# Chapter 5 — **Practice Without Witnesses**
Elias led me through Meridian like he was avoiding more than cameras.
He kept us off main streets—not because they were watched (everything was watched) but because the *watchers* there were trained. Transit guards knew which calls to escalate. Clockhouse security knew what a clerk looked like when their reserve was bleeding. On main streets, the city's attention moved in straight lines.
Elias preferred crooked ones.
We cut through a service alley that smelled of fryer oil and ozone, crossed under a skybridge where an ad-screen played a smiling family buying "ten more years" with a signature, and entered a narrow passage between two buildings that looked like it had been designed by someone who hated sunlight.
My phone stayed silent.
That scared me more than the vibrations.
Silence was what happened right before the ledger decided to stop nudging and start collecting.
"How far?" I asked.
Elias didn't look back. "Not far."
"That's not an answer."
He finally glanced over his shoulder. His eyes were sharp, but there was a faint smear to his focus, like the world was lagging half a beat behind him.
"You want numbers," he said.
"I want a plan."
Elias's mouth tightened. "Plans are what they punish."
We turned into an old commercial block where half the storefronts were shuttered. Time-loan offices had moved to richer districts years ago; down here people borrowed in private. The signs that remained were mostly faded warnings and municipal notices no one obeyed.
Elias stopped in front of a door that didn't belong to anything. No sign. No business name. Just a gray slab with a mechanical knob and a peephole covered by tape.
He knocked once.
Then twice.
Then a pause.
Then once more.
The door opened a crack.
A woman's face appeared—late forties, hair clipped short, eyes like a clerk's: tired but precise. She looked at Elias, then at me, then at Elias again.
"Rowe," she said.
Elias exhaled like he'd been holding his breath for three blocks. "Toma."
"I told you not to bring work here," she said.
Elias's jaw tightened. "He's not work."
Toma's gaze pinned me. "Then what is he?"
I swallowed. "A problem."
Toma snorted. "Finally. Honesty."
She opened the door wider and stepped aside.
"Two rules," she said as we entered. "No names inside. No devices on the table. If something speaks to you, you don't speak back—out loud or in your head."
I froze. "You—"
"I know," Toma said flatly. "Sit."
The place was a workshop that pretended to be storage. Shelves of spare parts. Coils of cable. A few battered chairs. A table scarred with old cuts and burn marks. The air smelled like solder and tea.
It was mundane enough to be safe.
It was safe enough to be a trap.
Elias shut the door and locked it with three turns.
Only then did I realize how much he'd been holding himself together by motion. The moment he stopped moving, his shoulders sagged slightly.
Toma watched him with a look that carried history and irritation.
"You're leaking," she said.
Elias wiped under his nose again. No fresh blood, but the skin looked raw. "I'm fine."
Toma made a sound that wasn't quite a laugh. "You're never fine."
She turned to me. "Phone."
I hesitated.
Toma held out her hand, palm up, like a tax collector. "Now."
I pulled my phone out and handed it over.
Toma didn't turn it on. She didn't scroll. She didn't even glance at the screen. She walked to a metal box bolted to the wall—an old equipment safe—and dropped my phone inside.
Then she shut the door and spun the dial.
"Faraday," Elias said when he saw my expression.
I swallowed. "That works?"
"It works on radio," Toma said. "Not on belief."
She poured tea into two chipped cups without asking if I wanted any.
I sat, hands clasped, trying not to shake.
Elias didn't sit. He paced once, then stopped, then paced again like he couldn't decide whether the room was safe enough for stillness.
Toma watched him until he finally snapped.
"Say it," he said.
Toma didn't blink. "You shouldn't have brought him here."
"He needs a place to practice," Elias replied.
Toma's gaze slid to me. "Practice what?"
I swallowed. "Misfiling."
Toma's expression didn't change. That alone told me she'd heard the word before.
"You did it," she said to Elias. Not a question.
Elias's mouth tightened. "He did it."
