The word hangs over my shadow in harsh fluorescent light:
**REJECTED.**
Not UNCLAIMED anymore. Not an empty placeholder.
Rejected.
Thrown out. Marked as "no longer acceptable material."
My stomach twists.
"That's… not better," I say.
Ardan follows my gaze. His expression shifts almost imperceptibly—one more line of worry added to a face already full of them.
"No," he agrees. "It's not."
The girl leans over the table, trying to see.
"What is it now?" she whispers.
"REJECTED," I say.
Her eyes widen. "By who?"
"By what," Ardan corrects softly. "Higher bidders. Plural. The word's too sharp to come from just one."
I swallow. "So they all collectively decided I'm… what? Trash?"
"Not exactly," he says. "If you were trash, the word would be something closer to 'DISCARDED.' Rejected means 'attempted to acquire, but process failed.' It implies effort. And frustration. And a paper trail."
"How is this supposed to make me feel better?" I mutter.
"It isn't," he says. "I told you, I don't specialize in comfort."
He nods toward my shadow.
"Look closer."
I don't want to.
But I do.
The supermarket tiles reflect the light harshly, making the edges of my shadow crisp. The word **REJECTED** hovers above it in cold, thin letters.
And under that, in even smaller script—barely there, like someone tried to erase it:
**(pending audit)**
My mouth goes dry.
"What is that?" I whisper.
Ardan sees it a second after I do.
The color drains from his face.
"Oh," he says. "Oh, that's bad."
"You keep saying that," the girl snaps. "Could you maybe at some point say 'oh, that's nothing to worry about'?"
"Not with him," Ardan says.
He rubs the bridge of his nose, then looks at me.
"All right," he says. "New problem. When something is REJECTED with 'pending audit' attached, it means the system couldn't reconcile your status. Think of it as… a discrepancy."
"In my favor?" I ask hopefully.
He gives me a look usually reserved for toddlers with scissors.
"In no one's favor," he says. "Discrepancies get inspected. Inspected things get categorized. Categorized things get filed."
"And filed things get eaten?" I guess.
"Sometimes," he says. "Sometimes they get promoted. Sometimes they get turned into warnings for others. Sometimes they become tools."
The girl frowns.
"Tools for what?"
"For enforcing Terms and Conditions," he says.
The phrase hangs in the air like a bad smell.
I hunch my shoulders.
"Okay, can we go back to the part where I'm probably going to be eaten? Weirdly, that bothers me less than being turned into a Terms and Conditions pop-up."
The girl chokes on an unexpected laugh. It's short and sharp, but real.
"You would be the kind of guy they make into a warning," she says. "Like a biohazard sign."
I look at her. "Thanks?"
Her word—**BOUND**—hovering above her shadow has dimmed back to its usual glow. No longer stretched to the breaking point, just… there. Waiting.
"Why isn't hers changing?" I ask.
"Because she hasn't made a choice yet," Ardan says.
Her expression tightens. "About what?"
"About whether she's just cargo tied to your thread," he says, "or something else."
She looks down at her hands.
"I didn't ask to be dragged into this."
"I know," he says. "That's part of the problem."
She goes very still.
I change the subject because the look on her face hurts to see.
"So this audit thing," I say. "What does it mean practically?"
"It means someone will come to check if you should exist," Ardan says calmly.
The words are too casual for what they mean.
I stare at him. "I thought that already happened. The not-thing in the corridor—"
"That was a bidder trying to finish a Contract while the auction still had momentum," he says. "An auditor is different. Less interested in eating you, more interested in… balance."
"Balance," I repeat. "As in: if I'm a problem, I get erased?"
"Sometimes," he says. "Sometimes they just trim a few threads. Sometimes they adjust the memories of everyone who knows you. Sometimes they lock you into a shape you never wanted because it makes the columns add up."
I feel queasy.
The supermarket's bright, artificial normality suddenly feels thinner, like a stage set in front of something very dark.
"Can we leave?" I ask.
"Soon," Ardan says. "Walking out right after your status shifts again is like waving a flag. Give it a moment. Let the noise settle."
I force myself to breathe.
People move around us, pushing carts, scanning items, checking their phones. A little boy runs past, nearly tripping, his mother scolding him gently in another language.
Above his shadow: **CURIOUS**.
He stops just short of our table.
And stares at me.
Not the way people look at someone in a hospital coat. Not the way they look at a guy with a bandage under his collar.
He stares just above my shoulder.
At the air.
At the space where the word hangs.
"Do you see something, kid?" I ask before I can stop myself.
He blinks.
Then his small finger lifts, pointing directly at my shadow.
"Bad letters," he says solemnly.
His mother hurries over, apologizing, tugging him away. "I'm so sorry, he's just—"
He looks back at me as she drags him off.
For a second, the word above his shadow flickers.
**CURIOUS**
**AWARE**
then back to **CURIOUS**.
My skin crawls.
"Ardan," I whisper. "Did you see that?"
"I saw enough," he says.
"You told me humans don't see the words."
"I told you most don't," he says. "Children, the half-conscious, the dying, the very drunk, and the truly desperate sometimes… notice more."
"So that kid—"
"Will probably forget," he says. "His mother will tell him he imagined it. The world will smooth over the ripple. Unless someone emphasizes it."
