Sleep escaped Ethan that night. Each time he closed his eyes, he saw the same image. The woman from the café, her face glitching for an instant like broken code. And her voice, low and unsettling, rustling in his mind.
You shouldn't be able to see me.
By dawn, however, tiredness got the better of him, but so did curiosity. He warned himself to let it go, to leave the weirdness along with the bulk of his day. But by lunchtime, his feet were taking him back to the café as if his physical framework had already made up its mind.
She was there.
Seated by the window with a book open in her hands, sun rays streaming down through her auburn locks.
She looked ordinary now, almost too ordinary, as though the glitch had been a trick of his tired mind.
Ethan ordered a coffee for himself and sat two tables away from her, watching her. His heart was racing as she moved in the chair, as her eyes were scanning the page.
The Veil remained silent. No alerts. No directives. No warnings.
Minutes passed. Then she closed the book, put it into her bag, and stood up to leave. As she passed his table, she paused.
Her head tilted just slightly, and without looking directly at him, she spoke in a voice low enough only he could hear.
"You shouldn't follow me."
The words sent a chill through him. By the time he looked up, she was already at the door, disappearing into the flood of the street.
Ethan's phone buzzed sharply in his pocket.
"Directive Override.
Do not pursue.
Noncompliance will result in penalty."
He came to a halt in front of the screen, his mind flipping between submission and the pain of desire that gnawed in his chest. His hand trembled as he shoved the phone into his pocket.
He sat for hours, coffee untouched, staring at the door where she had vanished. The world outside went on as normal, yet everything within him knew normal was gone.
She was real. She was connected to the Veil. And whether he obeyed or resisted, he could not ignore her.
The woman in shadows had seen him.
And that changed everything.