Toma looked back at me. "With what?"
I hesitated. "A maintenance node."
Toma nodded once, approving despite herself. "Boring systems are the easiest to lie to. They're built to accept nonsense and reconcile later."
Her eyes sharpened. "What did you tell it?"
I remembered Elias's instruction. Log it. Repeat it.
"Administrative Delay. Pending," I said quietly.
Toma held my gaze for a beat too long. Then she looked away, as if the phrase tasted like metal.
"That'll get you killed if you think it's a spell," she said.
"I don't," I said. "It's… formatting."
Toma's mouth twitched. "Clerk answer."
Elias finally sat, heavily, as if choosing the chair cost him. "He's a clerk," he said. "It's all he has."
"It's more than most," Toma replied.
She moved to the table and set down a battered ledger book—paper, thick, old-fashioned. Its cover was stained and warped from moisture.
"Open," she told me.
I hesitated again, then did it.
The pages were filled with handwriting. Columns. Dates. Item codes. Short notes like: *STATIC works better near transit.* *NULL breaks after 3 uses.* *Don't do pending twice in same hour.*
It was a manual written by people who didn't want to die.
My throat tightened. "You… keep your own ledger."
Toma's eyes were cold. "The city lies. I prefer mine."
Elias rubbed his face. "Teach him the basics."
Toma's gaze snapped to Elias. "You teach him. You started this."
Elias went still.
For a moment, the room felt smaller.
He lowered his hand from his face. "I didn't start the ledger," he said.
"No," Toma replied. "You started dragging other people into it."
Silence stretched.
I understood then that Elias wasn't just a catalyst in the plot sense. He was a catalyst in the chemical sense: something that made reactions happen faster, messier, and with less control.
I cleared my throat. "What is this place?"
Toma's gaze slid to me again. "A shop."
"That's not—"
"A shop," she repeated, and the force of the repetition made it a boundary. "We repair things. We sell things. People come here when they want their devices to last longer than the warranties. That's the public story."
"And the real one?" I asked.
Toma's eyes didn't soften. "The real one is that we don't let the city watch us think."
Elias leaned forward. "You said you wanted to blaze your own path," he said to me. "Here's the first step: build a method that doesn't depend on me."
My chest tightened. "I didn't say I depend on you."
Elias's expression was tired. "You grabbed my sleeve back there like I was a door out of drowning."
The embarrassment burned, sharp and hot.
Toma set her tea down and tapped the ledger book with a finger. "Start with definitions. If you can't define the threat, you'll worship it."
I swallowed. "Okay."
Toma leaned back. "What do you think Authority is?"
I hesitated. Words mattered.
"A classification engine," I said slowly. "Not human. Something that—when it can label you cleanly—can take action without friction. Like the ledger, but… embodied."
Elias's eyes narrowed. He looked almost impressed.
Toma nodded. "Good. Next: what do you think misfiling does?"
"It inserts ambiguity," I said. "Not random. Structured ambiguity. Something that looks like an internal process—pending, delay, manual resolution—so the system flags it instead of closing it."
Toma's gaze sharpened. "And why does that matter?"
Because it buys time. Because it creates an argument inside the machine.
But I realized that wasn't the deepest answer.
"It forces the system to spend effort," I said. "It can't close me without reconciling contradictions. And reconciliation takes time."
Toma's mouth twitched again. This time it looked like approval.
Elias exhaled through his nose. "Then you understand the goal."
"What goal?" I asked.
Elias's eyes met mine. "You don't win by overpowering it. You win by becoming too expensive to process."
The sentence lodged in my chest, heavy.
Too expensive to process.
Like a case no one wanted to touch because it would ruin their day. Like a file that got moved from desk to desk until the deadline passed. Like bureaucracy turned into armor.
I looked down at the ledger book. "How?"
Toma pushed the book closer. "You build a taxonomy of wrongness."
"A what?"
