suit chose what he dreamed again.
Kazuki knew it the moment he opened his eyes. That specific blankness — not the blankness of a night without dreams but the blankness of a night where the dreams had been edited. Removed. Filed somewhere he couldn't access.
He lay still for a moment. Listening to the garage. Rain on the roof. The hum of Aeva's monitors. The distant sound of the city deciding how it felt about him today.
He got up and went to the mirror.
The blue ring in his left eye was the first thing he checked every morning now. A habit that had developed so quietly he hadn't noticed it forming until it was already formed. He looked at it. Measured it against yesterday in his memory.
Thicker. Definitely thicker. It occupied a full quarter of the iris now. In certain light it was the first thing you saw when you looked at his face.
He pulled his shirt collar down. The vein network on his chest had not moved overnight. Three branching lines, still pointing at the Core, still dark blue against his skin.
Still patient.
He put his shirt on and went to find Aeva.
She was at the kitchen counter — the small folding table they used as a kitchen counter — making instant rice with the focused attention of someone who needed something simple to do with their hands. Her back was to him.
"You slept four hours," she said without turning.
"You counted?"
"The suit's biometric feed updates to my secondary monitor when you're in range." She stirred the rice. "Four hours and eleven minutes. Your REM cycle was completely flat."
Kazuki sat on the workbench. "The suit filters the dreams."
"I know." A pause. "It's been doing it for three weeks."
He looked at her back. At the gold scars tracing her neck, catching the light from the monitors in thin, bright lines.
"You've been watching the biometric data for three weeks and you didn't say anything," he said.
"I was waiting for you to say something." She finally turned. Her eyes went straight to his left eye. She looked at the ring. Measured it the same way he had — against her memory of yesterday. Something moved across her face. Controlled quickly.
"It's bigger," she said.
"Yeah."
"Victor's files. Did you read all of them?"
"Yes."
"And?"
He looked at the table. He thought about the suit confirming twice. About Kazuki Prime sitting in the stopped world looking comfortable. About the signal from the end of time arriving the night he first put the suit on — a welcome home from a version of himself he hadn't become yet.
"They were thorough," he said.
Aeva watched him for a long moment. She was good at reading him — better than anyone — and he was getting better at letting her read the surface while keeping the middle floors locked.
She turned back to the rice.
"Elena's back," she said. "Arrived an hour ago. She said she was sourcing supplies."
Kazuki said nothing.
"Her bag was empty," Aeva said. "I checked when she set it down."
Elena was in the back room reorganizing the surgical cabinet. She moved with the brisk, purposeful energy of someone who had decided the best way to re-enter a room was to already be busy when people noticed her.
"You were gone thirty hours," Kazuki said from the doorway.
"Supply run," Elena said, not turning. "The black market in District 6 is the only place that still stocks type-O synthetic plasma in bulk."
"Your bag was empty."
A half-second pause. Clean. Controlled. The pause of someone who had been prepared for this question and had prepared a response.
"I dropped the case at the clinic first. I have a secondary storage unit in District 6. I don't bring that much through the main entrance." She closed the cabinet and turned. Her eyes were steady. Calm. Professionally clear. "Why? Is there a problem?"
He looked at her for three seconds.
"No," he said. "Just checking."
He went back to the main room.
At noon Aeva pulled up the speed-signature scanner — a program she had built from Renji's original detection code and rebuilt twice since then. She ran it across the city the same way she did every morning. Systematic. District by district.
She got to District 3 and stopped.
"Kazuki."
He was across the room. He heard the specific tone in his name and was beside her in two steps.
She pointed at the screen.
A signature. Small. Compact. Sitting in the eastern edge of District 3, in the maintenance level beneath the transit hub.
It wasn't Helix pattern. It wasn't Malvorn's hunter architecture. It was a speed signature — biological, the kind the suit produced — but the energy color on the scanner was wrong.
Not blue. Not red.
Black.
"It's been there for eighteen hours," Aeva said quietly. "Stationary. Not moving toward us. Not moving away."
Kazuki stared at the signature.
"Dread," he said.
"He's not hunting you," Aeva said. "If he wanted to engage he had eighteen hours to choose this location. He's been sitting still."
"He's waiting," Kazuki said.
"For what?"
Kazuki looked at the signature on the screen. The black energy reading, compact and quiet and completely still in the dark beneath the transit hub.
"For me to come to him," Kazuki said.
Aeva turned to look at him. "You're not going alone."
"I know," he said.
He picked up his jacket.
He went alone.
[To Be Continued...]