Keira didn’t look like a threat. She was shorter than Cael had expected, her hair clipped unevenly like it had been cut in haste or frustration. Her jacket hung loose and torn, the kind that had been worn too long to care what rank someone was supposed to be. But there was something else—something in her posture. Rigid. Practiced. Alert.

  She didn’t fidget. Didn’t glance around. Didn’t run.

  People like them didn’t run anymore.

  “You saw the Loop?” she asked, voice quiet, direct.

  Cael nodded. “A couple nights ago.”

  “And?”

  “I thought I imagined it.”

  “You didn’t,” she said. “That was them reaching out. Or testing you. I don’t know which.”

  Cael narrowed his eyes. “Them?”

  She didn’t answer. She just turned and walked without looking back. “Come on. If you’re still above ground in fifteen minutes, you’re going to have more eyes on you than skin.”

  Cael hesitated, then followed. He didn’t have a better option—not anymore.

  The place she led him wasn’t far. They moved like shadows through the city’s underlayers, slipping past sensor gates, inactive monitors, and long-forgotten service corridors. Keira moved like she belonged in the in-between, navigating the architecture of disrepair like it whispered to her. She didn’t explain how she knew the blind spots. She just did.

  Eventually, they ducked behind a waste sorting facility and descended into a stairwell that dropped three levels beneath the city’s mapped infrastructure. The air changed immediately—cooler, denser. Not stale. Just forgotten.

  Cael slowed as the light faded. “What is this place?”

  Keira stepped over a bent railing. “Old maintenance subgrid. Before the Restructure. Some of it still breathes. The rest just pretends to.”

  They passed through a sealed door that hissed open like it was annoyed to be touched and entered a room lit only by a cracked ceiling panel and the blue glow of a sleeping terminal.

  “This is one of mine,” she said.

  “One of your what?”

  “Holes.” She shrugged off her jacket. “You live off the Grid, you learn to make space where the system doesn’t look.”

  Cael stepped inside. It was small—barely wide enough for the both of them to stand apart. The walls were scratched with coordinates, numbers, power readouts. At the center, a chair sat before a console that looked like it hadn’t functioned in a decade.

  But it was warm. Lived in.

  “I thought I was alone,” Cael admitted.

  “You were,” she said. “We all are. Until the system starts connecting dots.”

  She tapped a panel. The screen blinked to life in pale green. Lines of old code scrolled up, then stopped.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “You’re the first echo I’ve seen in three years,” she added.

  Cael stood still. “Echo?”

  “Someone who doesn’t scan. Someone the Grid tries to overwrite.”

  She gave him a long look.

  “You’re louder than the others.”

  Theo spoke, his voice buzzing in Cael’s wristband, cautious. “Her implant is offline. No transmission. She’s completely dark.”

  “That’s the point,” Keira said. “You let those things talk too long, they start talking to people they shouldn’t.”

  Cael glanced down at the band. “Theo’s not like the others.”

  “No. But the Authority doesn’t care about nuance.”

  Keira pulled a small drive from her coat and slipped it into the console. “Let me show you something.”

  The screen flashed, displaying a grid of surveillance pings. Not people—anomalies. Glitches. Places where the Grid had failed to classify something and flagged it for review.

  Dozens. Then hundreds. Spread across the city map.

  “Each one of these is a NULL incident,” she said. “Over the last seven years. Some lasted seconds. Some days. Most were cleaned up. Erased. But not all.”

  She zoomed in.

  Cael saw his school. Then his name.

  Except it wasn’t a name. Just a red tag.

  ERROR. RECALIBRATION REQUESTED. LOCAL CORRUPTION: ACTIVE.

  “They’ve been tracking me,” he said.

  “No,” Keira replied. “They’ve been predicting you.”

  Over the next hour, she told him everything.

  About the others. About Trace—the boy who bent probability until it snapped and vanished deeper than memory. About Roa, the girl who froze every device near her by breathing. About the Fracture units—operatives not ranked, not visible, and not human in any way that mattered.

  “They don’t bring you in,” she said. “They remove your footprint. Your echoes. They don’t want a cure. They want silence.”

  “Why?” Cael asked.

  “Because people like you break the rules. Not the legal ones. The fundamental ones.”

  He sat. “I didn’t choose this.”

  “No one does.”

  A hum echoed through the wall.

  Theo crackled sharply. “Contact. North wall. Four heat signatures.”

  Keira moved, pulling a slim device from under the console and slipping it into her boot. “They followed you.”

  Cael stood. “They shouldn’t be able to.”

  “They shouldn’t be able to do a lot of things.”

  Theo buzzed. “They’re rerouting power. Sector suppression initiated. They’re going to blank this entire tunnel.”

  “What happens if they do?”

  Keira pulled open a back panel in the wall—revealing a narrow shaft.

  “We lose who we are.”

  They crawled fast.

  The shaft dropped into a lower corridor beneath the Loop, then into a flood control tunnel no longer listed in schematics. Theo pulsed silently, guiding.

  “They’re still moving,” he said. “But slower. Like they’re not chasing—just waiting.”

  Cael looked at Keira. “They’re boxing us in.”

  She nodded.

  He clenched his jaw. “Then we go through.”

  The next twenty minutes blurred.

  Tunnels twisted. Rooms collapsed. Infrastructure groaned. Cael’s presence warped local logic. Walls flickered. Gravity stuttered. Keira threw a rock—it hung in the air before falling.

  “We’re close,” Theo said.

  “To what?”

  “To a decision.”

  They found the chamber by accident.

  A power silo. Ancient. Offline. Still connected. At the center stood a terminal surrounded by arcane wiring. Symbols danced on the walls—not written. Embedded. Shifting.

  Cael stepped closer.

  Keira didn’t.

  “You’re the variable,” she said. “This thing’s waiting for you.”

  He placed his hand on the console.

  It responded.

  Data spilled across the walls. Not code. Paths. Futures. Simulations. Every moment not yet lived, written in a language he didn’t know but understood.

  He blinked.

  Saw himself burning through a city already ash.

  He blinked again.

  Saw himself quiet. Alone. Forgotten.

  A third time.

  Saw nothing.

  Then the console spoke.

  FRACTURE DEPLOYED. NULL CONFIRMED.

  YOU CANNOT EXIST.

  CHOOSE A RESOLUTION PATH.

  Cael took a breath.

  “I don’t choose extinction.”

  He clenched his fist.

  And the terminal exploded.

  The blast didn’t kill them.

  It unraveled the room—peeled it back like soaked paper. The world screamed as it lost alignment.

  Cael screamed too.

  Then—

  Nothing.

  He woke in the dark.

  Keira beside him, breathing shallow.

  Theo flickered. “Cael.”

  He coughed. “Still here.”

  “You bent the junction. Time skipped.”

  “How long?”

  “Thirteen minutes.”

  He sat up.

  Whole. Alive.

  So was she.

  Keira opened her eyes and whispered, “You chose something.”

  Cael stared at his hands.

  “No,” he said. “I became something.”