Arkadia (F) (CHAPTER 2 POSTED 1/22/26)
Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2026 5:48 am
CHAPTER 1: CARLY (M/F)
The Portal website loaded you straight into the video feed.
The transparent glass cube sat dead center on a small black stage under clean white light. Its edges caught glare like razor lines. A low stool was bolted to the floor inside. Carly Winters sat on it with her back straight and her chin level, as if posture counted as part of the solution.
A calm overlay sat at the top of the screen. Nothing in the interface tried to hype you up.
ARKADIA NETWORK PORTAL
LIVE: CARLY_WINTERS // “THE SILENT EQUATION”
REWIND: LOCKED (LIVE BROADCAST)
STUDY LAYER: RESTRICTED FOR YOUR TIER
RESULT: PENDING
Carly wore a metal double-wrap lock vest that pinned her arms to her sides. The design looked mechanically engineered instead of theatrical. It compressed her shoulders without forcing them into strain. Metal finger cages sleeved each digit and locked them into place. They weren’t there to hurt her. They were there to remove the option of fine-motor improvisation. Her gag was a silver metal panel harness that cupped her jaw and locked her mouth closed while leaving her chin free so that it could become an input device.
A mechanical keypad rested on a pedestal in front of the stool at mouth height. The surface was divided into pressure panels instead of buttons. A small timer above it counted down from 10:00 in rigid, unblinking digits.
The timer was the trial. The fog warning was the same countdown, surfaced as an explicit consequence when Arkadia wanted to remind you what running out of time did to the room.
A handler, clad in anonymous black, stepped into frame long enough to check the gag placement and confirm the vest was secured correctly. He didn’t acknowledge Carly or the fact that he was on camera. He did his work and stepped out of frame.
Carly inhaled through her nose and held it for one beat. Then she exhaled slowly. A mic near her jaw captured her breath for the feed. A digital placard flashed inside the cube long enough for the audience to read it.
THE SILENT EQUATION
ARCHITECT SIGN-OFF: E. CARTER
CONDITION: NO HANDS. NO VOICE.
FOG: AT 0:00.
GOAL: SOLVE FIVE EQUATIONS.
ERROR: FOG TIMER LOSES 0:30 PER MISTAKE.
FAILURE: SCREEN BLANKS. SUBJECT REMAINS UNSOLVED.
Carly read it without changing her expression.
The screen inside the cube flickered on. The pressure panels brightened for a moment, signaling that they were active. With that, the first equation appeared. It wasn’t too complicated on paper. Carly did the arithmetic in her head and checked herself. She’d made mistakes before when she tried to complete the math too fast. Arkadia recorded mistakes like the weather. It didn’t shame the performers. It wrote them down and showed them to the people who helped fund the organization and paid to study the trials.
Carly leaned forward and pressed her chin into the first panel. A buzz answered her. It wasn’t loud, but it was still aggressive. It sounded like a warning disguised as feedback.
She pressed again. The buzz grew even sharper. She pressed again, matching her inputs to the solution she’d mapped in her head. The buzz rose in intensity with each press. The sound wasn’t meant to hurt her, but it was meant to make her hurry. She slowed down anyway.
Arkadia loved systems that provoked panic. It made for great data.
The keypad timer ticked down. The audience could see it in the corner like a taunt. The stream stayed wide. It didn’t zoom in or cut away. It just watched Carly complete the sequence with one final chin press. The keypad chirped, and the equation screen updated: CORRECT.
Carly exhaled in a controlled thread of breath through her nose. She didn’t celebrate or glance toward the camera. She kept her eyes on the screen.
The second equation appeared immediately. This one included a trap meant to punish assumption. Carly caught it because she distrusted convenience. During her time in competitive puzzle box-solving races, she’d seen too many people outside Arkadia get praised for ‘confidence’ when they were only boldly guessing.
