Floating in the middle of the street, a block and a half away, Zahir spotted it. A Cyclo Unit. BQP-grade. Old—but definitely not harmless.
Circular. Silent. Surgical.
Its single lens of field-reactive glass gleamed softly under fractured alley lights, encased in matte-gray metal and held aloft by three whisper-quiet rotors slicing the air with unnatural precision.
Zahir had seen them plenty of times before. They were floating reminders that in this city, your breath, your bones, your signature—all were on borrowed time. Surveillance built into the blockchain contracts. Protection disguised as a leash.
The drone slowed its approach, hovering deliberately. Its lens tilted slightly, sensors flexing invisibly to read the ambient Field. Not scanning for faces; scanning for pressure, for presence, for that faint, molecular ripple signaling an Innovator nearby.
As far as Zahir could tell, it hadn't noticed him yet, but it drifted slowly, inevitably closer. Sudden movement might flag its attention. But if he kept walking at this pace—especially exposed in the middle of an empty lot—detection was inevitable.
He forced himself forward, keeping his stride measured and even, fighting down panic. Twenty more paces until he could slip around the corner. He dared not glance back, not wanting his face captured in its feed.
But he could feel it behind him, approaching, steady, methodical.
Fuck.
Before discovering his soul's structure was a superposed particle, all Zahir had was glitch and error. At latent rank, his knack for frying nearby tech had been sporadic, unconscious, stressful—mostly unwanted. But occasionally, it had its perks.
It was exactly how they'd stolen BQP's shipment logs. After all, stealing, scamming, and flipping had always been his primary income streams. And glitches and errors occasionally gave him an edge.
Now he was starting to understand what had really been happening all this time. All Lattice tech required a stable Signature structure, and his Signature was decidedly unstable—neither heads nor tails unless he consciously willed it.
When he'd grabbed Elai's slate back in the fallback, he had felt something different. A distinct resonance. If "one" was active, "zero" was null, he could be both simultaneously. And it's the "both" that makes him unable to read.
He could hear the unit drawing nearer as a new understanding of his signature blossomed in his mind. The hum wasn't loud. It was worse than loud. It was subtle. Clinical.
The Cyclo Unit drifted low over the middle of the street rotors whispering against the humid air, a shimmering glass lens that reminded Zahir of an unblinking eye.
Every few breaths, it sent out a barely perceptible pulse. Funny, Zahir had never noticed it before. he didn't know what it was exactly, but he knew that he probably shouldn't get caught in its radius, if it wasn't already too late.
Right now, he desperately needed not to be seen.
What if he didn't choose? What if he held two competing intentions at once, keeping himself suspended between states.
He had to try.
Now, less than a half a block away from him, the Cyclo Unit pulsed again a muted pressure ripple that grazed his skin like static.
Just as Logos had shown him, Zahir held the intention to to run and to stay simultaneously, causing his sense of self to fracture. But instead of choosing one state, he hovered there, mind floating in indecision. It was exactly like holding his breath, except the thing he was holding was more like being.
Scan Complete.
On the opposite end of the Cyclo Unit's feed, in a dimly lit living room, a BQP operative lounged across a designer couch. She scrolled absently through videos on her slate, barely bothering to glance at the drone's surveillance readouts.
Her nails clicked rhythmically against the screen, the sound sharp and deliberate. Her hair was styled into flawless bleach-blond finger waves, each curve meticulously sculpted, shimmering every now and then with liquid light gliding gently along each wave.
She loved her neon-type signature for the aesthetic, but it was practically useless for most things BQP needed.
Her pupils glowed softly, tiny neon-pink hearts floating inside—not reflections, not contacts—but an intentional lightshow plucked straight from her Archive. She wore a mesh corset top beneath a cropped tactical jacket, high-waisted designer cargo pants hugging her generous curves, and utility boots polished to a mirror sheen. Every inch was curated.
And she was bored out of her mind.
She wasn't even supposed to be here. This assignment was beneath her. But Daddy Dross had insisted she handle drone ops for their new assets until BQP could train a fresh batch of baby Innovators. Frankly, the task felt insulting—especially for someone who usually served as the holon's chosen face for high-end contracts and delicate, pretty things.
The Cyclo mostly ran itself anyway, which was fine by her. It left most of her attention free to cycle through the latest Lattice social feeds.
Her attention, half-drifting between the console and her slate, assumed that everything was normal as the Cyclo traced it's new route, clean and steady, tracking the empty lot and a lone figure cutting through it. Most likely a random latent loser.
She kept scrolling on her slate, as the scan cycle reached him.
