Morning came too fast, and Jup knew something was wrong before he fully opened his eyes.
Hunger hit first.
It rolled through his stomach hard enough to drag him upright, sharp and immediate in a way that made his entire body tense before his mind caught up.
This wasn’t normal hunger—not the dull ache of skipping dinner or waking up late after sleeping through breakfast.
This felt deeper than that, like his body had burned through everything he gave it yesterday and had already decided it needed more.
He sat on the edge of his bed in the dark, one hand pressed against his stomach while he tried to steady his breathing.
Then Triōhnah’s voice entered his mind.
Nutritional deficiency detected.
Jup squeezed his eyes shut and let out a long breath through his nose.
“You really know how to make mornings worse.”
Correction: your biological state created the issue.
I identified it.
“That somehow made it worse.”
He pushed himself to his feet and stood still for a moment while his room settled around him.
The new clothes Aya bought yesterday were folded neatly near the edge of his bed.
The blanket hiding the crushed remains of his old chair still sat in the corner like a badly kept secret.
Triōhnah rested motionless on his desk, silent now, its dark frame somehow making the room feel smaller.
Jup stared at it.
“I genuinely don’t know if I’m adapting to this or losing my mind.”
Mental instability remains unconfirmed.
“That’s not comforting either.”
He stepped into the kitchen and immediately stopped.
Mark stood near the front door fully dressed, his bag hanging over one shoulder, boots already on.
The sight of it made everything feel more real than it had last night.
Aya was asleep on the couch, one arm hanging loosely over the side while Dominique slept half on top of her beneath a tangled blanket.
Mark looked up first.
“You’re awake.”
“Trying not to be.”
That earned the smallest laugh before his expression settled again.
“My transport gets here in ten.”
The words landed heavier than Jup expected.
Mark stepped closer and lowered his voice enough that it wouldn’t wake anyone.
“I meant what I said last night.”
Jup stayed quiet.
Mark studied him carefully before adding,
“And stop disappearing in public.”
Despite everything, that almost pulled a smile from him.
“No promises.”
Mark stared at him for a second.
“Wrong answer.”
Then he stepped forward and pulled Jup into a quick one-armed hug that felt awkward enough to be genuine.
“Take care of them.”
Jup nodded once.
“You too.”
Mark stepped back, looked toward Aya and Dominique for a moment, then back at Jup.
“Move smart.”
Then he left.
The apartment felt different the second the door closed behind him.
Quieter.
Smaller.
Like one of its support beams had quietly been removed.
Jup stood there longer than he meant to before his stomach twisted again hard enough to force him into motion.
He opened the cabinets and started eating whatever he could find.
Leftover rice.
Bread.
Two protein packs.
Fruit cups.
Eggs.
At one point he found a drink Dominique had clearly hidden behind vegetables, stared at it for a second, muttered an apology to his sleeping sister, and drank that too.
The hunger eventually dulled enough for him to think clearly.
Not gone.
Just quieter.
That was enough.
He looked at Aya sleeping on the couch and thought about the new clothes she had bought him yesterday.
He thought about groceries disappearing faster than they should.
He thought about Mark leaving.
Then he looked back toward his room.
He needed something normal.
He grabbed his tool bag, sat on the floor, opened his comm, and pulled up a neighborhood repair board—the kind people used when they didn’t want to deal with district pricing or wait weeks for official service requests.
He scrolled through listings for flickering comm screens, drone stabilization issues, overheating relays, and broken door locks.
Most of it wasn’t complicated.
It was neglected equipment that had been patched incorrectly or ignored until it became loud enough to matter.
He stopped scrolling and stared at the screen.
Fixing things meant moving around.
Moving around meant being seen.
That reality hit him almost immediately after he stepped outside.
Two teenagers walking past slowed down when they noticed him.
One looked at him, frowned, then looked again.
“Yo…”
Jup kept walking.
“Wait—isn’t that—”
He turned the corner before the sentence finished.
It happened again near a food stall when a woman stared too long at his face before glancing down at her comm.
A man near a transit station subtly raised his wrist projection as he passed.