"Emphasizes?"
"Tells him he's right," he says. "Names what he saw. Gives it weight."
"Oh," I say.
I shut my mouth.
The girl shifts in her seat. "What if the auditor comes somewhere like this? Full of people. Full of small words."
"Then it will try to touch as little as possible," Ardan says. "Auditors don't like contamination. But they will do what they must."
"Describe an auditor," I say. "So I can know what to panic about."
"You won't like it," he says.
"I don't like any of this," I reply. "Might as well be specific."
He leans back in his chair, eyes scanning the aisles.
"Imagine a creature that hates loose ends," he says. "Not out of malice. Out of… design. Imagine something for whom a discrepancy is like a splinter. The bigger the splinter, the more it hurts."
"That's… vague."
"They don't have a fixed look," he says. "They use what works in the environment they're inspecting. In a hospital, they might look like a head doctor. In a bank, like an auditor in a suit. In a supermarket…"
He pauses.
The girl swallows. "In a supermarket?"
"…like whatever everyone expects to have authority over their bill," he finishes.
"A manager," I say.
"A security guard," she says at the same time.
"Both plausible," he says. "Either way, you'll know them when the words change."
"What words?" I ask.
He taps the table.
"Not just yours," he says. "Everyone's. When an auditor walks in, whole sections of reality *relabel* themselves for its convenience."
A chill creeps up my spine.
"Great," I mutter. "So if the cashier suddenly becomes 'ACCOMPLICE' or 'WITNESS,' we run?"
"Yes," he says. "Preferably before you become 'CORRECTED.'"
The girl huffs, a nervous little sound that might be almost a laugh if it wasn't shaking.
"And what about you?" I ask Ardan. "What's your word?"
His gaze flicks to his own shadow.
For a heartbeat, I see it:
**ACCOUNTANT.**
Then it glitches.
**ACCOUNTANT**
**DELINQUENT**
**ACCOUNTANT**
and settles back.
He notices me watching and lifts an eyebrow.
"Nosy," he says.
"Curious," I counter.
The girl's shadow whispers **BOUND** above her ankles.
"So what's the plan?" she asks. "Hide here forever between discount cereal and cheap coffee?"
"No," Ardan says. "We buy time. Then we move to somewhere… off-ledger."
"Off what?"
"Off the main books," he says. "Not every place is equally accounted for. There are gaps. Blind spots. Places where the ink is smudged."
"Like The Between?" I ask.
"No," he says quickly. "Never go there on purpose."
He looks genuinely shaken by the idea.
"The Between is where contracts bleed through," he says. "The places I mean are where the system simply… loses interest. Forgotten corners. Those are still dangerous, but less supervised."
"How do we find one?" the girl asks.
Ardan hesitates.
"Carefully," he says. "And with cost."
I don't like the way he says cost.
Before I can press, a voice crackles over the supermarket's cheap speaker system.
"Attention, customers," it says. "Due to a brief system issue, some card terminals may be temporarily offline. Please be patient."
The music cuts for a second.
Every fluorescent light flickers in unison.
Words over the nearest shadows glitch.
**HUNGRY** becomes **WAITING**.
**ANNOYED** becomes **OBSERVED**.
**TIRED** becomes **STILL.**
My heart slams against my ribs.
"Is this—"
"Maybe," Ardan says. "Stay seated."
The speaker crackles again.
"We apologize for the inconvenience," the voice continues. "Our staff is working to resolve the issue. Management is now reviewing the situation."
The word **MANAGEMENT** hangs in the air a fraction of a second too long.
Above the automatic doors at the entrance, a new word etches itself into existence.
Not over a shadow.
Over the doors themselves.
**ACCESS.**
The glass doors slide open.
A man walks in.
He's utterly ordinary.
Middle-aged. Cheap dark jacket. Lanyard with the supermarket logo hanging from his neck. Clipboard in hand. A little plastic tag on his chest that says:
**SHIFT SUPERVISOR.**
His shadow stretches before him.
The word above it is not ordinary.
It isn't **SUPERVISOR**.
It isn't **MANAGER**.
It rewrites itself even as I look at it.
**CHECKING**
**COUNTING**
**BALANCING**
Then settles into a single, chilling word:
**AUDITING.**
My fingers curl around the edge of the plastic table.
"Ardan," I whisper. "He's here."
"Yes," Ardan says quietly. "And he'll start where the numbers hurt most."
The supervisor walks slowly down the central aisle, eyes apparently on his clipboard.
As he passes people, their words flicker.
**HUNGRY** becomes **ACCOUNTED.**
**HURRIED** becomes **CLEARED.**
**LONELY** becomes **IRRELEVANT.**
No one looks up.
No one feels the change.
Except us.
The girl leans closer to me, her shoulder pressing into mine.
"What do we do?" she breathes.
"Nothing rash," Ardan says. "He might not be here for you specifically. There were other violations tonight. Other small breaches. We wait. We watch. We don't draw attention—"
The supervisor turns his head.
Our eyes meet.
He shouldn't be able to see me from this distance.
But I feel the recognition land like a weight.
He doesn't smile. He doesn't frown. His face barely moves.
But above his shadow, another word appears beneath **AUDITING**:
**FOUND.**