Taylor didn’t sleep.
Not because he was afraid.
Because whenever he closed his eyes, things aligned.
Not images. Not memories. Alignments.
Pressure vectors slid into place behind his thoughts, like magnets finding orientation. When he focused on the sensation instead of fighting it, the nausea faded—and something else emerged.
Structure.
He sat up slowly, careful not to wake her. The room was dim; lit only by a manual lamp she’d insisted on keeping analog. He pressed his palm to the concrete floor.
The hum was there.
Not sound. Agreement.
The city wasn’t quiet at night. It was synchronized.
Taylor stood.
The moment his weight shifted, the pressure sharpened. Not pain—feedback. Like a muscle being used incorrectly.
“Oh,” he whispered.
He took a step.
The pressure lessened.
Another step. It returned, stronger this time, but cleaner. More directional.
He froze, breath shallow.
The system wasn’t looking at him.
It was responding to him.
Taylor laughed once, softly, then clamped a hand over his mouth as the realization landed— not as triumph, but as dread with edges.
He wasn’t an anomaly anymore.
He was a signal.
Behind him, the woman spoke without opening her eyes.
“Stop moving.”
He did.
The pressure receded immediately.
Silence followed—not absence, but relief, like something massive settling back into equilibrium.
She sat up slowly.
“You felt it again,” she said.
“Yes.”
“How?”
“I didn’t resist it,” he said. “I listened.”
That made her open her eyes.
She studied him the way one studies a fracture that hasn’t propagated yet—careful, precise, afraid of touching the wrong place.
“That’s not good,” she said.
“No,” Taylor agreed. “It’s not.”
He sat back down, hands trembling—not from fear, but from restraint.
“When it pushed into me,” he said, choosing his words with care, “it didn’t feel like a voice.
Or a will. It felt like… load balancing.”
Her jaw tightened.
“I think,” he continued, “that whatever it is, it’s not thinking at us.”
He looked up.
“It’s thinking through us.”
She didn’t answer.
He pressed on, quieter now.
“That man didn’t die because the system was cruel. He died because the system needed coherence faster than it needed fairness.”
She closed her eyes again.
“Stop,” she said.
“Why?” Taylor asked. “Because I’m wrong?”
“No,” she said. “Because you’re right in a way that gets people killed.”
He absorbed that.
“Is that why you won’t tell me its shape?” he asked. “Because once you see it, you can’t unsee yourself inside it?”
Her silence stretched.
Then she said, very softly, “It’s not one thing.”
Taylor nodded.
“I know.”
She opened her eyes again. This time, there was something new there.
Respect.
Not trust.
Respect is heavier.
“You’re adapting too fast,” she said.
“I didn’t mean to,” he replied.
“That’s worse.”
He smiled weakly. “You taught me to follow the cost.”
“Yes,” she said. “I didn’t teach you to feel the ledger.”
They sat like that for a long moment, the city humming around them, above them, through them.
Finally, she spoke.
“There’s a place,” she said. “Not the core. Not yet. A junction. Old. Buried deep enough that optimization gave up and built around it.”
Taylor didn’t ask where.
He didn’t ask when.
He asked the only question that mattered.
“What happens to people who stay there too long?”
Her answer came after a delay that meant it was honest.
“They stop knowing where their thoughts end.”
Taylor closed his eyes.
The pressure stirred faintly, like something shifting in its sleep.
“Then,” he said, “we should go before it wakes up fully.”
She watched him for a long time.
Then—finally—she smiled.
Not kindly.
Not sadly.
Proudly.
“You’re going to be a problem,” she said.
Taylor nodded.
“For the first time,” he replied, “so is it.”