Hana avoided the screens.
Every room she entered had one, glowing softly with curated calm: weather updates, gate risk levels, smiling anchors promising stability.
She turned them all off.
The apartment they gave her was small. Government-issued. Neutral colors. No bars, no locks she could see — just permission disguised as freedom.
She sat on the floor with her back against the couch and stared at her hands.
They were still shaking.
People thought telling the truth would feel powerful.
It didn't.
It felt like being hollowed out.
Hana had expected anger. Arrest. Maybe even execution.
What she hadn't expected was to be let go.
No apology.
No explanation.
Just… release.
As if she were already irrelevant.
She dreamed of the bridge.
Not the collapse — the moment before.
The moment where nothing had happened yet.
Where seventeen people were still just commuters.
She woke up with her heart pounding.
"Aiden…" she whispered into the quiet room.
She didn't know if he could hear her anymore.
Lucas knocked that evening.
He brought food and a look that said he didn't know what to say.
They ate in silence.
Finally, he spoke.
"You changed something."
Hana laughed weakly. "I broke something."
"No," Lucas said. "You made it visible."
She looked at him. "And what did that save?"
He didn't answer.
Neither did she.
She went outside for the first time in days.
The city looked normal.
Too normal.
People bought coffee. Kids ran past. A street musician played an old song about a world without gates.
No one looked up.
No one knew how close the world had come to lying to itself forever.
A memorial had formed near the visible breach site.
Not official.
Just names written in marker on metal sheets.
Flowers taped to fences.
Hana stood in front of it for a long time.
"I didn't save you," she whispered.
"I just made sure you weren't erased."
The wind took her words.
That night, she felt something.
Not a voice.
A pressure shift.
Like someone standing just outside a closed door.
"Aiden?" she said quietly.
Nothing answered.
But the air felt… aware.
Somewhere in the lattice, Aiden sensed her.
Not as coordinates.
As gravity.
He could feel her refusal to let the world forget.
That made her dangerous.
That made her necessary.
Hana opened her laptop.
Not to leak.
Not to fight.
To write.
Not a manifesto.
A record.
Names.
Dates.
Bridges.
Trains.
Breach zones.
A human memory the system couldn't compress.
She titled the file:
THE COSTS THEY DON'T SHOW
And for the first time since the blackout, Hana Park felt like she had a role again.
Not as a technician.
Not as a rebel.
But as a witness.
Far away, deep in system architecture, a new node initialized.
[Distributed Constant Prototype: Stage 1 Calibration]
It did not know Hana existed.
Yet.