Kael Ardyn noticed the mistake at 07:13 a.m., which annoyed him more than it should have.
The train doors opened exactly three seconds late.
He knew this because the city's transit system ran on predictive timing, not reaction. Every door opening, every signal pause, every acceleration curve was calculated hours in advance by an adaptive model Kael himself had helped audit two years earlier. Delays happened only when variables changed—weather anomalies, system faults, human interference.
None of those applied this morning.
Yet the doors hesitated.
Three seconds.
The passengers barely reacted. A woman scrolling through her feed didn't look up. A man adjusted his jacket, eyes glazed. The crowd flowed out and in like water finding its level, indifferent to the anomaly.
Kael stayed seated.
His watch vibrated softly against his wrist.
07:13:04 — Minor deviation detected. Logged.
He frowned. The system had logged it automatically. That shouldn't have happened either. The threshold for "minor deviations" had been raised last quarter to reduce noise in the data. A three-second delay no longer qualified.
Unless the system thought it mattered.
Kael stood and exited the train, the doors sliding shut behind him with their usual precision, as if nothing had happened at all.
The station smelled faintly of ozone and disinfectant. Light panels along the ceiling adjusted brightness as commuters passed beneath them, responding to biometric cues—heart rate, pupil dilation, gait. The city liked to call it "ambient optimization."
Kael called it surveillance with better branding.
As he walked toward the exit gates, a flicker of unease crawled up his spine. The feeling was familiar, though he couldn't remember when it had first started. A sense that the world was slightly out of alignment, like a picture hung just a few degrees off-center.
He slowed.
The unease sharpened into certainty.
Someone was watching him.
That, too, wasn't unusual. Everyone was watched. Cameras embedded in walls, lenses hidden in light fixtures, data scraped from every device. But this felt different. Focused. Intentional.
As if the system wasn't just observing—
but waiting.
The gate scanned his face and iris simultaneously. A green line pulsed.
Then red.
A soft chime sounded. Polite. Apologetic.
"Please wait."
Kael stopped.
The people behind him didn't. They flowed around him, irritation flickering across their faces as if he were an inconvenient object rather than a person. Another chime sounded, closer this time.
"Identity verification in progress."
Kael's pulse ticked upward. He kept his expression neutral. Drawing attention never helped.
He knew his records were clean. He'd checked them himself last week, after the dream.
The gate remained closed.
A drop of sweat slid down his temple.
"Problem?" a voice asked from behind him.
Kael turned.
She stood just outside the traffic stream, untouched by its momentum, as if the crowd instinctively curved around her. Dark jacket, worn boots, hair pulled back without care. Her eyes—sharp, assessing—met his without hesitation.
There was something unsettling about the way she looked at him.
Not curiosity.
Recognition.
"No," Kael said automatically. "System delay."
Her lips twitched. "You say that like you don't believe it."
Before he could respond, the gate chimed again.
Green.
The barrier slid open.
Kael exhaled slowly and stepped through. When he looked back, the woman was already walking away, absorbed into the crowd as if she had never stopped.
Except she had.
She'd been watching the gate.
Watching him.
Outside, the city unfolded in layered precision. Towers of glass and steel reflected a sky too clean to be natural. Autonomous vehicles traced invisible lanes. Advertisements shifted dynamically, adjusting content based on who passed beneath them.
As Kael walked toward his office building, one of the screens flickered.
Just for a moment.
The image—an ad for cognitive enhancement software—glitched into something else.
A room.
Dimly lit. Bare concrete walls. A single chair bolted to the floor.
And someone sitting in it.
Kael stopped dead.
The image snapped back to normal instantly. No one else reacted. The people around him continued walking, laughing, checking messages, unaware that reality had just blinked.
His heart pounded.
The room had felt familiar.
Not like a place he'd seen.
Like a place he'd been.
He pressed his fingers against his temple, grounding himself. Lack of sleep, he told himself. Stress artifacts. Neural echo from the dream.
The dream.
He hadn't been able to shake it since waking.
In it, he was running through the city at night, alarms screaming overhead, lights cutting through smoke. Someone was pulling him forward, hand locked around his wrist.
Don't stop, a voice had said. If you stop, they reset you.
He'd woken with the words still ringing in his ears.
Kael entered the building lobby and crossed to the elevator bank. As the doors slid shut, his reflection stared back at him from the polished metal—tired eyes, controlled posture, a man who believed in systems because systems were predictable.
Except they weren't anymore.
His watch vibrated again.
Unscheduled audit request received.
Origin: Internal.
Authorization: Level Black.
Kael's breath caught.
Level Black didn't exist.
At least, it wasn't supposed to.
The elevator slowed abruptly between floors. Lights dimmed. The hum of the cables dropped to a low, uneasy silence.
"Come on," Kael muttered.
The doors slid open.
Not to his office floor.
To a maintenance level he didn't recognize.
The corridor beyond was narrow, unfinished, concrete walls lined with exposed conduits. Emergency lights cast everything in a dull amber glow.
And at the far end of the hall—
She stood waiting.
The woman from the station.
"Relax," she said, raising her hands slightly as Kael froze. "If I wanted you detained, you wouldn't be standing."
"Who are you?" Kael asked.
She studied him, something unreadable passing through her eyes. Relief, maybe. Or regret.
"Someone who's running out of time," she said. "And so are you."
Kael glanced back at the elevator. The doors had already closed.
"You shouldn't be here," he said. "This building is restricted."
She smiled faintly. "So are you."
That made his stomach twist.
"You tripped a flag," she continued. "A subtle one. Most people never do."
"I didn't do anything."
"I know." She stepped closer. "That's the problem."
Up close, he could see the fine tension beneath her calm, like a wire drawn too tight. She looked tired in a way sleep wouldn't fix.
"You don't remember me," she said softly.
Kael shook his head.
Her jaw tightened, just a fraction.
"Of course you don't."
The lights flickered.
For a split second, the corridor wasn't a corridor anymore.
It was the room from the screen.
Concrete walls. The bolted chair.
And Kael was sitting in it.
He gasped and staggered back as reality snapped into place.
"What did you do?" he demanded.
"Nothing," she said quickly. "That wasn't me. That was you."
"That's impossible."
"So is a system that audits itself without authorization," she shot back. "So is a man remembering things that haven't happened yet."
Kael's head throbbed. Images pressed against his thoughts—flashes of conversations he didn't recall having, emotions without context, the echo of pain without cause.
"Listen to me," she said urgently. "They're watching this building now. You have maybe four minutes before someone notices the elevator deviation."
"Who's they?"
She hesitated.
"The Watch."
The word landed heavily, like it carried weight beyond its syllables.
"You need to leave with me," she said. "Right now."
"And if I don't?"
Her gaze locked onto his.
"Then they reset you," she said. "Again."
A distant hum rose through the walls—the sound of systems waking, recalibrating.
Kael swallowed.
"Tell me one thing," he said. "If I go with you… what happens?"
She didn't answer immediately.
When she did, her voice was steady, but her eyes weren't.
"Everything breaks," she said. "Including us."
The lights cut out.
And somewhere above them, alarms began to sound.