Alden stood in the shadow outside the tavern.
There was only one thing he needed to confirm.Jeff was still there.
The window reflected the light inside—blurred, incomplete.Three figures sat at a table against the wall.Close together, yet not touching.
Alden's gaze lingered briefly on the woman who did not appear in the mission brief.His fingers brushed the communicator behind his ear.
He did not report immediately.Instead, he memorized the scene, his throat tightening as he swallowed.
"You're staring too obviously."
The voice came from just behind his shoulder, casual, faintly amused.
Alden turned, eyes locking onto the speaker.
Elias stood beside him, hands in his coat pockets, the tip of his shoe tapping idly against the stone.
"Move," Alden said flatly. No room for negotiation.
"I'm not blocking you," Elias replied. He didn't look at Alden, his eyes still fixed on the reflection in the glass, fingers tapping twice inside his pocket. "Just confirming something."
Alden said nothing. His shoulders tightened, one hand drifting toward his sidearm.
Elias nodded to himself, unbothered. "As I thought. There's one more."
Alden's jaw clenched, knuckles whitening.
"She's not a variable," Elias added, tone as neutral as a weather report. "She was pulled in."
Alden lowered his gaze and tapped a few commands into the display on his wrist.One extra line appeared in the draft report.
Private note:— Accompanying personnel changed. Cause unknown.
Florence felt quieter than it should have been.
Footsteps, conversations, rolling luggage—everything landed in the right place, yet lacked a certain weight.As if the entire city were adjusting itself to an unseen rhythm.
Jeff noticed the distance first.
As he and Ayla crossed the bridge side by side, his heel struck the stone—and the feedback came half a beat late.
Ayla walked to his left, eyes on the reflections of buildings rippling across the river.The lines were precise, but at each bend they slipped slightly out of alignment.
She turned her head, glancing at Jeff.
He was still facing forward, pace unbroken, yet she caught the deliberate hesitation in his last step—a half-beat slower than necessary.
She knew she wasn't the only one who had noticed.
Patch walked between them, gait steady.Its tail flicked once, brushed Jeff's leg, then stilled. The ears pressed back slightly.
Across the city, two monitoring systems flagged the same data at the same moment.
ARC's assessment was swift.Florence's data stream was clean. Deviations were localized, contained, non-expanding.
Recurring delay values fell within predictable thresholds, consistent with controllable models.
Conclusion: anomaly stable, suitable for containment.
MO's marker lingered longer.
The source of deviation was being absorbed evenly by the city itself, rather than radiating outward.
That meant the cost was being displaced into the environment.
Such a pattern only appeared in locations where history had been preserved too completely.
MO appended a note: cost not yet reclaimed, redistribution in progress.
Two systems, at the same moment, drew circles around the same city.
Rome.
Outside the Colosseum, space shuddered irregularly.
Tourists along the perimeter felt the imbalance at once.
Someone gasped.Someone reached for the wall.Someone staggered half a step.
No energy discharged outward.But space trembled again.
The monitoring systems captured a single anomalous peak—insufficient to identify its origin.
Without announcement, without warning,the second source point completed a release.