By late afternoon, the Civic alert had replayed often enough that Aya killed the kitchen feed in the middle of it: the hooded figure, the warping barrier, the descending drones, and static swallowing Jup’s face.
The apartment stayed too quiet after the wall strip went black.
Jup looked toward the door.
“I can’t stay in here forever.”
Aya turned from the wall strip.
“You are not going back outside while Civic is telling the entire sector to report sightings.”
“I wasn’t planning to walk straight into a patrol.”
“You walked outside before we understood what Triōhnah had done to you,” Aya said.
“We still do not know what changed, and tomorrow CMAS is going to scan you again.”
Mark glanced over.
“She has a point.”
Jup looked at him.
“You’re helping?”
“I’m observing.”
“That means no.”
“It means I’m waiting to see if you say something worse.”
His room still carried scorch marks, broken paint, and the smell of burned copper.
If anyone came asking questions, the apartment would answer too loudly.
“You need someone to look at you,” Aya said.
“No clinics.”
“Not the kind that file reports.”
“Then what kind of help are we talking about?”
Aya looked toward Mark.
Mark tracked something through the blinds for another second before letting them fall back into place.
“There’s someone off-record.”
Jup narrowed his eyes.
“Off-record like illegal?”
“Off-record like alive.”
Aya picked up Jup’s hooded jacket from the back of a chair.
“Dr. Saye treats people who cannot afford official attention.”
Dominique looked over from the couch.
“That sounds like something you say when people are bleeding.”
Mark gave her a quick look.
“You’re staying here.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“You were about to.”
Dominique sank deeper into her blanket.
“I was preparing a question.”
Aya handed Jup the jacket.
“We leave before the evening patrol pattern changes.”
“We?” Jup asked.
“Mark takes you. I follow two blocks behind. If anyone stops him, I keep walking. If anyone stops me, he keeps walking.”
Jup stood too fast, and the chair legs scraped against the floor.
“No.”
Aya looked at him, and he hated that look because it made him feel younger than he was and more dangerous than he wanted to be.
“I’m not letting you get pulled into this,” he said.
“You already did,” Aya replied.
Before they left, Aya pulled an old backpack from beside the couch and set it on the table.
Jup looked at Triōhnah.
“We’re bringing that?”
“If that machine rebuilt part of you,” Aya said, “then the doctor needs to see what connected to your body.”
“I don’t think doctors usually inspect the thing that broke physics.”
“Today is not usually.”
Triōhnah folded down without protest, lens dimming as Aya eased the frame into the bag.
Mark covered the opening with dark cloth.
“Cameras,” he said.
The lens shifted beneath the fabric.
I dislike travel arrangements.
Jup huffed.
“Apparently, so does everyone else.”
Mark pushed away from the window.
“We move through service routes. No front lobby. No elevator. No street-facing exits if we can avoid them.”
He stepped toward the door, and Jup caught the slight movement of his hand before it reached the side of his head.
Two fingers pressed behind Mark’s right ear, just below the hairline.
Nothing obvious happened at first.
Then a blue line woke beneath his skin, thin enough to pass for a vein catching light.
Jup saw it because he knew where to look.
Most people thought Mark was gifted.
Those who knew about his Cortex Link assumed it was standard civilian Cognis technology: memory support, study acceleration, pattern assistance.
Aya and Mark knew better.
Knowledge, not mastery.
But enough knowledge, fast enough, looked like cheating.
Mark studied the apartment door, the wall strip, the old smoke sensor above the hallway, the angle of light beneath the neighbor’s door, and the dull reflection of the stairwell camera in the glass frame beside the kitchen.
“Front stairwell is dirty,” he said.
“Elevator logs. Fire escape catches the pharmacy camera. Laundry corridor gives us the cleanest gap.” Enjoying the story? Read on at g.com.
Jup blinked.
“You got all that from looking?”
Mark’s eyes stayed on the door.
“From learning.”
Aya’s face changed.
“Don’t push the Link.”
“I’m not.”
“You always say that when you are.”
Mark reached for the door.
“Then I’m consistent.”
He opened it a fraction and listened.
The Cortex Link arranged the building’s noise into something usable.
“Now,” Mark said.
They moved.
The hallway smelled like cleaner, fried oil, and old wiring warmed too many times.
Aya stayed behind for a count of ten before following.
Dominique remained in the apartment with the door cracked, eyes wide over the edge of her blanket.
“Don’t die,” she whispered.
She tried to make it sound like a joke.
It came out too small.
Mark looked back.
“Terrible instruction.”
“It covers a lot.”
Jup’s expression softened.
Then the apartment door clicked shut behind them.
At the laundry corridor, a service lock blinked red, red, green, then red again.
The blue line behind Mark’s ear pulsed once.
On the next green, he caught the handle before the panel finished changing color.
The door opened without an alarm.
Jup followed him through.
“You knew the cycle?”
“I do now.”
“That’s annoying.”
“It’s useful.”
“Both can be true.”
He is not wrong.
Jup almost answered before remembering Mark could see his face.
His brother looked back.
