I didn't start by looking for people.
That would have been a mistake.
People lie.
They improvise.
They react when they're watched.
Systems don't.
I sat near the window of the inn with a cup of cheap coffee cooling in my hands. Outside, the town woke up in fragments—shutters opening, delivery trucks idling, someone sweeping water off a storefront like yesterday still mattered.
I watched without staring.
The panel hovered briefly in my vision.
Sanity: 0%
It didn't move.
Didn't flicker.
Didn't acknowledge me.
I let it fade.
Nola lay near my feet, half-awake, pretending not to watch me while watching me anyway. She didn't ask questions. She hadn't since last night.
I wasn't planning.
I was tracing.
The encrypted site was still open on my phone—not the videos, not the footage. I avoided those. Instead, I scrolled through discussion threads, logistics posts, fragments of conversation that no one thought mattered.
Supply schedules.
Meeting delays.
Route changes.
Different usernames.
Same phrasing.
"Efficiency first."
"Necessary losses."
"Clean outcomes."
The words repeated too often to be coincidence.
That's how systems expose themselves—not through intent, but through vocabulary.
I copied nothing.
Saved nothing.
I just remembered.
The Hunters—no, the military units pretending to be hunters—didn't move randomly. They reused infrastructure. Old warehouses. Decommissioned clinics. Temporary shelters that stopped being temporary.
They favored places where no one stayed long enough to ask questions.
I closed the site and leaned back.
Outside, a man laughed loudly at nothing. Someone else yelled about change being short. Life continued in pieces, ignorant and stubborn.
Good.
I didn't need names yet.
Names came later.
What mattered were patterns.
They rotated teams every three to four operations. Never the same pair twice. They staggered leave schedules to prevent bonding. They rewarded speed, not confirmation.
No rituals.
No reflection.
Just throughput.
That told me more than any confession ever could.
I stood and left the inn without checking out.
The street was busier now. I walked with the flow, not against it, letting my pace dissolve into everyone else's. Nola stayed hidden. For once, her silence felt deliberate.
We passed a closed building with fresh locks on an old door.
Then another.
Then a third.
Different neighborhoods. Same hardware.
Same contractor.
I stopped across the street from one of them and pretended to check my phone.
Nothing happened.
No guards.
No movement.
That was the point.
They weren't hiding from attack.
They were hiding from attention.
I moved on.
By the time the sun reached its highest point, I had nothing concrete.
No targets.
No faces.
No blood.
Just threads.
Loose, overlapping, patient threads.
Behind me, the world kept moving.
Ahead of me, something inevitable was taking shape—not because I forced it, but because it already existed.
I wasn't hunting yet.
I was learning how they breathed.
And for now—
That was enough.
Getting close was easier than I expected.
That was the first problem.
I found him by accident—or at least, that's what it looked like from the outside. A coffee shop near a transit hub. Too busy to linger, too forgettable to remember. The kind of place people passed through without attaching meaning.
He sat alone near the window.
Late twenties. Maybe early thirties. Clean clothes. Nothing expensive. A jacket that had seen use but not neglect. He stirred his coffee absentmindedly while scrolling through his phone, brows slightly furrowed like he was reading something mildly annoying.
Not urgent.
Not guilty.
Just… occupied.
I took a seat two tables away.
Nola stayed hidden. I didn't need her instincts for this. I needed my own to stay quiet.
The panel didn't appear.
I ordered coffee I didn't want and let it cool untouched. The noise around us filled the space—cups clinking, a barista calling out names, someone laughing too loudly at a joke that wasn't funny.
He checked his watch.
Then his phone.
Then relaxed again.
Waiting.
I noticed small things.
The way he positioned himself so the window stayed in his peripheral vision. The way his hand never fully left the table when he scrolled, like he was ready to move if needed. The faint tension in his shoulders that never quite went away.
Not fear.
Habit.
He wasn't on edge.
He was trained.
