Bound by Collar, Freed by Choices

He woke in a cellar with someone else's blood on his cheek, a collar locked around his throat, and no memory of his own name. Around him stood nineteen other children, frozen mid-breath, eyes sealed shut, arranged like things instead of people. He was one of them. A debt-slave. Property before he was old enough to know what the word meant. Then something inside his skull spoke. Axiom. System designation. Active. Not a friend. Not a guide. Axiom doesn't explain itself, doesn't answer questions, doesn't care what he wants to know. It gives him only what it decides he needs, when it decides he needs it and nothing more. Function One: Information Delivery. Knowledge for the hardships he's already facing, and the ones still waiting. Function Two: Continuous Record. Every second he lives, permanently kept, permanently his. Function Three: Function Creation. New abilities, born only from the conditions of his survival. Function Four: Simulation. A space outside time itself, where he can train without his body aging a single day, and face anyone bound to him by feeling, enemy or otherwise. Function Five: Notification. Word of what happens to the people connected to him, wherever they are, whatever befalls them. Function Six: Reward Selection. When Axiom decides he's earned it, a choice. Always a choice. Never explained. With a wound in his skull and a system he can't command, he has one chance to slip past sleeping guards and locked doors before morning comes. But leaving means leaving nineteen children behind in that cellar collared, silent, and just like he used to be. Freedom has a price. Axiom doesn't tell him what it is. He's about to find out anyway.