The city noticed them.
Not with alarms. Not with sirens.
With silence.
Netoshka felt it first—the subtle tightening of the streets, the way foot traffic thinned too quickly, how windows dimmed as if the buildings themselves were averting their gaze. Cameras rotated a fraction slower than before, recalibrating. Drones adjusted altitude. Patrol routes shifted.
Someone had flagged the anomaly.
"Movement pattern changed," Circe muttered through the comms, eyes flicking between ghosted overlays. "They're not locking down—yet. They're observing."
"That's worse," Rue replied quietly.
"Means they're confident."
They moved through a narrow pedestrian corridor, neon signage flickering overhead, propaganda slogans scrolling in calm red text:
STABILITY IS SAFETY
ORDER IS MERCY
EQUILIBRIUM PRESERVES ALL
People walked in near-perfect rhythm, eyes forward, heads down. No one ran. No one spoke. A woman stumbled—and three strangers helped her up instantly, not out of kindness, but reflex. Conditioning.
Zev's jaw clenched.
"This place feels… trained."
"It is," Surgien said quietly.
"Fear optimized into routine."
Then Circe froze mid-step.
"…I'm picking up encrypted movement. Not standard patrols."
Netoshka raised a fist. The squad slowed as one.
From the far end of the avenue, figures emerged—not soldiers, not riot police. They wore matte black coats that absorbed light, segmented armor beneath the fabric, faces obscured by smooth masks marked only by a thin vertical red slit.
They didn't hurry. They didn't spread out.
They walked like they already owned the street.
"Confirming ID," Circe whispered.
"Designation matches internal security doctrine. Non-military."
Netoshka didn't need the confirmation.
"Secret Police," she said.
The civilians noticed them immediately.
The street emptied.
Doors sealed. Shutters slid down. Lights dimmed. Within seconds, the avenue was hollow, echoing only with the measured footsteps of the approaching figures.
One of the masked officers tilted its head slightly.
A signal.
The air shifted.
Drones descended silently from between buildings, triangular and blade-thin. Camera lenses irised open across walls, lampposts, even the pavement itself.
They were being boxed in.
Rue hissed,
"They didn't trip alarms on purpose. They wanted us visible."
A calm voice echoed from unseen speakers—genderless, emotionless.
> "Unregistered entities detected. Failure to comply will result in corrective action."
Zev cracked his knuckles.
"I hate corrective action."
Netoshka's vision flickered—numbers threatening to surface—but she crushed them down. This wasn't a fight they could win cleanly. Not here. Not yet.
"Circe," she murmured.
"Options."
Circe swallowed.
"They're not trying to kill us. They're mapping us. Testing reactions."
"Then we don't give them clean data," Netoshka replied.
One of the Secret Police stepped forward, raising a compact device. The red slit on its mask brightened.
Netoshka moved first.
Reality skipped.
The street fractured for half a second—like a corrupted frame—and Inferius vanished from the centerline, reappearing hard-left inside an abandoned storefront. Glass exploded inward as they hit cover.
Gunfire followed—not loud, not chaotic. Suppressed, disciplined. Shots meant to herd, not execute.
"Move!" Netoshka ordered.
They burst through the back corridor as shock-fields detonated where they'd been standing moments before. The Secret Police advanced without breaking formation, adjusting angles, predicting exits.
"They're learning," Circe said, tension creeping into her voice. "Every glitch you use, they're adapting."
"Then we stop playing fair," Rue growled.
Zev shifted partially, claws scraping concrete as he took point. Surgien dragged a stunned civilian out of the way as a drone clipped the corner overhead.
They broke into the lower service alleys—narrow, wet, choked with steam.
That's when Netoshka felt it.
A presence.
Not hostile. Not friendly.
Watching.
She didn't name it. Didn't look for it.
They kept moving.
Behind them, the measured footsteps accelerated.
The city had moved from observation to pursuit.
And Inferius was officially hunted.