Ava walked the long way home.
No drone. No data trail. No camera lens in her pocket. She had nothing to track, no one to record.
Just silence and her footsteps through the back streets of the university quarter.
She hadn't run. She hadn't smiled.
She hadn't even looked back.
Because she didn't need to.
Lucas had looked her way. That was enough.
She hadn't expected the slap. It hadn't been in the plan.
But Angel had touched her.
That had been her mistake.
By the time Ava stepped into the dark stairwell of her building, she was calm again.
One slipper came off.
Then the other.
Ava stepped quietly into the narrow apartment foyer and set her shoes side by side, precise as always.
She could already hear the soft clatter of chopsticks, the hum of a wok against the stovetop, and her father's low voice murmuring something to her mother about "too much garlic."
The smell of soy, scallions, and slow-braised pork hung in the air like comfort she didn't deserve.
She moved through the doorway just as her mother turned.
"Ava," her mother said, smiling like nothing in the world had shifted outside their tiny kitchen. "You're just in time. Sit."
Her father glanced over from the table, half his glasses slipping down his nose. "You didn't text."
"I got caught up," Ava said simply.
No lie. No truth.
She slipped into her usual seat; the one by the window, slightly drafty in winter and poured herself tea as if she hadn't just shattered the social standing of one of the city's most untouchable elites.
Her mother slid a bowl toward her. "You're working too hard. You have those eyes again."
"What eyes?"
Her mother mimicked them. Squinted, serious, absurdly dramatic.
Ava gave a rare laugh. Quiet. Real.
Her father grunted. "That face means she's planning something."
"Not tonight," Ava said, lifting her chopsticks. "Tonight I'm just home."
They didn't ask more.
They never did.
Her mother talked about a cousin getting married. Her father asked if she'd heard back from any applications she had sent out. Ava nodded when she needed to. Ate when they paused. Smiled enough to reassure them.
But underneath it all, the engine of her mind kept running.
But beneath her stillness, her mind was working.
Every sound at the dinner table faded into white noise—soft, safe, forgettable. Her father's voice, her mother's gentle teasing, the clink of ceramic against wood. Familiar rhythms, unchanged.
But Ava wasn't unchanged.
She replayed the gallery in her head, not for satisfaction but for calibration. The lighting. The timing. The pause before the slap. How long Lucas had looked at Angel before speaking.
What he didn't say.
She catalogued it all with the same quiet efficiency she used to disassemble and rebuild mechanical locks. One slip, one wrong angle, and the whole structure gave way.
Tonight, Angel cracked.
Tomorrow, someone else would.
Ava reached for the teapot, refilled her cup, and smiled faintly when her mother asked about her appetite.
She was full.
Not from the meal but from clarity.
After dishes were rinsed and her parents settled into their nightly routine of old dramas and weak tea, Ava slipped out again. She said she needed fresh air. Her mother reminded her to bring a jacket. Her father didn't look up from his crossword.
Ten minutes later, she was in a quiet internet café with blacked-out windows and seven other seats, all empty.
She plugged in her portable drive, checked the VPN layers, and connected to a shell account through a nested interface that didn't exist on any standard browser.
The screen went dark, then lit with numbers.
She didn't blink.
By the time the tea shops were closing down and the streetlights had shifted patterns, Ava had purchased a volatile mix of crypto assets. Low-visibility chains with high-laundering risk and zero corporate tracking.
One of them had been used by Locke's side channel three months ago.
Another was tied to a military startup Lucas's father had once tried to dismantle from the inside.
She didn't need the money.
She needed the footprint.
Not to be seen—but to be found, by the right eyes.
And they were already watching.
The man who followed her from the internet café wasn't clumsy. He didn't wear the wrong shoes, didn't walk too close, didn't try too hard to disappear into the late-night foot traffic.
Which made him obvious.
Ava crossed the street without looking back.
Three blocks later, she paused beside a vending machine, pressed the same button twice, and waited.
He approached carefully, hands visible, posture open.
"Miss Zhang," he said, voice even. "Mr. Bai requests a conversation."
She turned slowly. Met his eyes.
Not surprised.
Not curious.
Just waiting.
The man hesitated. "Now, if you're free."
Ava nodded once and stepped away from the vending machine. She didn't ask where they were going. She already knew.