Carly pressed her chin to the panels again. The buzz climbed again. Halfway through the input, the buzz spiked into an uglier tone. It sounded like audible irritation that made your body want to jerk away from the source. Carly held steady. She finished the sequence.
CORRECT.
Four minutes had passed. The third equation appeared, and then the fourth. Each one asked her the same question in a different language: Could you keep your mind intact while you couldn’t use your hands or your voice, and also while sound and time attacked?
At the bottom of the screen, the Portal surfaced the fog warning as a second overlay: FOG: 3:00. It was not a new clock. It was the same ten minutes, spelled out in a way your body could not ignore.
Fog meant distraction more than blindness. It meant the lights would bloom, and the cube would fill with haze. It wasn’t harmful, but the metaphor spoke loudly to Carly.
The fifth and final equation appeared at the seven-minute mark. It looked simple until she realized it wasn’t. It included a negative sign in a place where the eye wanted to skip. It also carried an order-of-operations twist that punished anyone who relied on instinct.
Carly couldn’t write out the equation, even if the cube had given her paper and a pen. The finger cages denied her that luxury. She couldn’t mouth the numbers. The gag denied her that habit. She kept the equation in her head and ran it twice. Her breath tightened, just slightly. The mic caught it. You heard the restraint in her breathing more clearly than you heard anything else in the room.
Carly pressed her chin into the panels. The buzz escalated fast this time. It didn’t like her hesitation. It wanted her to commit before she was sure.
Carly paused with her chin hovering a hair above the next panel. She felt the impulse to rush. She remembered it as a physical itch under the skin. She remembered the specific kind of mistake that came from fear of wasted time, even when time was still available.
She thought, briefly, about a phrase Arkadia repeated in its training documents, the kind of line that showed up on a tablet right before a trial began: A silent trial revealed the truth.
Carly never cared that it sounded poetic. She cared what it did. Silence removed bargaining and excuses, forcing you to either solve or fail without selling personality to the crowd.
Carly checked her result one last time, then she pressed the final panel. The buzzer screamed for half a second and then died.
CORRECT.
The countdown froze with a little over two minutes left. The fog warning vanished with it.
The equation screen cleared. The cube stayed transparent and clean. The moment still shifted anyway. The room recognized completion before the audience did.
A mechanical tone sounded. The lock vest released in stages, accompanied by the sound of internal latches letting go. The finger cages unlocked with a series of small clicks.
Carly stayed still through the release. She waited until the final latch opened before she rolled her shoulders. The Portal overlaid the result in one clean line.
RESULT: PASS
The camera stayed on her as the fog warning disappeared from the overlay. Then, the stream ended with a soft fade and a final caption that appeared for two seconds.
VAULT UPLOAD: PENDING
STUDY LAYER: AVAILABLE AFTER INTERNAL REVIEW
After the feed ended, a handler returned to her line of sight. He kept his posture neutral. “You good?” he asked.
Carly nodded once.
He glanced at the monitor, not at her face. He didn’t congratulate her. Arkadia avoided praise because it made performers chase approval instead of mastery. “Any pain?” he asked.
“No,” Carly said. “The vest wasn’t too uncomfortable.”
He nodded once. “Good.” He stepped closer to the cube and reached for a latch. It was released with a small click. The transparent door swung open. Carly stepped out carefully.
Carly looked back at the glass wall and saw her own faint reflection: her dark gray one-piece performance bodysuit with neon green accents. Her dark brown hair was tied into a pair of identical pigtails on the sides of her head. Her usual glasses were swapped for prescription goggles so nothing could slide or snag during the trial.
Carly didn’t smile at her reflection over a job well done. She didn’t hate what looked back at her, though. She accepted what happened as another record.
Once the internal review cleared, the feed would become a product. People with money would replay her chin presses and call them tells. Analysts would chart her breathing and use it to shape marketing data for whatever products they were selling.
