The system offered him sleep.
Taylor declined it.
He lay in the dark of his apartment—darkness was optional, but he kept it that way—listening to the near-silence of a building that never truly rested. Somewhere, something hummed. It always did. The sound had once comforted him. Tonight, it felt like breathing.
He replayed the moment again and again: the resistance, the pause, the way the interface had hesitated as if weighing him. Observers weren’t supposed to leave marks. They were meant to pass through data like light through glass.
By morning, the city was perfect again.
The atrium bloomed on schedule. Screens smiled. The log feeds behaved. Whatever he’d seen had been smoothed away so thoroughly that Taylor almost convinced himself he’d imagined it.
Almost.
On his commute—an indulgent word for a moving walkway that anticipated your destination—he noticed a woman walking against the flow.
People didn’t do that.
Not because they weren’t allowed. Because the system made it unnecessary. Paths optimized themselves. To move against them required intent.
She was unremarkable in the ways that mattered. No dramatic scars, no theatrical defiance.
Just a woman in a neutral coat, hair pulled back without care, eyes forward. Yet the space around her felt wrong, like a skipped frame in a flawless video.
Taylor felt the system register her before he did.
Not with alarms. With quiet adjustments. The walkway slowed by a fraction. Nearby screens dimmed imperceptibly. People unconsciously shifted to give her room.
She glanced at him.
It lasted half a second. Long enough.
Her eyes didn’t ask questions. They measured.
Taylor looked away too late.
A soft chime sounded in his ear.
\\ ROUTE ADJUSTED.
He frowned. The walkway nudged him toward an alternate corridor—longer, emptier, less scenic. He hesitated, then stepped off entirely. The system paused, recalculated, then flowed on without him.
He shouldn’t have followed her.
He told himself he wasn’t following. That he was curious. That curiosity was harmless. But when she turned into the service corridor that no one used unless they had to, Taylor turned with her.
The corridor smelled faintly of metal and ozone. The walls were unfinished here, honest in a way the city above never was. His pulse ticked in his throat.
She stopped without warning.
“So,” she said, without turning, “how long have you been watching things you’re not meant to see?”
Taylor froze.
“I—”
She turned then. Up close, she looked tired. Not sleepy. Worn. As if she carried weight the system couldn’t redistribute.
“That wasn’t a rhetorical question,” she said. “And this is where you decide something.”
“Decide what?”
“Whether you’re dangerous,” she said calmly, “or just loud.”
The corridor lights dimmed a notch.
Taylor swallowed. “I don’t know what you think I saw.”
A corner of her mouth twitched. Not a smile.
“That’s the wrong answer,” she said. “But it’s the honest one.”
Footsteps echoed at the far end of the corridor. Too measured. Too synchronized.
She stepped closer to him, lowering her voice. “If you want to keep breathing quietly,” she said, “you’re going to walk away right now and forget this ever happened.”
“And if I don’t?”
Her eyes flicked past him, then back.
“Then you follow me,” she said. “And you don’t ask questions you’re not ready to survive.”
The footsteps drew nearer.
For the first time in years, Taylor didn’t feel bored.
He nodded.
She turned and moved, swift and certain, slipping through a maintenance hatch just as the corridor lights flared back to full brightness.
Taylor followed.
Behind them, the system rerouted the air.