He stepped through the automatic doors dressed as no one in particular. One-size-fits-none scrubs, faded sneakers with soles worn flat. The face he wore today lacked all features worth remembering. That was the point.
The city outside buzzed in grays. Metro lines clattered behind plastic barriers. People moved without seeing. Their eyes grazed him and kept moving. Good.
Vincent walked two blocks and paused beneath a flickering light post beside a late-shift coffee shop. He didn't drink. He didn't rest. He waited. The system didn't speak, but it hummed. That hum became heat. The heat shaped focus.
A file opened in his mind like a long-sealed letter:
Name: Clarence Holt. Occupation: Night security, East Harbor loading yard. Age: 58. Routine: Unarmed. Smokes between 2:40 and 2:50 a.m. beneath Dock 3 stairwell. Risk: Low. Reward: Initiation-grade influence.
Vincent walked again. Not quickly. There was time.
The docks rose at the city's edge like a ribcage of iron. Rain gathered on tarpaulin and slid down rusted joints. A ship's horn groaned across the water like a dying god.
He reached the stairwell and crouched behind a crate. Wind blew south. That would do.
Clarence arrived five minutes later. Right on schedule. He lit his cigarette with the ease of habit and leaned into the rail, coat half-zipped, collar loose.
Vincent waited a breath. Then another. Then moved.
He circled wide. Found the length of discarded rubber cable from the surveillance overlay. Thirty inches. Damp. Flexible. He wrapped it twice around his palms and advanced.
Clarence didn't notice until the loop bit into his throat.
He struggled, but briefly. Vincent pulled upward and back. No screams. No fire in the spine. Just the long exhale of a man folding.
When the eyes dulled, Vincent laid him gently to the ground. A fresh cigarette between the man's fingers. Symbol complete.
The system bloomed. A heartbeat of reward lit the glyph.
"Lesson two," Vincent whispered beneath the stairwell's leaking eaves. "Silence is a signature."
A pulse in the Codex responded, low and faint: "Clean grip. No panic."
Then Vincent vanished before the city knew what it had lost.