Carly let them do it. They could keep the story they bought. She kept the result: five equations solved with no incorrect guesses. She gave them the solutions, not a performance.
The Portal website loaded you straight into the video feed.
The transparent glass cube sat dead center on a small black stage under clean white light. Its edges caught glare like razor lines. A low stool was bolted to the floor inside. Carly Winters sat on it with her back straight and her chin level, as if posture counted as part of the solution.
A calm overlay sat at the top of the screen. Nothing in the interface tried to hype you up.
ARKADIA NETWORK PORTAL
LIVE: CARLY_WINTERS // “THE SILENT EQUATION”
REWIND: LOCKED (LIVE BROADCAST)
STUDY LAYER: RESTRICTED FOR YOUR TIER
RESULT: PENDING
Carly wore a metal double-wrap lock vest that pinned her arms to her sides. The design looked mechanically engineered instead of theatrical. It compressed her shoulders without forcing them into strain. Metal finger cages sleeved each digit and locked them into place. They weren’t there to hurt her. They were there to remove the option of fine-motor improvisation. Her gag was a silver metal panel harness that cupped her jaw and locked her mouth closed while leaving her chin free so that it could become an input device.
A mechanical keypad rested on a pedestal in front of the stool at mouth height. The surface was divided into pressure panels instead of buttons. A small timer above it counted down from 10:00 in rigid, unblinking digits.
The timer was the trial. The fog warning was the same countdown, surfaced as an explicit consequence when Arkadia wanted to remind you what running out of time did to the room.
A handler, clad in anonymous black, stepped into frame long enough to check the gag placement and confirm the vest was secured correctly. He didn’t acknowledge Carly or the fact that he was on camera. He did his work and stepped out of frame.
Carly inhaled through her nose and held it for one beat. Then she exhaled slowly. A mic near her jaw captured her breath for the feed. A digital placard flashed inside the cube long enough for the audience to read it.
THE SILENT EQUATION
ARCHITECT SIGN-OFF: E. CARTER
CONDITION: NO HANDS. NO VOICE.
FOG: AT 0:00.
GOAL: SOLVE FIVE EQUATIONS.
ERROR: FOG TIMER LOSES 0:30 PER MISTAKE.
FAILURE: SCREEN BLANKS. SUBJECT REMAINS UNSOLVED.
Carly read it without changing her expression.
The screen inside the cube flickered on. The pressure panels brightened for a moment, signaling that they were active. With that, the first equation appeared. It wasn’t too complicated on paper. Carly did the arithmetic in her head and checked herself. She’d made mistakes before when she tried to complete the math too fast. Arkadia recorded mistakes like the weather. It didn’t shame the performers. It wrote them down and showed them to the people who helped fund the organization and paid to study the trials.
Carly leaned forward and pressed her chin into the first panel. A buzz answered her. It wasn’t loud, but it was still aggressive. It sounded like a warning disguised as feedback.
She pressed again. The buzz grew even sharper. She pressed again, matching her inputs to the solution she’d mapped in her head. The buzz rose in intensity with each press. The sound wasn’t meant to hurt her, but it was meant to make her hurry. She slowed down anyway.
Arkadia loved systems that provoked panic. It made for great data.
The keypad timer ticked down. The audience could see it in the corner like a taunt. The stream stayed wide. It didn’t zoom in or cut away. It just watched Carly complete the sequence with one final chin press. The keypad chirped, and the equation screen updated: CORRECT.
Carly exhaled in a controlled thread of breath through her nose. She didn’t celebrate or glance toward the camera. She kept her eyes on the screen.
The second equation appeared immediately. This one included a trap meant to punish assumption. Carly caught it because she distrusted convenience. During her time in competitive puzzle box-solving races, she’d seen too many people outside Arkadia get praised for ‘confidence’ when they were only boldly guessing.
Carly pressed her chin to the panels again. The buzz climbed again. Halfway through the input, the buzz spiked into an uglier tone. It sounded like audible irritation that made your body want to jerk away from the source. Carly held steady. She finished the sequence.