"A set of misfiles," Toma said, patient in the way you're patient with someone you don't expect to survive. "Not one phrase. Not one trick. A catalog. You pick based on context."
Elias added, "And you keep the costs small. Misfiles have prices. Your brain will pay them."
My throat tightened. "Blur."
Toma nodded once. "Blur."
The word made my scalp prickle.
I thought of my reserve. Twenty-seven years. Four months. Ten days. Then less. Then an unknown countdown I'd refused to read.
"Okay," I said quietly. "Then teach me how to do it safely."
Toma laughed—short, sharp. "Safely."
She stood, walked to a shelf, and pulled down a small case. Inside were rolls of receipt paper, stamps, and a cheap thermal printer.
She set it in front of me.
"We start with a toy," she said.
Elias's jaw tightened. "Toma—"
"Let me," she snapped, then softened by a fraction. "You're slipping. If you teach him like you taught yourself, you'll both end up quiet."
Elias went still again.
That word—quiet—hung between them like a shared grave.
Toma turned back to me. "Put your hand on the table," she said.
I did.
"Now," she continued, "think of your name."
My chest tightened.
Toma's gaze sharpened. "Don't say it. Think it."
I did.
Instantly, pressure gathered behind my eyes, faint but present—like the ledger had leaned in.
Toma nodded as if she'd expected it. "Good. That's your anchor. Your name is a hook."
My throat tightened. "So I… avoid thinking it."
"You can't," Toma said. "The harder you avoid, the louder you become. Avoidance is a pattern."
She tapped the table twice with one finger. "Instead, you give it competing anchors. You flood the form."
I frowned. "Flood?"
Toma slid a blank receipt strip toward me. "Write three identities. Not names. Roles."
I hesitated, then wrote:
- Maintenance contractor
- Transit runner
- Citizen under review
Toma nodded. "Now hold them in your head at once."
I tried.
My skull tightened, confused. The pressure didn't spike; it smeared.
Toma's eyes narrowed. "Feel that?"
"Yes," I whispered. "It's… fuzzier."
"Because the system likes one label," Toma said. "Multiple labels make it spend effort choosing."
Elias, from the chair, murmured, "Don't do that too long."
Toma shot him a look. "He won't. Not yet."
She leaned closer to me. "Now we do the same thing, but with a procedural wrapper. Choose one phrase that implies internal delay."
"Administrative Delay. Pending," I said.
Toma shook her head once. "Not that. Not twice in the same day."
My stomach dropped. "Why?"
"Because repetition makes a signature," Toma said. "Signatures get learned."
I swallowed. "Then what?"
Toma tapped the ledger book and flipped to a page of headings:
- **Manual Reconciliation**
- **Duplicate Ticket**
- **Routing Error**
- **Provisional Entry**
- **Index Mismatch**
"Pick one," she said. "One that fits this place."
I looked around. A workshop. Devices. Repairs. Receipts.
"Routing error," I said.
Toma nodded. "Good. Now form it."
I inhaled, slow.
In my mind: **Routing Error. Forward to Transit Ops.**
Pressure gathered behind my eyes. I held the thought steady—not dramatic, not emotional. Just flat, clerk-like.
The pressure wavered.
Toma watched me closely. "Now stop."
I let the thought go instantly, like releasing a hot wire.
The pressure eased, leaving a faint hollow in my head.
Toma exhaled. "Good. You can start and stop. That matters more than strength."
My hands were trembling. I hated that I was proud of myself for controlling a thought.
"What did that do?" I asked.
"It did nothing," Toma replied. "That was practice. You're learning the feel of the stamp."
Elias rubbed his temple. "And learning what it costs."
I swallowed. "What did it cost?"
Toma's eyes stayed on me. "Tell me a memory from this morning."
I blinked. "What?"
"Before the Clockhouse," she said. "Something small."
I opened my mouth—and nothing came.
I remembered waking up. I remembered the elevator. I remembered Elias and the tunnels.
