The first scream didn't startle anyone.
It blended into the city's background noise — traffic, shouting vendors, impatient horns.
That was why it mattered.
Arav felt it before he heard it properly.
A sudden shear in the air, like fabric pulled too tight finally tearing.
He stopped in the middle of the street.
"No," he whispered. "Not here."
The crowd outside the metro exit was dense, restless, overheated.
A train delay.
No explanation.
Announcements looping without information.
Pressure.
Old-style pressure — the kind Arav used to recognize instantly.
But this time, something was wrong.
The pressure wasn't building.
It was trapped.
Held down so hard it had nowhere to go.
Ira pushed through the crowd beside him.
"You feel it?"
"Yes," Arav said. "They're suppressing too aggressively."
Tiku swallowed. "That sounds… bad."
"It is," Arav replied. "It means they're afraid of something breaking."
As if summoned by the thought, the lights flickered.
Not off.
Not on.
Just… uneven.
People murmured.
Phones came out.
Then a man near the platform edge laughed.
Once.
Too loud.
Too sharp.
He clutched his head, laughter warping into something close to sobbing.
Arav's breath hitched.
That wasn't fear.
That was interpretive collapse.
"Move," Arav said, already stepping forward.
Ira grabbed his arm.
"You're restricted."
"I know."
The system didn't warn him.
That terrified him.
Arav placed his hand against the tiled wall.
He didn't ground.
He didn't redirect.
He listened.
The pressure screamed back at him — misaligned, over-compressed, fractured.
Too much containment.
Too little release.
The man's shadow peeled away from his feet.
Not fully.
Just enough.
A ripple ran through the crowd as people noticed.
Someone shouted.
Someone ran.
Phones tilted upward.
The frame was slipping.
Inside Arav's head, the system reacted — too late.
Containment Failure Detected
Cause: Over-Suppression
Public Exposure Risk: Escalating
Arav pushed.
Not hard.
Precisely.
The shadow snapped back into place.
The man collapsed, unconscious but breathing.
Silence fell — heavy, stunned.
People stared.
They had seen something.
Not clearly.
But clearly enough.
Sirens wailed immediately.
Too immediately.
Containment teams moved in with rehearsed calm.
"Medical emergency," someone announced.
"Please clear the area."
But the crowd didn't move right away.
They hesitated.
They looked at each other.
Comparing.
Remembering.
Ira's hands were shaking.
"They saw it," she whispered. "They really saw it."
Arav felt cold spread through his chest.
"Yes," he said. "And this time, they won't forget."
Later, footage circulated.
Blurry.
Inconclusive.
But unmistakable.
A shadow behaving incorrectly.
A man laughing and crying at the same time.
A crowd reacting before being told how.
The system framed it as stress.
As lighting malfunction.
As hysteria.
But the comments didn't settle.
They questioned.
They argued.
They compared memories.
The fracture widened.
That night, Devavrata Rathod closed his eyes when the report ended.
"That's it," he said softly. "The restraint phase is over."
Rudra Dhawan watched the same footage twice.
He smiled.
"Too late," he murmured. "Now it's real."
Arav stood alone on the rooftop, city lights flickering below.
The pressure behind his eyes lingered — not pain.
Awareness.
He understood now.
Restriction wasn't a shield.
It was a bet.
And that bet had just failed in public.
Whatever came next wouldn't be quiet.
It wouldn't be deniable.
And it wouldn't wait for clearance.