The drone sent out its soft Field pulse—barely perceptible even through the feed. Normally, it came back with a ripple: presence confirmed, rank estimated, neat and efficient. But this time…
The image distorted.
Princess frowned, leaning forward, eyes narrowing as her pupils pulsed faint pink around the floating neon hearts. The figure on-screen—male, average height—wavered at the edges, like cheap holo-footage buffering.
The Cyclo pulsed again. Field pressure swept out in a wave.
And for a breath—he wasn't there.
On Princess' screen, the system staggered—visuals caught mid-frame, the readout hesitating like a skipped heartbeat.
Scan Complete.
Status: Innovator Rank: Undefined Signature: Undefined
Princess' stomach flipped—a sharp, electric surge of fascination crawling up her spine.
What the hell?
She'd seen Innovators glitch cameras before. But this wasn't that. Undefined wasn't an error message. It was something else entirely—something she'd never encountered.
Before she could react further, a new window bloomed across her display, edges outlined in a faint official blue—the kind of color reserved exclusively for CID business. The logo of the Constellation of Interconnected Dimensions pulsed faintly in the corner:
SYSTEM ADVISORY: POTENTIAL ANOMALY DETECTED ⚠
Field Signature Inconclusive. Data Instability: High.
Recommend Immediate CID Notification.
Failure to Report May Violate Holon Safety Protocols.
[ REPORT ] [ DISMISS ]
An Anomaly flag.
Her mind flickered instantly to whispers she'd overheard about the CID's most powerful Innovator—Dr. Quell. Wasn't he some kind of sanctioned Anomaly? Anomalies were supposed to be rare, dangerous, powerful, disruptive enough to break the Field itself. They weren't supposed to be casually strolling through the backstreets of the Slant. And certainly not crossing her surveillance route.
So many questions.
She flicked the CID window aside, trying to get a better view of the figure. But it was too late—the Cyclos, caught in its own moment of uncertainty, had lost him entirely.
A slow grin curled across her face. Her pupils shifted again, the pink hearts melting into pulsing neon question marks as her teeth flashed behind parted lips.
"Oh, no, sweetheart," she whispered softly, eyes glittering. "You're mine first."
With a decisive tap, she hit DISMISS, watching the CID warning vanish.
Princess leaned back into the designer couch, adrenaline replacing boredom like a welcome rush.
If this little ghost turned out to be worth reporting, maybe Daddy Dross would get her something nice.
A Prismite cuff, maybe. That would be the perfect accessory.
Back on the street, Zahir kept holding his breath until the Cyclo Unit drifted past and disappeared beyond the corner.
Then, heartbeat ragged, he climbed onto the nearest gravbus.
The moment his foot hit the platform, he felt it—the world tilting wrong. Something was off. Badly off.
Pain exploded through his skull, sharp and sudden, like someone had driven a spike straight through bone and memory. His vision doubled, fracturing the interior of the bus into overlapping shards of neon and grime. The floor rolled underfoot like a deck caught in a rogue wave.
Nausea surged upward, swift and unstoppable.
Instinctively, he reached for a nearby handrail to steady himself, fingers splayed.
His hand missed.
Not slipped—not fumbled—simply missed, grabbing air beside the rail that should have been solid metal beneath his fingers. Reality blinked, uncertain, and suddenly Zahir's balance was gone entirely.
He crashed sideways into another passenger, a stocky woman wrapped in a grimy work jacket. She grunted, shoving him off with casual disgust. He fell forward, knees slamming against gritty flooring, palms hitting cold metal.
Bile burned hot in his throat, and before he could stop it, vomit spattered from his lips, coating his hands and pooling on the gravbus floor. A violent shudder coursed through him, each nerve-ending firing painfully, needles stabbing into muscle and marrow.
The passenger made a disgusted noise and stepped back, face twisted in scorn. "Stars save me from these fiends," she muttered, pulling her jacket tighter.
Zahir barely heard her. His pulse pounded like gunfire in his temples. The world shrank down to the acid in his throat and the shivers racing down his spine.
Am I dying? he thought numbly.
But death didn't come. Just slow, painful clarity as the sickness faded, leaving him hollow and shivering. Signature recoil—that's what it had to be. His soul flickering, frayed, half-collapsing into something he still couldn't control.
His head felt thick, like thoughts were moving through sludge.
Somehow, though, he managed to rise, stumbling off the gravbus a few stops later into the crooked, shadowed high-rises of the Slant's projects. He staggered into an elevator that shook with every creak and groan of its frayed cables, his breathing ragged, stomach still raw.
When the doors slid open again, Zahir was standing in front of his mother's unit, staring at a door he hadn't seen in far too long.
Home—if it could still be called that.