But between waking and the Clockhouse, there was a gap like a missing receipt.
My throat went tight. "I—"
Toma's expression remained flat. "That's blur. Not a lot. A scrape. It gets worse if you push."
I stared at the table, nausea rising.
Elias's voice was quiet now. "That's why you log. Paper doesn't blur the way minds do."
I forced myself to breathe. "So I lost… a piece of the morning."
Toma nodded. "And you didn't even complete an action. Just invoked the feel."
My skin crawled.
This wasn't power.
This was bargaining with the integrity of my own mind.
I gripped the edge of the table. "Then how does anyone get stronger?"
Toma leaned back. "Some people don't. They die at spark-level. Some people pay. Some people find cleaner methods outside Meridian."
Outside.
The word hit me like wind.
"There are other cities," I said.
Toma's gaze sharpened. "Yes."
"And other tiers," I said carefully, testing the phrase.
Elias's jaw tightened as if the word itself was bait.
Toma answered instead. "Other systems. Other hierarchies. Meridian likes to pretend it invented everything worth fearing. It didn't."
My chest tightened. "Tier Seven."
Elias flinched—subtle, but real.
Toma's eyes narrowed. "Don't chase myths."
"I'm not," I said. "I'm trying to understand the map."
Toma studied me for a moment, then nodded once. "Good answer."
Elias exhaled. "He's going to get himself killed with questions."
"He's already dying," Toma replied. "Questions are what he has."
She stood and walked to a cabinet. Opened it. Pulled out a folder.
She slid it across the table to me.
It was a Clockhouse form.
Not a generic one—an internal routing document. My stomach tightened immediately at the sight of it. The paper was genuine stock. The watermark shimmered faintly in the overhead light.
Across the top was stamped:
**PRIORITY 1 — AUTO-AUDIT ESCALATION**
My throat went dry. "Where did you get this?"
Toma's expression didn't change. "From a clerk who thought the system was impartial."
Elias's eyes went hard. "Toma."
She ignored him. "Open it."
I did.
Inside was a partial case file. Redacted sections. But enough visible to make my blood run cold.
**SUBJECT: DISCREPANCY EVENT**
**TRIGGER: UNAUTHORIZED INTEGRITY CHECK — FLOOR 23**
**AFFECTED STAFF: [REDACTED]**
**RECOMMENDED ACTION: VERIFICATION PATH — TRANSIT / MAINTENANCE / WORKPLACE**
My pulse hammered. "That's me."
Toma nodded. "Yes."
Elias went still. "How current?"
Toma tapped the timestamp. "Updated within the last hour."
My stomach dropped.
I'd assumed the ledger was slow because it was big.
It wasn't slow. It was patient.
Elias's voice was low. "So they're routing through maintenance like we are."
Toma nodded once. "Which means they're not hunting random. They're following a playbook."
My mind raced.
"Then the misfile at the maintenance node—" I started.
"Bought you time," Toma finished. "But it also announced you're capable of wrongness. That makes you more expensive. More interesting."
My skin prickled. "So every technique I learn makes me a bigger target."
"Yes," Toma said.
Elias leaned forward, eyes sharp. "That's why he needs to move off Meridian's board."
My chest tightened. "Off the board?"
Elias's jaw flexed. "Out of the Clockhouse's jurisdiction."
Toma looked at Elias like he'd said something blasphemous. "And go where? You think borders stop classification?"
"No," Elias replied. "But different cities classify differently. Meridian is optimized for clerks and commuters. Other places will have other blind spots."
Toma's gaze slid to me. "And do you have time to reach another city?"
My phone sat locked in the Faraday safe. I didn't know my countdown. That was the point. But ignorance didn't stop the penalty.
"I don't know," I admitted.
Toma's eyes hardened. "Then we assume you have less than you think."
Elias pressed his fingertips to his temple. "We need a diversion."
Toma's gaze snapped to him. "No. We need him to learn to survive alone."
