Amon never stole the most expensive thing.
She stole the thing its owner would be most afraid to lose.
The bakery’s copper key.
A patrolman’s letter to his lover.
The old watch a drunk claimed he had forgotten years ago.
She took each object and waited while its owner searched the streets.
When the panic had ripened enough, she traded it back for a meal or a pair of shoes.
So when Mia found the inside pocket of her uniform empty, she did not reach for her money.
She touched the folded registry pages first.
They were still there.
The broken copper clasp from the black handbook was gone.
The Glitch Manual no longer occupied any ordinary pocket.
The clasp remained in Mia’s physical coat as proof that the book had once existed in the same layer as everything else.
She had taken it out only once, before dawn, to examine the fracture.
Only one person in Grayharbor could remove it without Mia noticing.
She set a BACK IN THREE MINUTES placard before the Descenders waiting to register, then searched the rooftops beyond the market.
A narrow figure was already running across a laundry line above the alley.
Scraps of metal sewn to her coat chimed with every step.
“Amon.” The figure ran faster.
Mia did not follow.
“That clasp came from a place the world says does not exist,” she called.
“Touching it may cause the system to classify you as an anomaly.” Roof tiles scraped.
Amon stopped behind a chimney and showed half her face.
“Save it.
It’s a broken buckle.” “It is broken,” Mia agreed.
“That does not make it safe.” “You confiscate everybody else’s dangerous things.
Now it’s your turn.” Amon raised one hand.
The copper clasp flashed between two fingers.
Then her face emptied.
The market below kept shouting.
A gear seller cursed a customer who had offered half price.
Descenders ducked beneath the dripping eaves.
No one looked up to see the thief by the chimney turn white.
Something invisible seemed to take hold of Amon.
Her spine bowed.
Her heels slid toward the roof’s edge.
Mia ran to the nearest ladder, climbed three rungs at a time, and swung herself over the eaves.
She caught Amon’s wrist as the clasp dropped into a crack between tiles with a sound barely louder than an insect landing.
Amon’s eyes were open.
They could not find Mia.
“Furnace Three exploded,” she whispered.
“Ma told me to run west.
No.
I never had a mother.
Grayharbor died last year.
You died under the sign.
I took the lamp off your body.” Mia tightened her grip.
“Amon.
Look at me.” “They tore the street apart and put it back wrong.
Tasha didn’t have that hand.
The dog had no eyes.
You said the third item.
The third—” Mia covered Amon’s fist with her palm and pried the clasp away.
Amon dragged in a breath as though she had broken the surface of deep water.
Her gaze struck Mia, then the intact market around them.
She tried to rise.
Her legs folded before they could hold her.
“What did you make me see?” Amon’s voice shook.
“I don’t know.” Amon stared at her.
“You died.” “Not yet.” “More than once.” Mia wrapped the clasp in her handkerchief.
Questions crowded close: which Grayharbor had Amon seen, why had Tasha possessed a different hand, what had the third item been?
Amon’s shoulders were still shaking.
Safety protocol required removing a distressed person from high ground, slowing their breathing, and stabilizing the visible environment.
Mia followed it.
They sat in the alley behind the market.
Mia bought warm water from a soup stall and waited until Amon took the cup herself.
“Are you turning me over to the watch?” Amon asked.
“Stolen property should be returned, and the owner should be compensated.” Amon’s mouth twisted.
“There she is.” Mia pushed the water closer.
“Before that, I would like you to describe what you saw.
You may refuse.” Amon cupped the drink between both hands.
For a long time, she did not swallow.
“Grayharbor blew up,” Amon said to the water.
“The furnace did it, not a starbeast.
Tasha still had a flesh-and-blood left hand.
It burned off later.
You wore green instead of blue.
And there was another me.
Younger.
She lived in the southern ward with a mother who sold fish.” “There is no fish market in the southern ward,” Mia said.
“I know.” Amon clawed at her hair.
“I still know their door.
Three knife marks across it.
I carved them when I was little.” “How old are you now?” “Fifteen.
Probably.” Mia took her to the Registry Hall.
The duty clerk refused to search for a thief until Mia invoked a safety verification.
The furnace reader accepted Amon’s fingerprint.
Its paper wheel turned for so long that the clerk hit the side twice.
At last, it produced a blank sheet.
No name.
No age.
No assignment.
“Temporary resident,” the clerk said.
