Taylor didn’t go back to her.
Not immediately.
He walked until the city lost interest in him.
That took longer than he expected.
The system didn’t pull this time. It didn’t suggest. It didn’t even notice him in the way he’d begun to recognize. The pressure was gone, replaced by something colder: an absence that felt earned.
He sat on the steps of a closed transit entrance and waited for the afterimage to fade.
It didn’t.
What lingered wasn’t fear.
It was math.
He could still feel the contour of the block he’d touched earlier — the way cognition had slowed, the way people had leaned into stillness without knowing why. He understood, now, that the system didn’t fix things.
It priced them.
And he’d just become expensive.
His phone vibrated.
Not the single pulse this time.
A pattern.
Three short, one long.
He stared at the screen.
“No,” he said aloud, and surprised himself with how steady it sounded.
He stood and started walking again, this time with intention.
He took alleys, service corridors, places where overlays jittered and corrected late. He didn’t want privacy — he wanted noise. Variance. The kind the system tolerated but never preferred.
That’s where she found him.
Not by tracking.
By instinct.
She stepped out from behind a shuttered storefront, limping slightly, weight favoring one side.
Her sleeve was torn at the shoulder, the fabric stiff with dried blood.
Taylor stopped short.
“You’re hurt,” he said.
“I know,” she replied. “I was there when it happened.”
He swallowed. “You followed me.”
She shook her head. “I followed the silence.”
They stood facing each other, the city pretending not to listen.
“You changed something,” she said. Not accusing. Observational.
“I tried not to,” Taylor said.
“That’s worse.”
She took a step closer, then another. Each movement was careful, deliberate, like she was negotiating with her own balance.
“People slowed,” she continued. “Not all at once. Just enough to be noticeable if you knew what to look for.”
“I fixed it,” he said.
She smiled, thin. “No. You left.”
The word landed heavier than he expected.
She leaned against the wall beside him, exhaling through clenched teeth.
“You can’t half-carry load,” she said. “Either you take it, or it finds someone weaker.”
Taylor looked at her arm again. The way she kept it still.
“Was that you?” he asked.
She didn’t answer right away.
Then: “I was nearby.”
That was enough.
A new understanding settled between them, dense and unwelcome.
The system hadn’t punished him.
It had reassigned.
Taylor felt anger flare — sharp, useless.
“It chose you,” he said.
She met his eyes. “It always does.”
Her knees buckled.
He caught her before she hit the ground, the impact jarring through his arms.
For a split second, the pressure surged — not as a pull, but as alignment snapping into place.
A dozen micro-adjustments firing at once.
Taylor gritted his teeth and held.
The pressure eased.
Not gone.
But routed.
She looked up at him, startled.
“You felt that,” she said.
“So did you,” he replied.
Something unreadable passed through her expression.
“Then we’re closer than I thought,” she said.
Sirens wailed somewhere distant. Not for them. Never for them.
Taylor adjusted his grip, careful of her injury.
“Next time,” he said quietly, “it doesn’t get to choose who pays.”
She laughed once — a short, broken sound.
“That’s what everyone says,” she replied. “Right before they become load-bearing.”