November 8, 2105

  On the day he turned twenty—a full legal adult—Bharat Nazar arrived at Hendrik Verwoerd Hospital in the Southern Suburb Administrative District. Dressed in a carefully pressed suit, he sat among the other applicants, shoulders tense, breath shallow. Before him remained the final test that would determine the trajectory of his life.

  The genetic test.

  Officially, it was called CAIT—Capetown Asset Ingenuity Test. In crude, unvarnished terms, it was the examination that decided whether a person was fit to be entrusted with the half-ruined skeleton of this city and make something useful out of it. In other words: a qualification for land stewardship.

  Not that Bharat had ever wasted much thought on what any of it truly meant. Terminology like that was for the upper strata, the kind of language they used to steer and pacify the lower classes.

  “Candidate 1488, please step forward.”

  At the sound of his number, Bharat swallowed the knot of fear in his throat and rose. He adjusted his tie once more before stepping ahead. He was slightly shorter than most men—dangerously so in a society where the average already hovered at Beta grade. A single misclassification could reduce an entire life to dust.

  “Stay strong, Candidate 1488. Nothing more, nothing less—just aim for Beta.”

  Bharat lifted his head.

  Light coffee-colored skin. A sharp nose. A slender frame, just a little taller than him.

  His childhood friend, Olivia Winslet.

  Olivia pointed toward the examination room.

  “…Would you please proceed over there?”

  Bharat stared at her in silence for a moment, then lowered his head, face reddening, and entered the room.

  Inside, everything was unfamiliar.

  A massive X-ray apparatus lined the wall.

  Shelves of meticulously arranged metallic instruments gleamed under sterile light.

  At the center lay a long examination bed. Beside it stood a doctor who greeted him with polite warmth—a rare sight in this hospital, and unmistakably of Chinese descent.

  “…First time seeing facilities like this, I presume? It must feel alien. I understand. That is precisely why you were invited here. Hendrik Verwoerd Hospital boasts the finest equipment in the entire South Suburb sector. A perfect opportunity to realize Pareto’s principle. Please, lie down.”

  Bharat hesitated, studying the bed, then removed his suit jacket and placed it neatly on the desk before climbing onto it—face down.

  “…You’re lying the wrong way, patient.”

  Flustered, Bharat quickly turned over onto his back.

  The doctor began a series of precise examinations. A cranial CT scan. Restraints secured around his arms. A needle slid into an exposed vein. At the sting, Bharat reflexively shut his eyes tight.

  The scanner emitted a sequence of soft clicks, as if something had been detected.

  Then the doctor’s expression shifted—subtle, apologetic. He looked away for a brief moment before speaking.

  “…Patient. Would you like to hear the good news first, or the bad?”

  Bharat blinked slowly. Anxiety crept into his chest as he parted his lips.

  “…The good news first, please. I… need time to prepare myself for the bad.”

  The doctor’s professional smile faded, replaced by a quiet, almost pitying gaze.

  “…You’ve placed within the top twenty percent of our city.”

  Thud.

  Bharat’s heart lurched.

  Top twenty percent.

  In Cape Town, those words carried only two meanings.

  First: the upper echelons. The Deus class—roughly one percent of the population, inheritors of nearly twenty-five percent of the city’s land.

  Then Prime—five percent of the population, granted fifteen percent of the land.

  And Alpha—fourteen percent, holding another ten percent.

  They were the only ones in this decaying, putrefying metropolis who did not have to cultivate and consume its rot. Together, they constituted the sacred top twenty percent.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  But for him to belong there?

  Impossible.

  Next came Beta: sixty percent of the population, dividing the remaining half of the land among themselves. Even then, at least one could secure a place to rest one’s body.

  And after that—

  “…Omega. I’m… Omega, right, doctor? That’s the bad news, isn’t it?”

  Bharat’s voice was calm now, almost resigned.

  The doctor met his gaze directly, as though refusing to avert his eyes.

  “…Yes. Omega. From this point forward, you will be incapable of owning real estate. The transaction interface will not even display property listings for you. Well… you are technically within the top twenty percent, aren’t you? Ha… ha… ah. No one ever laughs at that. Still, I try to lighten the mood…”

  Bharat glanced past the curtain toward the ward’s waiting area.

  Olivia.

  This would be the last time he ever saw her.

  “…Let me see her once. Just once. I want to remember her with my own eyes.”

  The doctor’s expression hardened.

  “…No. I have witnessed too many moments like this. People who cannot bear to see their lovers, those who beg for one last look only to propose joint suicide… No. Absolutely not. The moment an Omega classification is issued, you are forbidden from visually perceiving the upper strata. Any disturbance in this hospital will result in security intervention and immediate transfer to Robben Island detention. There are no exceptions.”

