They surfaced hours later in a place the city pretended not to notice.
The room was small, low-ceilinged, and stubbornly manual. A table. Two chairs. A wall map printed on real material, its edges worn soft by handling. No ambient music. No adaptive light. The air smelled faintly of dust and old plastic.
Taylor sat because she told him to.
She busied herself with checks that looked unnecessary until he realized they were ritual: sealing vents, disabling passive receivers, confirming absence rather than presence. Only when she was done did she lean against the table and let her shoulders drop.
For the first time, she looked tired in a way the system could have fixed.
“You don’t get a name yet,” she said, noticing his gaze. “Names stick.”
“That wasn’t what I was going to ask.”
“Good.”
He waited. She noticed that too.
“You want context,” she said finally. “Not answers. That’s smart.”
“Is it?”
“It keeps you alive longer.”
She reached into a drawer and took out a thin slate. Not connected. She placed it between them and slid it across.
On the surface: a still image. Grainy. Poorly framed. A domestic space frozen mid-moment— cups on a table, a chair pulled back too fast. Two figures stood near the doorway, faces blurred by motion.
“Pause,” she said.
“It already is.”
“Exactly.”
Taylor felt something cold gather behind his ribs.
“My brother,” she said. “And our mother. Before they were reduced to a data note.”
He didn’t speak.
“I did what you did,” she continued. “Only slower. I asked questions that didn’t fit. I followed logs that didn’t resolve. I thought if I stayed careful, no one else would pay.”
Her mouth tightened. “I was wrong.”
She swiped. The image shifted to a corridor Taylor recognized—not by layout, but by feeling.
Narrow. Unfinished. Honest.
“They came politely,” she said. “They always do. Said there was an inconsistency tied to my access.”
“What happened?”
“They corrected it.”
Taylor closed his eyes.
“When I ran,” she said, “I learned something useful.”
“What?”
“That the system doesn’t erase what it takes. It buries it.”
She gestured to the walls. “Everything you don’t see ends up somewhere like this. Physical labor. Maintenance. Redundancy management. All the inefficiencies perfection requires.”
“That’s… the greater picture?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No. That’s just the residue.”
She leaned forward, voice low. “There are people who live in that residue. Work in it. Keep the city clean by being unseen. Some of them have been there longer than the city remembers.”
Taylor’s pulse thudded. “And the system lets that happen?”
“It requires it,” she said. “Stability has a cost. You saw one payment tonight.”
She pushed the slate back toward him.
“This is all you get for now,” she said. “Faces. Places. Consequences.”
“Why show me?”
“Because if you’re going to keep moving,” she said, “you need to know what you’re stepping over.”
Silence settled—not heavy this time, but charged.
Outside, far above them, the city continued to shine.
Below, the first outline of its shadow took shape.