The response didn’t come as violence. It came as help. Daniel felt it before anyone said a word the pressure reorganizing, smoothing itself into familiar shapes. Forms. Procedures. Concern with a logo and a mission statement.“Here it is,” Luther muttered, staring out the window. “They’re rolling out the soft cage.”Below them, two white vans idled at the corner. No markings. No sirens. Just presence. Across the street, a woman in a blazer spoke quietly into an earpiece, posture relaxed, unthreatening. Down the block, a pop-up tent was being assembled with efficient calm.Sophia’s stomach dropped. “That’s fast.”Mara nodded grimly. “It always is once they decide on a frame.”Eli leaned forward, eyes narrowed. “What frame?”Daniel answered without looking away from the street. “Care.”As if summoned, a knock sounded at the building’s main entrance below. Polite. Professional. The kind that assumed cooperation.Sophia felt Daniel tense, then deliberately not react. The glow beneath his

By midday, Daniel could feel where he ended. It wasn’t a clean edge. It was more like walking into fog and realizing too late that the fog was you. Thin in places, dense in others. A presence without a center, a pressure without a name.He hated how quickly his mind adapted. “You’re drifting again.”Sophia’s voice pulled him back not sharply, not urgently, just enough to remind him that gravity still existed here. He was standing by the window, staring down at the street without really seeing it.“I’m here,” he said.She didn’t argue, but she stepped closer anyway, her hand finding his wrist, fingers warm and grounding. Physical. Specific.Human. “That wasn’t what I meant,” she said.Daniel exhaled. “I know.”Outside, the city had changed tone. Not louder. Not quieter. More careful. People moved with a kind of cautious intention, as if something invisible had been added to the rules of navigation. Conversations paused half a second longer than necessary.Eyes lingered on signs, on scr

The fallout didn’t arrive like a wave. It seeped. Daniel felt it the next morning in the way the city avoided finishing sentences. Headlines that trailed off.Official statements padded with clauses that neutralized themselves. Conversations that began confidently and ended with someone saying, “I don’t know.”Uncertainty had weight now. Not enough to break anything. Enough to bend it. Daniel sat at the small table by the window, hands wrapped around a mug that had long gone cold.He hadn’t noticed. Temperature had become negotiable lately another sensation slipping toward abstraction.Sophia noticed. She always did. “You’re drifting again,” she said softly, setting a fresh cup in front of him and deliberately nudging his fingers until he took it.He blinked, refocused. “Sorry.”She didn’t answer right away. She leaned against the counter instead, arms crossed, watching the street below like she was daring it to do something unforgivable.“They’re quiet,” she said finally.“Yes,” Dani

Daniel dreamed for the first time in weeks. Not the fractured half-sleep he’d been surviving on no overlays, no echo bleeding through but an actual dream, thick with images that didn’t ask to be interpreted.He was standing in a hallway that kept extending every time he reached the end. Doors lined the walls, each marked with a name he almost recognized. Not his. Not strangers either.Familiar in the way forgotten things are. When he woke, his heart was racing. Sophia was still asleep beside him, one arm flung across his torso with possessive certainty, as if daring the universe to argue.Morning light crept through the window in narrow bands, dust motes suspended like proof that time was still passing even when he wasn’t tracking it.Daniel lay still. He waited for the city. Nothing came. No pressure. No background pull. No invisible crowd leaning into his awareness.Just the sound of Sophia breathing. It was unsettling. He slid out from under her arm carefully and stood, surprised a

Daniel woke with a bruise he didn’t remember earning. Not the purple-yellow kind nothing visible but a soreness behind the sternum, like he’d held his breath through a long argument and only realized afterward.He lay still, cataloging sensations the way he’d relearned to do: weight of the blanket, ache in his neck, the distant thud of a door closing somewhere in the building. No chorus. No pull.Just morning. Sophia was already awake, sitting against the wall with her knees drawn up, watching light climb the concrete. She didn’t speak when she noticed his eyes open. She just shifted closer and rested her shoulder against his, a quiet check-in that didn’t demand proof.“You okay?” she asked eventually.Daniel considered the question. “I think so.”She hummed, noncommittal. “That’s new.”“It is,” he agreed. “Usually I know when I’m not.”“That’s not a compliment,” she said.He smiled anyway. Across the room, Mara had set up a makeshift workstation papers spread, pens aligned, tablet po