Merrowen locked itself in layers.
Not gates slamming shut—those were too visible, too theatrical. Instead, the city constricted quietly. Streets redirected foot traffic through subtle signage changes. Market bells shifted their tones. Patrol routes overlapped where they had not before. Windows closed in sequence, like eyelids lowering one district at a time.
Aarinen felt it immediately.
The square emptied faster than panic would explain. People moved with purpose, not fear. They had been trained for this—not drills, but habits cultivated over years of municipal caution.
Containment without spectacle.
He stepped forward.
A line of wardens formed ahead of him, shields raised. Not heavy shields—laminated composites etched with resonance channels. Anti-force. Anti-irregularity.
One of them spoke.
"Lie down," she said. "Hands visible."
Aarinen laughed softly.
Pain flared where he was weakest—ribs, shoulder, thigh. The city's systems were adjusting pressure dynamically, probing for thresholds.
This was not a hunt.
This was a calibration.
He moved sideways instead of forward.
That confused them.
A resonance net dropped where he had been, slamming into empty stone and shattering it. The ground cracked outward in a jagged ring.
Aarinen ducked into an alley as bolts fired—not arrows, not bullets, but weighted capsules that burst midair into shimmering constraints.
He laughed louder.
The sound ricocheted through the narrow space, folding against stone, slipping between harmonics. One capsule detonated early, its field collapsing in on itself. The warden behind it was thrown hard against a wall, armor screeching.
Aarinen ran.
Not blindly.
He followed the city's logic backward.
Merrowen was built to control crowds, not singular disruptions. Its strength was distribution. Redundancy. Response through overlap.
He broke overlap.
He sprinted through a dye market, overturning vats. Blue and red liquids flooded the street, staining boots, obscuring visual tracking. He vaulted a stall, landed hard, laughed through the pain as his ankle twisted.
A squad turned the corner ahead.
He changed direction again.
Every time he was hurt, the laughter grew sharper, stranger—less like a sound and more like a function. It bent trajectories. It disrupted timing. People mistimed their steps, swung too early, braced too late.
Still—he felt it.
Fatigue.
This was not an endless well.
The city knew that.
A voice boomed—not amplified, but carried through the infrastructure.
"Aarinen," it said calmly. "Stop."
Calder's voice.
Alive.
That was unfortunate.
"You are not winning," Calder continued. "You are escalating loss ratios."
Aarinen skidded to a stop in a narrow courtyard.
He turned.
"Winning what?" he called back.
"Time," Calder replied.
The air shifted again.
This time, it wasn't resonance.
It was weight.
Something descended—not physically, but administratively. Authority made manifest. Emergency powers overriding protocols.
From the far end of the courtyard, a new unit entered.
Not wardens.
Executors.
Their armor was matte black, unmarked. Their movements synchronized without obvious signals. Each carried a device instead of a weapon—compact, humming faintly.
Aarinen's laughter stuttered.
These weren't meant to subdue.
They were meant to erase anomalies from the record.
One executor raised his device.
Aarinen threw himself sideways as the courtyard vanished where he had stood—space collapsing inward, stone folding like wet paper. The impact wasn't loud. It was final.
Aarinen hit the ground hard, breath knocked from him.
Pain roared.
He laughed.
But the sound came out thin.
The executors advanced.
Calder's voice returned, closer now.
"This is the part where you stop being interesting," he said.
Aarinen dragged himself upright.
Blood dripped onto stone.
"Then look away," he said.
He inhaled deeply.
And did something he hadn't before.
He held the laughter.
Did not release it.
Compressed it.
The pressure built inside him—pain, sound, defiance folding inward, tighter and tighter. The world seemed to lean toward him, uncertain.
The executors hesitated.
Too late.
Aarinen laughed once.
Not loud.
Not long.
The sound didn't spread.
It cut.
The nearest executor dropped instantly, armor caving inward as if struck by an invisible blade. Another staggered, device screeching as its field inverted and consumed itself.
The courtyard fractured.
Windows shattered outward. The ground split in a clean line from Aarinen's feet to the far wall.
Silence followed.
Heavy.
Calder did not speak.
The remaining executors retreated—not in panic, but recalculation.
Aarinen collapsed to one knee.
He had crossed a line.
Not morally.
Operationally.
Merrowen would not contain him now.
It would escalate beyond the city.
Beyond civic logic.
As wardens regrouped at a distance and alarms shifted tone again, Aarinen pushed himself upright and limped toward a drainage passage he had spotted earlier.
Behind him, the city sealed wounds, rerouted flows, logged casualties.
Ahead of him lay flight.
Not freedom.
Exposure.
Because now, every system that traded in order would hear the same report:
Containment failed.
Anomaly escalated.
Authorization to neutralize pending.
Aarinen disappeared into the dark as Merrowen recalculated the acceptable cost of letting him exist.
And this time, the answer would not be conservative.