Not everyone recognized him, but that almost made it worse because he never knew who would.
His face glitched on recordings.
That didn’t mean people had forgotten him.
By the time he reached the first address, he had already adjusted.
Less time on main roads.
More side streets.
Less standing still.
Head down enough to avoid attention without looking suspicious.
That was when someone brushed past his shoulder.
Jup’s entire vision shifted.
Information exploded across his sight so suddenly he stopped walking.
SUBJECT DETECTED
Physical Output: Level 4
Threat Probability: Low
Pathway: None
Status: Elevated cortisol
The man who brushed past him kept walking like nothing happened.
Jup turned sharply.
The man looked completely ordinary until Jup noticed the concealed weapon beneath his jacket.
His pulse slowed.
“What was that?” Get faster updates on g.com.
Passive observational protocol initiated.
“I didn’t ask for that.”
Threat analysis improves survival probability.
“That wasn’t an answer.”
Statement acknowledged.
Jup stared at the crowd moving around him and felt a new kind of discomfort settle into his chest.
Everyone looked normal.
Now he knew that didn’t mean anything.
He adjusted his bag on his shoulder and kept walking until he reached the first repair address.
The address from the board was six blocks away, a narrow apartment wedged between a laundromat and a shuttered clinic.
The buzzer didn’t work.
He knocked.
The man opened the door with suspicion already set in his posture, his eyes narrowing slightly before they landed on Jup.
The tension shifted when he took in how young he was, not disappearing, but adjusting.
“You the one fixing comms?” he asked.
Jup met his gaze without stepping back.
“Depends what’s wrong.”
“It flickers. Cuts out. I keep missing calls. Been doing it all week.”
Jup gave a small nod.
“Show me.”
The apartment smelled like oil and reheated food.
A fan rattled somewhere deeper inside, and a muted screen in the next room threw shifting light across the wall without enough volume to make out the words.
“My name’s Lio,” the man said.
“They told me some kid fixes stuff cheap.”
“It’s not cheap,” Jup said calmly.
“It’s just not a scam.”
Lio laughed once and handed over the comm.
Jup opened it.
The problem showed itself immediately.
Burned connector.
Bad patch job.
He didn’t say anything.
He just worked.
Twenty minutes later, the display stabilized into something clean and steady, the kind of result that didn’t need to announce itself to be understood.
Lio tested it twice, more out of habit than doubt, and the second pass confirmed what the first already had.
The tension in his face eased.
“How much?”
Jup named a fair number.
Lio transferred it without arguing.
A second later, a quiet vibration ran through Jup’s wrist.
BRICS TRANSFER RECEIVED
It wasn’t a lot.
But it was real.
Outside, the air didn’t feel brighter or lighter, but it felt settled in a way that hadn’t been there before.
This worked.
Slowly.
But it worked.
By the time afternoon light tilted through the city, another job had already appeared.
Door lock issue.
Immediate payment.
Third-floor walk-up.
Jup accepted.
The building smelled like old heat trapped inside walls that hadn’t been repaired properly in years.
One of the stairwell lights buzzed overhead like it was fighting to stay alive.
By the time he reached the third floor, the woman who opened the door had already unlatched it before he finished knocking.
She looked older.
Late fifties maybe.
She wore a faded robe that had been washed enough times to lose most of its color.
Her eyes moved over his face, then immediately past him down the hallway.
“You the repair kid?”
Jup nodded.
She stepped aside.
The apartment was narrow and clean in the way small places had to be to stay manageable.
A fan clicked in the corner.
Framed photos hung carefully across one wall.
“The lock keeps looping,” she said.
“Every time I try to disengage it, it resets itself.”
Jup crouched beside the panel.
The issue revealed itself quickly.
The lock wasn’t broken.
It was trapped.
One warped contact kept feeding the same failed command back into the system.
Fresh scratches near the override suggested someone had already tried forcing it.
Behind him, the woman kept glancing toward the hallway.
Not at the lock.
Past it.
Like she expected someone else to arrive before he finished.
That stayed with him.
He fixed the warped contact, cleaned the scoring, reset the loop, and manually restarted the lock.
