The city did not react immediately.
This was their first error in judgment.
After the passage, Arcanum continued to flow as if nothing had happened: footsteps intertwining, goods changing hands, quick gestures and tired gestures. No alarm. No interruption. The outside world had a quality the Athenaeum lacked: it knew how to ignore what it hadn't yet decided to use.
Marikka, however, felt the change.
It was not a new pressure. It was an adjustment.
Like when an Archive corridor didn't overtly move, but subtly tilted the probabilities by a few degrees. The vibrations beneath their feet had lost some of their random noise. Certain impulses were returning. Regular. Curious.
Something was re-reading them.
Aurelian walked with measured steps, too careful not to lose his balance. Marikka supported him without looking at him, focused on what her fingers returned to her: stone, wood, iron... and, at irregular intervals, interferences that belonged neither to objects nor to ordinary people.
Cedric slowed down. He didn't speak. He looked behind them too often.
Marikka gestured to him: not with your eyes.
They turned onto a narrower street, where commerce gave way to closed shops and small windows. Here the noise was less, but denser. The vibrations were layered, as if the place had accumulated unresolved decisions.
Marikka sensed the point of attention even before locating its source.
It was polite. Measured.
A contact that did not touch.
She stopped.
Cedric took two more steps, then turned back when he realized she wasn't following. He didn't ask anything. He just moved slightly in front of Aurelian, as if to shield him.
The man was leaning against the wall opposite them. He wasn't selling. He wasn't buying. He wasn't staring insistently. He was still in the exact way one stops when waiting for the right moment.
Marikka stretched her fingers toward the wall next to him.
The stone was vibrating... tuned. Prepared. As if someone had made it more receptive.
The man smiled.
Not a wide smile. A recognition.
"I won't stop you," he said. "I was waiting for you."
Cedric tightened his jaw. He did not speak.
"Not yet," the man added, as if answering a silent objection.
Aurelian stiffened. Marikka felt an ancient response in his body, one from an unwritten protocol.
The man pushed himself off the wall. He wore ordinary clothes, but they were neat. His hands were clean. Not from physical labor. From annotation.
"I am not from the control group," he said. "Not today."
Marikka took Cedric's notebook and wrote, without diverting her attention from the man's hands:
THEN WHAT ARE YOU?
The man read it and nodded. "From evaluation."
The word settled between them with a precise weight. Not a threat. Not a promise. A figure.
Serian stirred in the case. A brief, irritated tremor.
"You are not the only ones who can read," the man continued. "Only the most honest admit they do it poorly."
Cedric took half a step forward, then stopped. His fingers clenched into a fist. Marikka touched his wrist: stay.
"We are not for sale," Cedric said, quietly.
The man barely tilted his head. "Nothing ever is at the beginning. That is what makes the initial estimates imprecise."
He stepped aside, leaving the passage clear. He wasn't blocking them. He was positioning them.
Marikka felt the vibration change again. Not the entire street. Only the stretch in front of them. A reference point shifted by a few degrees.
She wrote:
WHO SENT YOU?
The man shrugged. "Someone who prefers to know before they have to compete."
Aurelian inhaled with difficulty. "You are making a mistake."
The man looked at him closely, for the first time. "Perhaps." Then, without harshness: "But not about the subject."
He took half a step closer to Marikka. Not close enough to touch her. Enough to attempt.
Not a full reading.
An estimate.
Marikka felt the pressure like one feels a hand weighing something without lifting it. Her skin reacted instinctively: she didn't close, she didn't open. She remained ambiguous.
Serian trembled harder.
The man stopped abruptly. His pupils narrowed. Not fear. Professional interest.
"Interesting," he murmured.
Marikka wrote, sharply:
DO NOT.
The man took a step back. "As you prefer." A pause. "The evaluation remains incomplete."
Cedric spoke softly, but harshly. "Then leave."
The man nodded. "I will."
As he turned away, he met the gaze of a woman a short distance away, standing on the threshold of a shop. He said a single word to her, under his breath. Marikka didn't hear it, but she felt it: the vibration passed from the stone to the person like a whisper taking notes.
Then the man walked away, swallowed by the city.
Marikka remained still.
She still felt something on her.
Not a trace. Not a wound.
A lack.
As if part of the world's response was now arriving late, offset by half a beat.
Cedric looked at her. "Did he... read us?"
Marikka slowly shook her head.
She made a precise gesture: he measured us.
Aurelian leaned more heavily on her arm. "And that," he said softly, "means we now exist in multiple versions."
Marikka closed her hand into a fist. Her index fingertip was slightly numb, as if she had touched something that didn't want to be touched.
Arcanum continued to move.
But beneath the noise, somewhere, an incomplete estimate remained open.
And in systems, what remains open never does so for long.