The alarms didn't stop, they just slid into a note too low for human ears, like the building decided to sigh instead of scream. Somewhere overhead, blast doors remembered how to be polite again.
We're still in the sublevel gallery. The chamber below is wide open, lights dimmed to "embarrassed." The shard (bone that learned how to glow) sits back in its cradle, red cooled to a coal that's pretending to be asleep. It's not. It's watching me the way a cat watches the exact spot you're about to sit.
Mara keeps her hand on my shoulder a second longer than strictly necessary. "Blink, kid. You're trying to win a staring contest with physics?"
I blink. The world snaps back into focus, edges sharp again.
Kwan is practically vibrating against the glass, eyes shining like a kid who just saw Santa commit war crimes. Sato and Rey are half-turned toward the corridor, half-turned toward me, doing that soldier thing where they guard everything at once.
"What'd we learn?" Mara asks, still not looking at Kwan.
Kwan makes a noise like his brain just blue-screened and rebooted happy. "We learned the subject—Ryo—can modulate—"
"Ryo," Mara corrects, soft but final.
"—Ryo can bend proximity fields without physical contact. The component literally tuned itself to his bio-signature and—"
Sato coughs once, polite but loud enough to chamber a round.
Kwan flaps his hands. "He told space to sit down and shut up. A little. Enough."
I don't remember telling space anything. I just picked the line that didn't end with the building folding in on itself. "It wanted to meet halfway," I say. "I wanted your ceiling to stay a ceiling."
Mara's mouth does the tiniest twitch (relief wearing sarcasm like cheap cologne). "You managed both by the width of a cigarette paper. My lunch is officially ruined."
She finally lets go of my shoulder. The spot she was touching feels colder than the rest of me. "We're moving him," she tells the room like the room just got promoted. Somewhere a comm chirps the special officer-only yes-ma'am tone.
"Surface transit to a secure site.
"Which site?" Kwan blurts, too eager. "Because the Array has—"
"'Should' is above your pay grade," Mara says. "You get 'maybe later.'"
Kwan looks like someone just told him Christmas is postponed indefinitely. "At least let me put telemetry patches on him for the ride."
Mara glances at my wrists. The cuffs are lying open on the bed like they lost a bet. She hates that they might've been right. "No needles," she says. "No toys that bite."
Kwan holds up a little case. "Two stickers. Passive. I swear on the gorgeous head of whoever built that shard."
The red inside me purrs at the word built, like it's flattered.
Mara reads my face like subtitles. "Your call, Ryo."
"I can live with stickers," I say. "If they try to sip me, I'll bite back."
Kwan's grin is pure sugar rush. The patches are cold, then warm, then part of me. A faint grid lights up behind my eyes—city lights seen from a plane I'm not on.
We move.
Surface transit = fancy windowless box on wheels. Sato drives like the road personally owes him money. Rey rides shotgun, pretending he's not listening. Kwan sits behind us cradling his case like a newborn. I get the whole back bench and the weird honor of being cargo everybody's scared to drop.
Mara watches me in the reflection of the reinforced glass. City lights smear past like someone else's night.
"How you holding?" she asks.
"Too many choices," I say.
"Get in line."
I lift my hand. The new overlay brightens—lampposts, shadows, every possible route drawn in ghost lines. It's like those math problems where every path costs the same steps but different shoes. Except the shoes are memories.
"When the red talks loud," I say, "every path has a price tag."
"What currency?" Rey asks before he remembers rank.
"Memories," I say. "Chlorine. Apple shampoo. Someone laughing over dishes. Little stuff that used to hold the big stuff up."
Sato's knuckles go white on the wheel. "What happens when the scaffolding's gone?"
"Then the big stuff learns to stand on its own," I say, and surprise myself by meaning it.
We drop into the old river tunnel. Tires hum different against concrete. The overlay stretches like taffy. My teeth buzz.
"We've got company," I say.
Mara doesn't ask how I know. "Kwan?"
He's already glued to his tablet. "External field spike. Someone laid a prism net—tunnel's longer than it should be."
"Translation," Sato growls.
"We're in a fun-house mirror made of physics."
The lights ahead double, then quadruple, reflections that aren't reflections. The overlay fractures into polite lies.