  The doctor’s eyes had turned cold.

  Bharat stared at him blankly, then let out a slow breath.

  “…Then hurry.”

  The doctor nodded and injected the anesthetic through the needle.

  Just before consciousness faded, the last thing Bharat heard was the faint vibration of a micro-drill—prepared for insertion at the base of his cervical spine.

  The chip implantation took approximately fifteen minutes.

  When it was over, the doctor stepped quietly into the corridor where the waiting personnel stood. Olivia Winslet approached him, curiosity flickering in her eyes.

  “Dr. Sun, how is our patient?”

  The doctor gave no immediate answer and merely looked toward the examination room. Olivia’s intuition tightened. Something was wrong.

  She pushed past him and rushed inside.

  “Bharat! Where are you—”

  Her words died in her throat.

  Before her stood a black silhouette.

  No voice.

  No visual data.

  Nothing.

  Olivia pressed the back of her neck.

  “…Omega On.”

  The silhouette before her reconstituted into Bharat’s form.

  Relief flooded her face—yet she knew the privilege of this moment was hers alone. She grabbed his hand tightly.

  “Bharat, listen carefully. You don’t have much time. Take this first—”

  BEEEEEEEEP—

  To Bharat’s eyes, only a black shadow stood before him.

  Whenever it tried to speak, all he heard was a piercing tone.

  Frustrated, he pressed the back of his neck. No response.

  A moment later, the shadow pressed something into his palm.

  A blue glass talisman shaped like an eye—the Evil Eye.

  His surname, Nazar, literally meant “the eye that wards off evil.”

  In Cape Town, people wore such charms to protect themselves from curses when confronted with black silhouettes.

  She must have bought it thinking he would be classified as Beta.

  But now he was Omega—

  A being that appeared as a black shadow to all upper classes.

  His vision blurred. A tear slipped and fell onto the shadow’s hand. Static crackled faintly from the silhouette—and then, from the shadow itself, a single drop fell.

  “Olivia, that’s enough. People stare when you hold an Omega’s hand. Wipe your tears and return.”

  The doctor entered, extending a towel toward the shadow. It accepted the towel and dabbed at the portion where its face should have been. When the shadow finished, it exited the examination room.

  Bharat looked at the doctor.

  “…Why can I see you? If you’re a doctor, that means you’re at least Alpha.”

  The doctor washed his hands at the sink before replying.

  “NCTI. Nerve Terminal Control Interface. A device that activates or suppresses your five senses. Up to Beta, the upper classes can revoke visual restrictions if they wish. But… Omegas cannot be seen even with upper-class authorization. I am a volunteer granted visual control permissions for Omega-level patients. Once I leave the hospital, I will surrender that privilege.”

  As he spoke, the doctor raised his hand and adjusted his visual interface.

  He became a black silhouette.

  Soon after, two silhouettes entered and locked arms with Bharat, escorting him outside. In the waiting corridor, a nurse-shaped shadow bowed her head, emitting faint beeping sounds as she called the next candidates. The silhouettes waiting their turn murmured in low electronic tones, like curses disguised as whispers.

  Bharat had often seen Betas in the slums of the Cape Flats hurl stones and insults at black silhouettes. Compared to that, the subdued murmuring of Southern Suburb residents was almost… polite.

  Dragged quietly past the glittering skyline and luxury estates of the Southern Suburb, Bharat was hauled across a dedicated waste transport route and taken to the Southern Suburb Station of the Cape Town Metro. With special interface authorization, the silhouettes opened the gates and dumped him into the cargo compartment of an arriving train.

  Other Omegas and Femmes were visible to his eyes inside the carriage—trembling, terrified. None of them had likely imagined they would ever be classified as such.

  “…Hah… long road ahead…”

  Bharat clutched the Evil Eye talisman hanging from his neck and held it close to his chest.

  The train ran for a long time, passing station after station. Yet he could not tell where he was. Regions inaccessible to Omegas had their station names censored—erased before they could even reach his ears.

  Then, at last, a sentence like a death warrant rang out.

  “This stop is Mandalay. Mandalay Station. Doors will open on the right.”

  Bharat slowly lifted his head.

  When the doors opened, wardens—visible only as black silhouettes—stood waiting with batons in hand. He swallowed hard and rose. The sobbing women beside him, along with several men, gathered themselves and stood as well.

  The wardens stormed into the cargo carriage, shouting curses he could not hear—only shrill beeping filled his ears. Whenever he tried to resist, the interface’s tactile sensors activated, paralyzing his body.

  In the end, Bharat was dragged onto the freezing outdoor platform, thrown to the ground, and beaten with batons.

  Such was the landscape of his twentieth birthday—

  the day he was designated Omega.