A woman sat across from him a few minutes later. Casual. Familiar. They exchanged a few quiet words. No smiles. No handshakes. Just confirmation.
She left first.
He waited exactly three minutes before standing.
I followed at a distance.
Not because I was careful.
Because I didn't need to be.
He walked like someone who knew no one was chasing him. That kind of confidence only comes from repetition. From knowing the rules and trusting them to hold.
We crossed two streets. Passed a playground. Children ran past us, shouting, shoes slapping against concrete. He didn't look at them.
I did.
He entered an apartment building with a working security camera and a broken intercom. I waited until the door swung shut behind him, then kept walking.
That was enough.
I didn't need his name.
I didn't need proof.
I knew now what mattered.
He lived here.
Not hiding.
Not fleeing.
Existing.
I stopped at the corner and leaned against a railing, pretending to scroll through my phone. My reflection stared back at me in the darkened screen.
Killing him would have been easy.
Not here. Not now. But soon.
And that was the second problem.
Because watching him walk away, coffee still warm in his hand, life intact and ordinary—
I felt nothing.
No anger.
No urgency.
No satisfaction.
Just a quiet understanding.
This wasn't about monsters.
It was about people who learned how to make cruelty routine.
I pushed myself off the railing and turned in the opposite direction.
Not retreating.
Just… not acting.
Yet.
I didn't follow him again.
That wasn't restraint.
That was necessity.
Following the same person twice creates shape. Shape creates memory. Memory invites questions. I didn't need questions yet.
So I widened the circle.
I started with addresses.
Not exact ones—clusters. Buildings that shared contractors. Clinics that changed signage too often. Storage units paid in short cycles, always renewed early, never late.
The kind of places that existed to be forgotten.
I walked past one in the afternoon, sunlight bleaching the paint until the walls looked newer than they were. A handwritten sign was taped to the door.
TEMPORARILY CLOSED
A lie.
They always were.
Across the street, a woman sat on the curb with two grocery bags, arguing softly into her phone. A child tugged at her sleeve, impatient. She hushed him without looking, eyes tired, voice thin.
They didn't notice the building.
Why would they?
Nothing loud had ever happened there.
That was the point.
I kept walking.
Later, I found a different place. This one was active. Not overtly—no guards, no signs. Just movement that didn't match the hour. People arriving alone, leaving alone. Never together.
I sat on a bench and waited.
A man came out carrying a paper bag. He was smiling. Talking to someone on the phone, voice light.
"Yeah," he said. "I'll be home soon."
Home.
I watched him disappear into traffic.
I imagined the line if I acted now.
One death.
Then the questions.
Then the search.
Then the sweep.
Buildings sealed.
Neighbors interviewed.
Cameras reviewed.
People who had nothing to do with it pulled into light they didn't ask for.
Collateral didn't start after the kill.
It started before.
I stood and moved on.
The pattern repeated.
One of them lived above a bakery. The smell of bread drifted out onto the street every morning. Customers lined up, joking, complaining about prices, pretending the world was smaller than it was.
Another volunteered on weekends. Community cleanup. Gloves. Trash bags. Photos posted online with captions about giving back.
It wasn't hypocrisy.
That was the worst part.
They didn't see a contradiction.
They compartmentalized.
Monster there.
Life here.
Clean lines. Clean hands.
I realized then what killing one of them would do.
It wouldn't end anything.
It would tighten their formation.
Sharpen their language.
Improve their efficiency.
It would give them proof.
Not that they were wrong—
But that they were necessary.
The thought sat heavy in my chest.
The panel didn't appear.
Sanity stayed where it was.
I went back to the inn as the sky darkened, footsteps steady, mind quiet in a way that felt earned rather than empty.
Nola greeted me at the door, stretching, yawning wide enough to show all her teeth.
"You smell like thinking," she said.
I didn't answer.
I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at my hands.
I could kill them.
I still could.
But now I knew what would survive them.
And that made the waiting harder.