For two days, Taylor did nothing useful.
He slept in short, uneven bursts. When he woke, he expected guilt to hit him like a wave. It didn’t. What came instead was worse: a quiet, grinding persistence, like pressure without direction.
The woman watched him without comment.
On the third day, she slid a cup across the table. Real ceramic. Chipped.
“Drink,” she said.
He did.
“You’re waiting,” she said.
“For what?”
“For permission,” she replied. “Or absolution. People usually want one before they move again.”
Taylor stared into the cup. “I don’t think I deserve either.”
“That’s progress.”
He looked up. “Then what am I supposed to do?”
She didn’t answer immediately. Instead, she reached behind her and tapped the wall map. A soft click followed, and a section shifted, revealing a narrow shelf.
On it: fragments.
A maintenance badge with its identifier scratched away. A child’s shoe, sole worn thin. A coil of cable scorched at one end.
“These are vectors,” she said. “Not causes. Not solutions.”
“What do they do?”
“They point.”
Taylor frowned. “Point where?”
“Toward imbalance,” she said. “Places where the system spends effort pretending nothing is wrong.”
He picked up the badge. It felt heavier than it should have.
“You don’t fix the system,” she continued. “You don’t fight it. You don’t expose it. Not yet.”
“Then what?”
“You follow the cost.”
The phrase settled into him, slow and exact.
“Every optimized outcome leaves residue,” she said. “People. Labor. Silence. If you trace those, you don’t need a manifesto. You get a direction.”
Taylor set the badge down. “And that’s supposed to be enough?”
“For now,” she said. “Because it’s not about hope.”
He waited.
“It’s about refusal,” she said. “You refuse to let the system decide where your attention goes.”
Taylor thought of the man in the tunnel. Of the word available. Of the city shining, flawless, above all of it.
“I don’t want revenge,” he said quietly.
“Good,” she replied. “Revenge is loud. It gets priced quickly.”
“What I want,” he said, choosing the words carefully, “is to stop being cheap.”
She studied him for a long moment. Then, finally, she nodded.
“That,” she said, “is a vector.”
Taylor exhaled. Something inside him aligned—not into certainty, but into direction.
Not a cause.
A refusal.
Outside the room, the city continued its calculations.
Inside, Taylor found a reason to move.