The forest didn’t feel safe. It felt unnoticed. Sophia became aware of it gradually the way the night insects went silent in pockets, the way the wind shifted direction twice in the span of a single breath. Not reacting to sound. Reacting to presence.Daniel stood a few steps away, unmoving, eyes unfocused, like he was listening to something that wasn’t air. “Daniel,” she said softly.He blinked. The tension in his shoulders eased by a fraction. “Sorry.”“For what?”“For leaving again.” He glanced around. “It’s loud out here.”Luther zipped his jacket, scanning the treeline with practiced calm. “Nothing on thermal. No drones yet.”Yet hung heavy. Sophia stepped closer to Daniel. “What do you mean, loud?”He hesitated, then answered honestly. “Possibility. Every choice hums now. I can feel which ones echo.”Luther frowned. “You’re predicting outcomes.”Daniel shook his head. “No. I’m standing too close to them.” A faint shimmer passed through the air not near Daniel this time, but seve

Morning arrived without ceremony. No alarms. No sirens. No distortions tearing through the air. Just light thin, gray, unimportant slipping through the cracked blinds and settling across the floor like it had done a thousand times before.Sophia woke first. She lay still for several seconds, listening. The city outside murmured in its usual way: distant traffic, a neighbor coughing, a radio playing something old and forgettable. For a fragile moment, it felt normal.Then she remembered. She turned her head slowly. Daniel sat on the floor where he’d fallen asleep, back against the wall, knees drawn up, arms loosely wrapped around them. His eyes were open.Not unfocused. Watching. “How long have you been awake?” she asked softly.He didn’t look at her right away. “I don’t know. Time’s been inconsistent.”That answer tightened something in her chest. Luther stirred near the door, already half-awake, habit overriding rest. He checked the small handheld scanner he’d scavenged the night b

The city noticed him in pieces. Not all at once. Not with alarms or announcements or a sudden sky full of drones. It noticed him the way a body notices pain late, unevenly, and with denial.Daniel felt it the moment he stepped fully onto the sidewalk. The air thickened, not around him, but through him. Like he’d been threaded into something already moving. Conversations nearby didn’t stop, but they stuttered.A man mid sentence repeated a word twice without realizing it. A woman checking her watch frowned, tapped the screen, then shook her wrist as if time itself had glitched.Sophia stayed close to Daniel’s side. Close enough that their arms brushed. Close enough to remind him where his edges were.Luther followed half a step behind, eyes constantly moving, posture loose but lethal.Mara walked ahead, unarmed, unhurried like she trusted the city not to eat her alive. “You feel heavier,” Sophia murmured.Daniel nodded. “I’m intersecting more systems.”“That sounds bad.”“It’s… inevita

The city learned faster than Daniel expected. Not in facts. Not in truth. In tone. Sophia felt it first when they emerged from the parking structure and blended into the late afternoon crowd.The way people looked at Daniel had changed not recognition, not fear, but a subtle hesitation, as if their instincts were trying to match him to a category that didn’t exist yet.He was becoming interpretable. “That’s worse,” she muttered under her breath.Daniel nodded faintly. “Yes.”Luther glanced sideways at a storefront screen playing muted news. The headline scrolled too fast to read fully, but the words anomaly, incident, and unverified repeated in different arrangements.“They’re soft-launching you,” he said. “Testing public tolerance.”Mara walked a step ahead, jaw tight. “They’re framing uncertainty as curiosity. It lowers resistance.”Daniel’s head throbbed. Each screen, each whispered speculation, tugged at him not physically, but conceptually. Like hands trying to sculpt him out of

The kid looked exactly like someone the future would overlook. Seventeen, maybe eighteen. Hoodie too thin for the season. Backpack slung over one shoulder like he’d never quite decided where he was going.His eyes darted between Daniel and the others, not afraid just confused in the way people get when reality breaks rules they didn’t know they were relying on.“Sorry,” he said again, reflexively. “I didn’t mean to this place just kept pinging.”Daniel felt it immediately. Not danger. Resonance. Sophia stepped closer, close enough that Daniel could feel the steadying weight of her presence. “Pinging how?”The kid swallowed. “Like my maps app glitched. Then my calendar. Then my feed. Everything kept rerouting me here.” He laughed nervously. “I figured it was some ARG or something.”Luther studied him with practiced intensity. “Name.”“Eli,” the kid said quickly. “Eli Navarro.”Daniel inhaled slowly. The name stuck. Not in the world. In him.“You’re not supposed to be here,” Daniel said