“The system misses people all the time.” Mia placed Grayharbor’s population register in the reading tray and requested a facial search for Amon.
Again, nothing.
The cleanup list was built from the resident registry and the objects linked to its root anchor.
Amon did not appear on that list.
The deletion might pass over her.
For the first time, Mia had found something resembling an escape route.
She looked at Amon.
The girl was staring at the blank identity sheet.
Relief never reached her face.
Her chin had gone stiff, and one thumb rubbed hard enough at a stain on the desk to redden the skin.
“I’m not in there?” Amon asked.
“The current registry has no record of you.” “So if Grayharbor goes, I stay?” “We cannot rely on that.
An unregistered entity might escape deletion.
It might also be grouped with low-value environmental objects.” Amon laughed once without amusement.
“You have a real gift for comfort.” “I was giving you the available risk assessment.” “Yes.
I noticed.” She jumped off the chair and headed for the door.
Mia let her cross the room.
“The copper clasp must remain with me,” Mia said before Amon stepped outside.
“It was yours in the first place.” “You still owe compensation for the time this investigation required.” Amon turned and glared.
Mia held out a folded note.
“Deliver this to Tasha at the Seventh Dock tomorrow morning.
Payment is one breakfast.
After compensation, you will receive half.” Amon looked at the note, then at Mia.
She snatched it.
“Cheapskate.” Then she ran.
Mia lowered her eyes to the blank identity sheet.
Grayharbor held 23,074 registered residents.
No one knew how many more lived like Amon, overlooked by the world that had made them.
And what the copper clasp had shown her might not have been a hallucination.
The announcement layer contained discarded tutorial signs and green uniforms.
Amon recognized Mia in green.
She remembered a Grayharbor destroyed by its own core furnace.
Perhaps Version 2.0 was not the first time someone had rewritten their world.
Amon did come back the next morning, though she arrived an hour late.
She ate the half breakfast down to the last crumb and folded the pickled-vegetable wrapper before tucking it into her pocket.
When Mia asked whether the blank identity page had caused any further disturbance, Amon said no.
Then she unhooked thirteen nameplates from her belt and spilled them across the tutorial desk.
The copper pieces made a bright, disorderly clatter.
“You want old things?” Amon said.
“Start looking.” Each plate held only part of a name.
Some carried a worker number on the back; others, the abbreviated name of a city.
Mia placed them one by one on the ledger’s reading groove.
The first five returned OBJECT DELETED.
The sixth returned ASSIGNED VERSION DOES NOT EXIST.
When she inserted the seventh, the ledger turned green.
The printed greeting changed from WELCOME TO GRAYHARBOR to HABITATION UNIT GH WELCOMES NEW ARRIVALS.
Amon stared at the line.
The little color left in her face disappeared.
“That’s it,” she said.
“I’ve seen you in green.” “Where?” “In a dream.
Maybe it wasn’t one.
The docks had no fog then.
There was one huge white star in the sky.
You told us to line up for air filters.” Mia possessed no such memory.
The reading ended.
Her ledger returned to gray.
The system classified the incident as LEGACY LANGUAGE-PACK LOAD ERROR and left no searchable record.
“Whose plate is this?” Mia asked.
“No idea.
Found it inside a shoe in the announcement layer.” “Can you enter that layer again?” “Sometimes.
When the wall doesn’t want me in, I hear people talking behind it.” “What do they say?” Amon pulled the nameplate back toward herself.
“We discuss my fee first.” “What do you need?” Amon closed her fist around the plate.
“I don’t want half a meal.
I want one person who won’t stop caring just because I don’t exist.” The request came with no deadline, no completion condition, and no payment Mia could calculate.
It fit no commission form she knew.
“I can’t promise forever,” Mia said.
“Until this deletion crisis is resolved, you may list me as your emergency contact.
I will record your choices.
I will not place you in Grayharbor’s population by default, and I will confirm your status even if the registry continues to omit you.” Amon’s mouth pulled sideways.
“You make everything sound complicated.” “You may refuse.” The girl pushed the seventh nameplate across the desk.
“Deal.” For the first time, Mia created a name page unsupported by the official population registry.
[AMON.
NAME SELF-REPORTED.
ASSIGNMENT UNDETERMINED.
SUBJECT REQUESTS CONTINUOUS CONFIRMATION THROUGHOUT THE CURRENT CRISIS.] The system printed a line in red beneath it.
[INVALID ENTITY.] Mia left the page where it was.