The Triangle did not announce changes.
It never did.
Institutions like it understood a simple truth: power that declared itself invited resistance. Power that shifted quietly rewrote the rules before anyone realized the game had changed.
Dreyden felt the shift before he saw it.
It came as a delay in access.
Not a lockout. Not a denial. Just friction.
The next morning, he attempted to reserve a high-intensity combat chamber—one he'd used dozens of times before without issue. The interface processed his request, paused for a half-second too long, then returned a polite notification.
REQUEST PENDING – MANUAL APPROVAL REQUIRED
That was new.
He stared at the text without blinking.
Manual approval meant oversight intervention. Not direct supervision, but something adjacent—an invisible hand resting just close enough to feel.
They weren't stopping him.
They were slowing him.