Elias looked at me, and in his eyes I saw something I hadn't seen before—regret.
"I'm not staying," he said quietly.
My chest tightened. "What?"
Toma didn't look surprised. That was worse.
Elias kept his voice steady. "I brought you here because you needed a place the city wouldn't immediately hear you practice. That's all I can give without making you dependent."
"And because you're being tracked," Toma added, voice flat. "And anyone near you becomes a trail."
My throat went dry. "You're leaving me."
Elias's expression tightened. "I'm cutting a line. If I stay, they'll file you as 'associated asset.' If I leave, you're harder to close cleanly."
"Harder," I echoed bitterly. "Not safe."
Elias's mouth twitched. "Nothing is safe."
Toma reached into the folder and pulled out a smaller slip—an address tag and a stamp code.
She placed it in front of me.
"Listen carefully," she said. "You're going to do three things."
I swallowed. "Okay."
"One: you're going to build your own ledger," she continued. "Paper. Every misfile attempt, every cost, every symptom. Dates. Locations. Don't trust memory."
I nodded.
"Two: you're going to learn three misfiles," she said. "Not one. Three. And you're going to rotate them. No patterns."
My throat tightened. "Three."
"Three," she repeated. "Start with **Routing Error**, **Duplicate Ticket**, and **Provisional Entry**. They're boring. They're plausible. And they're different enough to not collapse into one signature."
I forced myself to breathe. "Okay."
"Three," she said, and her voice sharpened, "you're going to stop thinking like a junior clerk."
I flinched. "How?"
Toma leaned in. "A junior clerk asks for permission and waits for policy. A survivor creates policy. You're going to stop hoping someone higher up fixes this."
My throat tightened. "There is no higher up."
Elias's gaze flicked toward the ceiling, as if he could feel the Clockhouse above them even here.
"There's always a higher up," he said quietly. "Just not one you'd like to meet."
Silence fell again.
Then, faintly, through the workshop's walls, I heard something that made my stomach turn to ice.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Not loud. Not close.
But unmistakably the same rhythm that had followed us through tunnels and corridors like a signature being applied to the city.
Toma went still. Her eyes narrowed.
Elias's face tightened. "No."
Toma crossed the room in two steps and pressed her ear to the door. Held still.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Closer.
My skin crawled.
Toma looked back at Elias. "You brought it."
Elias's jaw clenched. "It was already on him."
Toma's gaze snapped to me—hard, assessing. "What did you do in 7B?"
I swallowed. "I—misfiled. Pending authorization. Then—at the gate—another pending."
Toma closed her eyes briefly, as if counting costs. "Twice."
Elias swore under his breath. "It's learning his shape."
The tapping stopped.
The silence that followed was worse. Silence meant the stamp had lifted and was about to come down.
Toma moved fast. She yanked open a drawer, pulled out a second Faraday box—smaller—and shoved a handful of receipts into it along with her own phone.
Then she looked at me.
"Stand up," she ordered.
I stood.
Elias rose too, unsteady for half a second, then steady again by force.
Toma pointed at the floor—at a seam I hadn't noticed between tiles. "There's a hatch. You go down."
My throat tightened. "You said you wouldn't bring work—"
"Shut up," Toma snapped. "Do you want to be alive or righteous?"
I moved toward the seam.
Elias grabbed my shoulder. His grip was firm, grounding.
"Listen," he said, voice low. "You can do this without me."
My throat tightened. "You don't know that."
Elias's eyes held mine. "Yes, I do. Because you did the one thing most people can't."
"What?"
"You stopped yourself mid-sentence," he said. "You stopped feeding it. That's not talent. That's discipline."
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
This time it came from inside the room.
Not on the door.
Not in the hall.
Inside—through the walls, like the building itself had accepted the stamp.
Toma's face went pale in a controlled way. "Down. Now."
I knelt at the seam, fingers searching, finding a small metal ring flush with the tile. I pulled.
