The city is trying so hard to act normal it hurts to watch.
Morning traffic crawls like nothing happened. Coffee ads loop on every screen. A kid on the subway is filming a dance trend while the train speakers play the same three-second jingle on repeat, like the algorithm got stuck in a polite panic.
But underneath, the city remembers.
Streetlights stay green a half-second too long.
Shadows are a little too sharp.
Every reflection hesitates, like it's waiting for permission to match the original.
Ryo walks beside Mara along the elevated service road, hands in his pockets, pin quiet in his pocket for once. The sky is that washed-out corporate blue that makes you think the world was designed by a committee.
Sato and Rey trail a few steps back, pretending they're not bodyguarding.
"Central's calling it a geomagnetic bloom," Sato mutters. "Minor. Localized."
Rey snorts. "Localized where? My left sock?"
"Both," Ryo says.
They all look at him.
"It's not a place," he says. "It's a direction. Everything's pointing the same way now."
Mara's jaw does that tiny flex. "Keep walking."
They do.
The city hums like a prayer nobody taught it the words to.
—
Corner of Dresden and 14th: an empty bus parked diagonal, hazards blinking like it's apologizing. A detergent billboard shows a smiling family with one too many fingers if you actually count.
A girl in a yellow raincoat is filming the only one not pretending. She's filming the sky, whispering, "You guys feel that too, right?" Her friend laughs the laugh you laugh when you're trying not to cry.
Ryo feels it.
Not sound.
A tug.
Like someone tied a string to his ribs and is gently reminding him it's still there.
—
They hole up in a substation break room that smells like burnt dust and someone else's lunch. Kwan's face pops up on the cracked wall screen, looking like he slept in a particle accelerator.
"Quick update," he says, vibrating. "Everything that wants to move is pointing the same direction."
Sato folds his arms. "Direction?"
Kwan points straight at Ryo like a compass needle that learned shame.
Ryo rubs the spot under his ribs. The hum is quiet, almost shy. "It's not me," he says. "I'm just the reference point."
"Reference for what?" Rey asks.
"Return," Ryo says, and the word tastes like someone else's name.
Mara leans on the table. "So the city's trying to phone home, and you're the only number it remembers."
"Pretty much."
—
They walk because driving feels like tempting fate today.
In an alley, yesterday's newspapers are stacked neat, ink bleeding upward like it's trying to crawl back into the printer. A salaryman stands frozen outside a florist, head cocked, listening to music only he can hear. When Sato says "Sir?" the guy blinks, startled, and starts crying without knowing why.
A traffic light cycles green-yellow-red, but the shadows go red-yellow-green, like reality's running the tape backward.
Kwan's voice in their earpieces: "Vector fall. It's contagious. One thing chooses a direction, everything else copies."
Mara doesn't slow. "Fix?"
"Anchors," Kwan says. "Strong local vectors to re-align the small stuff."
"Where?"
Long, guilty pause.
"You're really not gonna like it."
—
They end up exactly where they swore they'd never go again: the public square where Ryo killed the first scout.
The city slapped a bandage on it: fresh concrete, baby trees in boxes, a brass plaque that says WE STOOD. AND WE WILL AGAIN.
Ryo stands on the exact spot he pulled the pin that day. The air tastes like licking a battery.
The seam isn't visible.
Until you know how to look.
Then it's a hairline crack in the sky only the part of your eye that still believes in monsters can see.
Crowds are already gathering—phones out, curious, scared, drawn like moths to light they hope isn't fire.
Mara scans them. "No rifles," she tells Sato. Meaning: don't scare the civilians into stampeding.
Rey kneels by the plaque, setting down four little humming discs.
Kwan in their ears: "Resonate low and the fall pours into you. Resonate flat and it slides around. We need narrow."
"Narrow how?" Ryo asks.
"Pick one thing to be," Kwan says.
Mara, quieter: "Pick a line, not a place."
Ryo closes his eyes.
The city shrinks to arrows: people wanting to run, glass wanting to hold shape, shadows wanting to stay attached.
He picks the only line that starts inside his chest and points outward into nothing.
The pin wakes up, warm, ready.
Rey: "Anchors hot."
Mara: "Do it."
The note rises.
—
It starts small.
Exhaust from a bus curls the wrong way and follows the line like smoke looking for a chimney. A paper cup spins once to face the wrong-north. A shadow peels off someone's shoe and takes one curious step before remembering manners.
Then the fountain in the middle of the square lifts in one perfect sheet and just… hangs there.
A woman screams and can't stop, like the sound got stuck on repeat.
The seam opens—clean, thin, polite.
Something steps through.
Not a harrower. Bigger. Smoother. It carries emptiness the way a parent carries a sleeping kid.
Mara's hand finds her sidearm but doesn't draw. "Positions."
Sato plants himself between the thing and the crowd. Rey's thumb hovers over buttons. Kwan is praying in numbers.
The carrier turns its blank face toward Ryo and waits.
"Return," it says. Voice like a door closing in another room.
"No," Ryo answers.
It tilts its head. "Define no."
The anchors scream. The plaque splits clean between WE and STOOD.
Everything starts sliding toward the seam—shadows, light, sound, the edges of people's fear.
Mara's voice, low: "Ryo."
He lifts the pin.
Not at the carrier.
At the ground between them.
"Anchor," he says.
The note tightens to a wire.
Everything that was falling suddenly remembers how to be still.
The carrier waits.
Ryo feels the question land like a hand on his shoulder.
Wait for what?
"For me," he says, and hates how right it feels.
—
It doesn't last forever.
The mountain (whatever's behind the curtain) decides waiting is boring. The seam starts closing.
The fountain remembers gravity and crashes down, soaking everyone.
The carrier is just gone.
The plaque now reads WE STO.
People start breathing again and pretend they never stopped.
Mara stands in the puddle, staring at nothing.
"We're gonna get a call," she says.
Kwan's laugh is half a sob. "We're gonna get twelve."
Sato brushes water off the cracked plaque. "We stood," he says quietly. "We're still standing."
Rey sits on the curb because his legs finally won.
Ryo looks at his hand.
The pin is just warm now. Present.
He feels the tug again—gentle, curious.
Return?
He closes his fist around it.
"Define later," he tells the sky.
For once, the sky doesn't argue.
—
In the van ride back, Mara watches him in the rearview.
"What line did you pick?" she asks.
"Out," he says.
"Out where?"
He thinks about the cursor blinking behind his ribs.
"Past the version of me that says yes too easy."
She lets that sit for a block.
"And when it asks again?"
He turns the pin over in his fingers.
"I'll answer," he says. "But it's gonna cost."
Mara doesn't tell him to be careful.
She just nods, like she already put his name on the receipt.
The van takes a corner that used to be sharper. The skyline leans and then regrets it.
They drive under a billboard where the detergent family smiles with the correct number of fingers again.
For now.