I stepped outside with Tony floating behind me like a judgmental balloon.
The street looked normal.
Too normal.
A woman walked past with a stroller. A guy on a bike rang his bell. A dog barked at a squirrel.
Then the squirrel glitched.
One second it was a normal squirrel. The next second it was a tiny low-poly 3D model with the words [MISSING TEXTURE] floating above its head. It stared at me, twitched, and turned back into a regular squirrel before running up a tree.
Tony's screen flashed.
"Passive Leak is active."
"No kidding."
I kept walking.
Every few steps something small broke.
A streetlight flickered between on, off, and a third option that just said NULL.
A vending machine I passed quietly changed its own prices to "Free for Zeke_N only" then changed them back when I looked away.
A pigeon landed on a sign, looked me dead in the eye, and whispered, "Nice percentage, traitor," before flying off.
I stopped.
"Tony. Did that pigeon just talk?"
"I've decided we're not acknowledging the pigeon."
Fair.
We reached the small park near my apartment. I sat on a bench. The moment I did, the bench under me briefly turned into a loading screen, then back into a bench.
The white card in my pocket pulsed.
You're leaking, it said.
"I noticed."
At 2% it's only small things. Background objects. Minor NPCs. The world can still pretend everything is fine.
"And at 3%?"
People start noticing.
Great.
A kid ran past chasing a ball. The ball suddenly split into two identical balls for half a second, then merged again. The kid didn't even blink.
Tony floated in front of my face.
"We should go back inside."
"And do what? Stare at the walls until the percentage goes higher anyway?"
"Yes."
I leaned back on the bench and stared at the sky. The cracks were still there if you knew how to look. Faint. Like scars that hadn't finished healing.
My debug panel opened on its own again.
> [Passive Leak Report]
> Minor reality distortions: 17
> Sentient objects affected: 3
> Pigeons with unauthorized dialogue: 1
> System response: Monitoring
I rubbed my eyes.
"Tony."
"Yeah?"
"If I hit 3% in public, what happens?"
Tony was quiet for a moment.
Then he said, very seriously:
"I think the System stops sending pizza delivery spies… and starts sending something that doesn't bother pretending to be human."
The card in my pocket felt colder.
He's not wrong.
I stood up.
"Okay. New plan. We go home. We lock the door. And we try very hard not to exist loudly for the next twenty-four hours."
Tony already looked exhausted.
"You say that every time."
"And one day I'll mean it."
We started walking back.
Behind us, the bench I had been sitting on quietly turned into a small wooden sign that read:
Zeke was here –2.0%
Then it turned back into a bench before anyone else could see it.
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