The mechanism clicked open.
“Try it.”
She stepped forward carefully and pressed the panel.
It worked instantly.
She stared at it.
Then exhaled.
Not relief.
Something smaller.
Like surviving one more day.
“Thank you.”
Then Jup’s vision shifted again.
SUBJECT DETECTED
Physical Output: Level 1
Threat Probability: Minimal
Pathway: None
The overlay vanished.
The woman frowned.
“You alright?”
Jup blinked.
“Yeah.”
Her payment transferred.
When he stepped back into the hallway, he heard the lock engage immediately behind him.
Fast.
Firm.
Like she’d been waiting all day to hear that sound.
The third job pulled him deeper into the market lanes.
The streets narrowed. Enjoying the story?
Noise stacked on top of itself.
Kids moved through crowds with food wrappers in their hands.
Vendors shouted prices.
Delivery drones crossed overhead.
Music leaked from damaged speakers.
The address led him to a cramped electronics stall wedged between a shoe repair counter and a shop selling knockoff accessories beneath a flickering holo-sign missing half its letters.
The owner was already waiting.
Thin shoulders.
Tight jaw.
Eyes too alert.
“This thing’s been doing that for an hour.”
He pointed toward the screen.
Jup opened the panel.
The screen wasn’t the issue.
The connector behind it had burned halfway through.
“You running extra off this line?”
The man hesitated.
“Just the stall.”
Jup didn’t answer.
He replaced the connector.
Reinforced the mount.
Stabilized the feed.
The flickering disappeared instantly.
The screen sharpened.
Static vanished.
The owner stared at the display.
Then at Jup.
“Didn’t think someone your age could do that.”
The words sounded harmless.
The tone didn’t.
Jup packed his tools in silence.
The payment arrived.
More than promised.
That should have felt good.
It didn’t.
He stepped back into the street feeling like the man had memorized far more than his repair process.
The fourth job made him stop before he even entered the building.
It stood farther from the market lanes where the district spread out enough for silence to collect between structures.
One security camera had been turned just far enough away from the entrance to feel intentional.
The access panel had been recently replaced.
Fresh screws.
Cleaner metal.
Wrong color match.
Someone buzzed him in immediately.
Too immediately.
Like they’d been watching him approach.
The hallway inside was too clean.
Not polished.
Controlled.
No voices.
No cooking smells.
No clutter.
Just stale conditioned air and the low hum of active systems somewhere deeper in the structure.
The unit door opened before he knocked.
A man in gray looked at him once.
“In here.”
That was it.
No explanation.
No small talk.
Jup entered.
The system looked dead.
But the second he opened it, he knew it hadn’t failed.
It had been shut down manually.
Someone intentionally made it look broken.
He stayed crouched longer than necessary.
Behind him, the man said nothing.
That silence bothered him more than questions would have.
Most people filled repair time with something.
Complaints.
Excuses.
Explanations.
This man just watched.
Jup restarted it anyway.
Because rules mattered.
Repairs only.
That was the rule.
The system powered back online in stages.
Low electrical hum.
Relay click.
Panel lights.
Terminal activation.
The man looked at the active system.
“That’ll hold?”
“If nobody shuts it down again.”
The man’s expression didn’t change.
Payment cleared before Jup reached the stairs.
Not delayed.
Not processed.
Cleared.
That stayed with him longer than it should have.
By the time the sun started dropping behind the skyline, Jup had completed four jobs and earned more money in one day than he normally made in a week.
That should have felt like progress.
Instead, every address felt less random than the one before it.
The woman who kept looking at the hallway.
The stall owner who watched him too closely.
The man in gray who never acted surprised that the system had been intentionally shut down.
None of it connected clearly enough to accuse anyone of anything.
But it sat wrong.
Like the city had spent the entire day quietly guiding him somewhere he hadn’t agreed to go.
Jup adjusted the strap of his tool bag and kept walking as the evening lights began waking across Sector 7.
Behind him, traffic moved.
Drones crossed overhead.
Storefronts lit up.
Life continued like normal.
And for the first time— normal felt like camouflage.