“It talking?”
Jup hesitated.
Mark’s expression shifted by a fraction.
The Cortex Link didn’t need to glow for Jup to know Mark had caught the pause.
“Yes,” Jup said.
Mark nodded once and kept moving.
“Does it control you?”
“No.”
The answer came too fast.
Mark stopped in the narrow service hall.
Jup exhaled.
“No. Sometimes it corrects things before I understand what it’s correcting.”
Mark studied him.
Triōhnah said nothing.
“If that answer ever changes,” Mark said, “you tell me before you tell Mom.”
Jup watched him.
“Why before Mom?”
“Because Mom will panic correctly. I’ll panic usefully.”
They kept moving.
The laundry corridor fed into a boiler hall.
Mark waited for a set of footsteps to pass, then guided Jup out the back of the building.
Aya emerged from another exit half a block away, her coat pulled tight and her face turned from the nearest camera.
Sector Seven carried on like it had not spent half the day being warned about him.
Vendors shouted over carts while Civic cameras watched from corners, poles, and vehicle mounts.
Jup pulled his hood lower.
Mark grabbed his wrist before he stepped into the alley mouth.
“Wait.”
Jup froze.
A delivery cart rolled past the intersection, then slowed for no visible reason.
Seven seconds later, a Civic drone crossed the gap, high and silent, its lens turned toward the street below.
When it passed, Mark moved.
“How did you know?” Jup asked.
“Could’ve been a bad motor.”
“It wasn’t.”
The alley narrowed between two patched buildings where pipes ran along the brick in crooked bundles.
Mark guided Jup beneath a dead camera, past a chained service gate, and through a side entrance into an old storage hall.
Aya rejoined them at the far door.
“You both clear?” she asked.
“For now,” Mark said.
Jup heard the strain beneath the words.
So did Aya.
Her eyes moved to the faint line behind Mark’s ear.
“You pushed it.”
“I learned faster.”
“That is what pushing it means.”
Mark’s hand lifted toward the implant, then dropped before he touched it.
A second later, he was already looking toward the next door.
They crossed two more blocks through places Jup had passed a hundred times without understanding what they were.
A boarded market stall had a service hatch behind it.
A closed laundromat shared an interior wall with an old clinic corridor.
An alley that looked blind ended at a maintenance panel with a latch worn smooth by hands that did not want to be seen.
Mark opened it after watching the lock pulse once.
The final service hall ended behind the freezer door of a closed corner market.
Mark knocked twice, waited, then knocked once more.
A narrow slot opened.
A woman’s tired eyes looked through it, moved over Mark, Aya, and finally Jup.
“If this is Civic,” she said, “I never saw you.”
Dr. Saye stepped back just enough to let them inside.
The freezer door sealed behind them.
Beyond it waited a narrow clinic smelling of antiseptic, old smoke, and boiled plastic, with two exam chairs and a diagnostic rig newer than the walls around it.
Aya entered first.
“That is why we came.”
Dr. Saye’s eyes moved over Mark, then Aya, then Jup, where they stayed longer than they had on anyone else.
She wore a faded green coat and the tired sharpness of someone who resented every new surprise.
“You’re the family from the alert,” she said.
No one answered fast enough.
Dr. Saye’s mouth thinned.
“That was not a question.”
Aya stepped farther into the room.
“Yes.”
“The alert showed a hooded minor and enough Civic interest to make everyone stupid. It did not tell me why you came through my freezer door.”
Aya’s fingers pressed into the backpack strap.
“His face will not hold on camera.”
Dr. Saye looked back at Jup.
For the first time, her tired expression changed.
“Say that again, slower.”
Aya set the backpack on the counter.
“Static covers it.”
Dr. Saye’s gaze dropped to Mark’s borrowed clothes pulling across Jup’s shoulders and wrists.
“You did not grow into those slowly.”
“He changed,” Aya said.
“Fast.”
Dr. Saye watched Jup for another second, then pointed toward the nearest exam chair.
“Sit down before you make me ask anything else slowly.”
Jup sat.
The chair creaked beneath him.
Aya unzipped the backpack.
Triōhnah’s frame rose from inside with a soft mechanical hum, lens dim, chassis unfolding only enough to hover above the counter.
Dr. Saye went still.
“What is that?”
Jup opened his mouth.
“Complicated,” Aya said.
“Complicated is not a medical category.”
“It is today.”
Dr. Saye looked at Aya like this was not the first bad decision she had dragged through the door, then reached for a set of diagnostic leads.
“I am not filing a report,” she said.
“I am not storing a record. I am not asking where you got the floating nightmare unless it starts touching my equipment.”
“I dislike her tone,” Triōhnah said from the counter.
Dr. Saye stopped with one diagnostic lead halfway raised.
“It talks,” she said.
“When spoken about rudely,” Triōhnah replied.
Dr. Saye looked from the hovering frame to Jup.
“Does it always do that?”
“Usually worse,” Jup said.
“Minimal accuracy,” came from the frame.
Dr. Saye stared for another second, then pressed the first lead against Jup’s chest.