Containment never arrived with force.
That was the first lesson Dreyden learned.
Force was loud. Force was emotional. Force created resistance.
The Triangle didn't like resistance.
Containment, by contrast, arrived quietly—folded into routine, disguised as normalcy, buried so deep into procedure that no single person could be blamed for it.
Dreyden realized it had begun when his schedule changed.
Not drastically.
Just… subtly.
His morning drills were shifted forward by fifteen minutes. His afternoon theory class moved to a smaller lecture hall. His evening access to the combat simulator was capped at two sessions instead of four.
No notice.
No explanation.
No confrontation.
The changes were minor enough that a normal student wouldn't have noticed.
Dreyden noticed immediately.