CORRECT.
Four minutes had passed. The third equation appeared, and then the fourth. Each one asked her the same question in a different language: Could you keep your mind intact while you couldn’t use your hands or your voice, and also while sound and time attacked?
At the bottom of the screen, the Portal surfaced the fog warning as a second overlay: FOG: 3:00. It was not a new clock. It was the same ten minutes, spelled out in a way your body could not ignore.
Fog meant distraction more than blindness. It meant the lights would bloom, and the cube would fill with haze. It wasn’t harmful, but the metaphor spoke loudly to Carly.
The fifth and final equation appeared at the seven-minute mark. It looked simple until she realized it wasn’t. It included a negative sign in a place where the eye wanted to skip. It also carried an order-of-operations twist that punished anyone who relied on instinct.
Carly couldn’t write out the equation, even if the cube had given her paper and a pen. The finger cages denied her that luxury. She couldn’t mouth the numbers. The gag denied her that habit. She kept the equation in her head and ran it twice. Her breath tightened, just slightly. The mic caught it. You heard the restraint in her breathing more clearly than you heard anything else in the room.
Carly pressed her chin into the panels. The buzz escalated fast this time. It didn’t like her hesitation. It wanted her to commit before she was sure.
Carly paused with her chin hovering a hair above the next panel. She felt the impulse to rush. She remembered it as a physical itch under the skin. She remembered the specific kind of mistake that came from fear of wasted time, even when time was still available.
She thought, briefly, about a phrase Arkadia repeated in its training documents, the kind of line that showed up on a tablet right before a trial began: A silent trial revealed the truth.
Carly never cared that it sounded poetic. She cared what it did. Silence removed bargaining and excuses, forcing you to either solve or fail without selling personality to the crowd.
Carly checked her result one last time, then she pressed the final panel. The buzzer screamed for half a second and then died.
CORRECT.
The countdown froze with a little over two minutes left. The fog warning vanished with it.
The equation screen cleared. The cube stayed transparent and clean. The moment still shifted anyway. The room recognized completion before the audience did.
A mechanical tone sounded. The lock vest released in stages, accompanied by the sound of internal latches letting go. The finger cages unlocked with a series of small clicks.
Carly stayed still through the release. She waited until the final latch opened before she rolled her shoulders. The Portal overlaid the result in one clean line.
RESULT: PASS
The camera stayed on her as the fog warning disappeared from the overlay. Then, the stream ended with a soft fade and a final caption that appeared for two seconds.
VAULT UPLOAD: PENDING
STUDY LAYER: AVAILABLE AFTER INTERNAL REVIEW
After the feed ended, a handler returned to her line of sight. He kept his posture neutral. “You good?” he asked.
Carly nodded once.
He glanced at the monitor, not at her face. He didn’t congratulate her. Arkadia avoided praise because it made performers chase approval instead of mastery. “Any pain?” he asked.
“No,” Carly said. “The vest wasn’t too uncomfortable.”
He nodded once. “Good.” He stepped closer to the cube and reached for a latch. It was released with a small click. The transparent door swung open. Carly stepped out carefully.
Carly looked back at the glass wall and saw her own faint reflection: her dark gray one-piece performance bodysuit with neon green accents. Her dark brown hair was tied into a pair of identical pigtails on the sides of her head. Her usual glasses were swapped for prescription goggles so nothing could slide or snag during the trial.
Carly didn’t smile at her reflection over a job well done. She didn’t hate what looked back at her, though. She accepted what happened as another record.
Once the internal review cleared, the feed would become a product. People with money would replay her chin presses and call them tells. Analysts would chart her breathing and use it to shape marketing data for whatever products they were selling.
Carly let them do it. They could keep the story they bought. She kept the result: five equations solved with no incorrect guesses. She gave them the solutions, not a performance.