The System That Hates Its Owner

Chapter 3: Nobody's Watching

The checkpoint into the Hunter District had a line. Three vehicles, two of them awakened couriers on faster bikes than his. Long enough that Ethan had time to sit still for the first time all day, engine idling, the case ticking faintly against its straps every few seconds.

He pulled out his phone instead of thinking about that too hard.

The folder was named nothing interesting … just numbers, dated by month, three years of saved clips he wasn't supposed to have access to. Guild footage leaked from training servers. Monster incursion reports meant for registered hunters only. Breakdowns some retired analyst had posted online before someone made him take them down. Ethan had copies of all of it. He watched them the way other people watched shows they already knew the ending to.

Tonight's clip was an old one: a Rank-4 hunter fighting a mid-tier stray in a collapsed parking structure.

He watched the hunter's footwork. Watched the moment right before the strike where his weight shifted onto his back leg a half-second too early, a mistake that would've gotten a slower monster to punish him for it.

Ethan had noticed that same mistake the first time he'd watched this clip eight months ago. He still noticed it every time, the way you notice a word misspelled in a book you've read a hundred times.

"You actually study that stuff?"

The voice came from the car window beside him … another courier, awakened, waiting out the same line, watching Ethan's screen with open curiosity instead of the usual disdain.

"Sometimes."

"Why? You're not exactly going to use it."

Ethan didn't look up from the screen. "Doesn't mean I can't know it."

"Guess so." The courier didn't sound convinced, but didn't push either. He glanced at the case strapped to Ethan's bike, then back at his screen. "That thing yours? Heard the depot's been shipping something twitchy out tonight."

"Not mine. Just carrying it."

"Rather you than me." His window rolled back up a second later, done with the conversation before it had really started.

Ethan kept watching. He'd heard some version of that question his whole life, usually followed by a shrug, like the answer was obvious: he'd never fight anything. He'd never need to know how a Rank-4 hunter shifted his weight wrong. The scanner had told him that already, six seconds and a slip of paper, NO ABILITY DETECTED, THANK YOU FOR YOUR INTEREST.

He'd believed it, for a while. Then he'd started noticing things … small things, at first. A hunter's stance a half-beat too wide before a lunge. A monster's tell right before it changed direction. None of it mattered, not in any way that paid rent or opened doors, but it was his. Nobody had scanned it into him and nobody could scan it back out.

Worthless was a word other people used. Ethan had never let it sit right in his own mouth.

He thought about the recruitment office sign from that morning. ARE YOU AWAKENED? He'd never gotten the chance to prove the scanner wrong in a way that counted. That didn't mean he'd stopped preparing for the day one might ask him to.

He switched clips … a monster report this time, some kind of burrowing type that had surfaced in the Lower Blocks two years back, before he'd learned to read the warning signs early enough to reroute around an incursion instead of riding straight into one. He'd survived three close calls doing deliveries in bad zones. Three times where knowing the pattern of a threat half a second before anyone official did had been the only reason he was still breathing.

Nobody put that on a resume. Nobody handed out a slip of paper for it.

The line inched forward. One vehicle cleared. Two left.

His tablet buzzed … not the dispatch app this time, a personal message from Danny.

*You good? Zone 4's been quiet on the scanner boards but people are saying the containment's been unstable all week. Not just tonight.*

Ethan read it twice before answering. Unstable all week meant somebody had known this job was risky long before it landed on his queue at triple rate. That explained a lot. It didn't make him feel any better about it.

Ethan typed back one-handed, phone balanced against his knee. *Case is strapped to my bike making noises I don't love. Ask me again in twenty minutes.*

*That's not reassuring.*

*Wasn't trying to be.*

He pocketed the phone before Danny could answer, because the vehicle ahead of him had finally cleared the gate, and the checkpoint guard was already waving him forward with two fingers, bored.

Ethan rolled up to the booth. The guard scanned his tablet, checked something on an internal screen, checked it again with a frown that didn't belong on someone's face at the start of a routine shift.

"Job number?"

Ethan gave it.

"Case is secured?"

"Strapped down like the guy at the depot told me to."

"Good. Keep it that way." The guard tapped his screen twice, waiting on something that took longer to load than it should have.

The guard's eyes flicked to the case, then to his own readout, then back to Ethan with something that hadn't been there a second ago. Not suspicion. Closer to concern he was trying not to show.

"You're clear," the guard said, slower than the last three vehicles had gotten it. "Straight to the western checkpoint. Don't stop. Don't detour, not even for traffic."

"That's the plan."

"Good." The gate began to rise. "And hey … courier."

Ethan paused, one foot still on the ground.

"If anything sounds wrong tonight," the guard said, voice dropping low enough that the next vehicle in line couldn't hear it, "don't wait to find out what it is. Just move."

The gate finished rising. Ethan rode through.

Then, somewhere ahead in the dark, an alarm he'd never heard outside of training footage began to wail.