The hatch lifted with a soft groan, releasing cold air that smelled like stone and damp paper.
A narrow ladder descended.
Elias pushed a notebook into my hands—blank pages, thick paper. A pen tucked into the spine.
"Your ledger," he said.
My hands trembled as I took it.
Toma shoved a small bundle at me next: three stamped receipts, each with different headers.
**DUPLICATE TICKET — PENDING**
**PROVISIONAL ENTRY — MANUAL REVIEW**
**ROUTING ERROR — FORWARD**
"Rotate," she hissed. "Don't fetishize one phrase. Don't make a prayer out of it."
Another sound joined the tapping—a soft rustle, like paper sliding across paper.
Elias's face tightened. "It's here."
I didn't ask what *it* was. My questions had already cost enough.
I climbed down the ladder, notebook pressed to my chest.
Halfway down, I looked up.
Elias stood beside the hatch, blocking it with his body as if he could be a door.
Toma stood behind him, hand on the table where the paper ledger lay open like a sacrifice.
In the flickering workshop light, their faces looked carved.
"What happens now?" I whispered.
Elias didn't answer immediately.
Then he said, very quietly, "You keep moving. You keep misfiling. And you don't come back here."
My throat tightened. "You're staying."
Elias's eyes were steady. "I'm leaving."
I frowned, confused.
Toma's voice cut in—sharp, final. "He means he'll lead it away. Get down."
The truth hit me like a physical blow.
Elias wasn't saving me with power.
He was saving me with *attention*—by making himself the louder mistake.
"No," I whispered.
Elias's gaze held mine. "This is what catalysts are for."
The tapping stopped.
A pressure—smooth, bureaucratic—filled the room above like a form being unfolded.
Even down the ladder, it pressed behind my eyes. It was close enough to taste.
Then a voice arrived behind my thoughts—not loud, not emotional.
Just certain.
**Rowe.**
Elias flinched like the word had teeth.
Toma swore softly.
I forced my mind not to reach for meaning. Not to answer. Not to react.
But fear is a reflex the body files automatically.
Elias met my gaze one last time.
"Go," he mouthed.
Then he pushed the hatch closed.
Darkness swallowed the ladder.
For a moment, I stood frozen in the shaft, notebook and receipts clutched against my chest, listening to the city above rearrange itself to close a file.
I heard footsteps—two sets, fast.
Then the tapping resumed, moving away, like a stamp traveling down a corridor.
And then—silence.
I exhaled shakily, realized I'd been holding my breath, and forced myself to climb down into the cold.
At the bottom of the ladder, the shaft opened into a narrow tunnel lined with old paper-wrapped pipes. Someone had painted arrows along the wall in faded red.
I followed them.
My mind tried to pull itself back into clerk routines: locate exits, count resources, evaluate risk.
I opened my notebook with trembling hands and wrote, by the dim light of a maintenance bulb:
*Chapter 5 — Practice Without Witnesses*
*Location: Toma's workshop (no name spoken inside).*
*Technique practice: Routing Error / Forward to Transit Ops.*
*Cost: blur — missing memory (morning detail).*
*Threat escalation: tapping entered room. Authority spoke "Rowe" to Elias.*
*Elias separated to draw verification away.*
I paused, pen hovering.
The act of writing steadied me. Not because it solved anything, but because it made my fear legible on *my* paper instead of the city's.
I wrote one more line, slower:
*Goal: become too expensive to process.*
As I followed the red arrows deeper into Meridian's hidden spine, the notebook warm against my palm, I understood what Elias and Toma had done.
They hadn't given me safety.
They'd given me the beginning of a method—and the brutal gift of being alone soon enough to need it.
Somewhere above, Meridian would keep trying to close my file.
Somewhere beyond Meridian, other cities with other systems waited—other tiers, other myths, a world that didn't end at the Clockhouse's walls.
But for now, all I had was darkness, paper, and the ability to make the books hesitate.
I kept walking.