Then the figures step out of the reflections.
Matte-black suits, masks shaped like arrowheads. No logos. Either black-budget or new religion (sometimes the same thing).
Sato floors it. "Hold on."
First arrowhead raises something that looks like a harpoon gun designed by someone who hates joy. I see every possible trajectory at once. None of them good.
What are you willing to forget?
"Not the important stuff," I mutter, and reach—not with hands, with the part of me that's been practicing.
The harpoon's path kinks like string yanked by an invisible hand. It screams off the hood and explodes into glass webbing that catches two arrowheads instead of us.
Payment: the memory of my own handwriting flaking away like old paint. I know I can write. I just can't picture the shape of my own name anymore. Small price. Hurts anyway.
Sato slaloms through the mess like he's done this in worse traffic. More harpoons cough. Mara leans out the window and returns fire with the calm of someone ordering coffee. Two arrowheads drop.
One harpoon bites the rear quarter panel and yanks us sideways into the wall like a bad dance partner. Metal screams. We stop.
"Out!" Mara barks.
Doors pop. Cold tunnel air slaps us. Sato moves like a fridge that learned parkour. Rey stumbles but keeps his feet. Kwan clutches his case like it's his emotional support data.
The arrowheads close in, stepping out of reflections that shouldn't exist.
Mara shouts, "Who the hell are you?"
Voice comes back warped, like bad voicemail. "Quality assurance."
Mara shoots him in the leg. "Wrong answer."
I feel the red rise. I could split us—make mirror versions that last long enough to confuse. Price would be bigger.
Mara catches my eye. "Whatever you're thinking, I'm in."
I don't ask how she knows. I just include her in the math.
Reality hiccups.
Suddenly there's two of each of us running opposite walls. The arrowheads shoot the wrong set. I hold the fakes long enough to sell the lie, then let them pop like soap bubbles.
We duck into a side maintenance corridor that definitely wasn't on any map until my foot needed it.
We climb.
The red is singing now, greedy. Behind us, the arrowheads peel themselves out of mirrors like nightmares that read the employee handbook.
We burst up into an old market hall—glass everywhere, skylights, cases, mirrors on every surface. The overlay goes berserk, too many reflections arguing about who's real.
"Can't fight here," Mara says.
"We won't," I say. "We bend."
I step into the middle and raise my hand like I'm asking the universe to hush.
Every piece of glass listens.
For one long heartbeat the market shows a dozen versions of the city: burning, frozen, empty, full of snow that never fell. The arrowheads grab reflections and come up with handfuls of nowhere.
We run through the gap I just carved.
We spill out two blocks away under a sad startup sign that used to be a bank. Night air tastes like freedom and exhaust.
Mara's hand lands on my shoulder again, deliberate. "You okay?"
"I forgot how I write my own name," I say.
She squeezes once. "Then I'll sign the forms till you invent a new one."
Rey's voice cracks. "Who were those guys?"
"Due diligence," Sato spits.
"Or someone who thinks oversight needs a ski mask," Mara adds.
Kwan is half laughing, half crying. "You weaponized counterfactual branching. Do you know how—"
"Yeah," I cut in. "I paid the receipt."
The overlay flickers again. Words appear on a shutter across the street, glowing soft, in handwriting I don't recognize but feels like home.
DO NOT GO TO THE ARRAY.
Underneath, a PS:
IF YOU LOVE HER, TURN LEFT.
Mara reads it over my shoulder because of course she does. "Friend of yours?"
"Future me, apparently," I say. My voice is weirdly steady. "Being dramatic."
The red purrs, interested.
Sato eyes the dark alley the message points to. "We picking?"
Mara steps back, giving me the whole street like it's a gift. "Your call."
The hunger whispers its favorite question.
I look at Mara. At the cut turning into a scar. At the way she's still standing between me and everything that wants a piece.
"Don't die," I tell her.
"Then don't make me," she says.
I turn left.
The alley smells like rain that changed its mind. At the far end something waits wearing my face but smiling like it's been practicing in the mirror a lot longer than I have.
"Hey," it says in my voice, warm and terrible. "Took you long enough."
The red under my ribs finally stands up and says hello back.
And the mirror reaches for me through the place where distance is just a suggestion.