elara gave a brief, polite nod before she moved toward the side counter and picked up a tablet.
Cedric folded his hands lightly over one knee. "We’ll begin with a general check. Basic vitals, basic questions. Nothing dramatic. Take your shirt off, please."
Neo did.
The air felt cooler against his skin than he expected. He had more at on him now than he used to, mostly because food had stopped being a daily gamble, though the lines of his body still carried too much old hunger to let anyone mistake him for soone raised comfortably.
Elara ca over with a handful of small adhesive sensors and began placing them against his chest and sides. They were cold enough to make him tense on contact.
Cedric noticed.
"That bad?"
Neo glanced at the little disc stuck below his collarbone. "Cold."
"Good. You’re alive, then."
Cedric leaned back a little and began. "These will be simple. Just answer honestly — you’re not being graded. "
Neo said nothing, which Cedric seed to accept as permission to continue.
"First one. Does it weigh on you that not everyone ca out of the Breach?"
Neo answered without hesitation.
"No. It’s a risk everyone accepts when they enter one. People know what they’re stepping into."
Cedric watched him with mild interest, but it was Elara who spoke next while her fingers moved across the tablet.
"Have you heard sounds from the tower after coming out of it? tal. Screams. Movent. Anything repeating when nothing is there."
"No."
"Have you had trouble sleeping?"
"No."
"Any nausea, shaking, sudden anger, trouble telling where you are?"
Neo gave her a slight sideways glance. "I knew where I was."
Elara did not react. "That wasn’t what I asked."
Cedric huffed a small breath through his nose, amused enough to be noticed.
Neo answered anyway. "No shaking. No nausea."
Elara continued. "Did you feel the urge to attack anyone after you ca out?"
Neo thought of Leo Duplain standing there like the tower had not swallowed dozens of lives because of him.
"Yes."
Cedric’s brows rose a fraction. "And what stopped you?"
"Caras."
That made Elara lift her head for the first ti.
Cedric’s expression shifted as well, though not into disapproval. More like interest with its sleeves rolled up.
"You did not say morality."
"No."
"You did not say law."
"No."
"You said caras."
Neo t him without moving. "That was the reason."
Cedric gave a small nod, as though that answer pleased him more than a lie would have.
Elara went on.
"Do you feel guilt for surviving?"
"No."
"Do you feel anger?"
"Yes."
"At the Soul Beasts?"
"So."
"At the people?"
"More."
That got another note from her.
Cedric took over again, voice easy, almost conversational.
"When soone dies beside you, do you keep going because you don’t care, or because stopping would kill the rest?"
Neo answered in the sa flat tone he had used for most of them.
"Stopping makes more people die."
Cedric nodded again. "Good. One more. When fear closes around you, what do you beco? Careless, frozen, or focused?"
Neo did not need ti for that one either.
"Focused."
The questions continued after that. Elara asked whether he disliked being touched after the Breach. Cedric asked whether he trusted people less now than before. Neo answered all of it with the sa dry sincerity that left little room for interpretation. He did not soften anything. He also did not dress it up.
Eventually, Elara peeled the last sensor from his skin and stepped back to study the data.
Cedric watched the screen for a few breaths, folded one hand over the other, and gave his conclusion without drama.
"You’re fine, Neo. Strong-minded too. I imagine Zone 0 had sothing to do with that."
Neo’s attention narrowed on him at once.
He had never said where he ca from.
Cedric saw it the sa mont.
"Ah. Right. Sorry. Richards ntioned he helped a boy recently, and there are not many boys with your face walking out of places like that." He lifted one shoulder lightly. "I put the rest together."
Neo gave a small nod and let it pass.
Cedric did not stay on it long.
"Now for the part I actually enjoy." He leaned forward a little, the tired-scientist air never leaving him, though sothing brighter moved under it now. "As you know, there’s a great deal we do not understand. Not about Breaches, about why they close and why they appear. Not even about what happened to our world after the Great Change four hundred years ago, when the old Earth beca what we now call Atlas."
Elara had gone very quiet by then, tablet ready in both hands.
Cedric continued.
"So I’d like you to tell us what you saw. Anything that felt important. Anything unusual. Any detail that may help us understand why that Breach closed."
Elara raised one finger. "Wait."
She touched sothing on the tablet, adjusted the recording layout, checked a field, and nodded.
"Alright. Go ahead."
Cedric gave Neo a reassuring smile, or sothing close to one.
"Don’t worry. She’s only taking notes. We’re with State Soul Research. If you help us, you help everyone trying to survive the next one a little better."
That was the wrong thing to say.
Neo went quiet.
State Soul Research.
The na by itself made sothing in him pull tight.
’Oh no.’
He did not actually know what they were beyond rumors, half-heard stories, and the sort of ugly talk that collected around institutions dealing with souls, classes, and things people feared more than they understood. For all he knew, he might be judging them from old poison and street gossip.
Neo stayed there with his shirt still off, the last trace of cold from the sensors lingering on his skin, and weighed the room around him. Cedric did not feel hostile. Elara did not feel eager to cut him open and catalogue the pieces. The place itself had not done anything to him except ask questions and write answers down.
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