The truck engine roars inside the gray fog like an iron beast that can't quite catch its breath.
Li sits in the cargo bed with his back against cold metal. The black thing on his wrist blinks green—irregular, arrhythmic, like a heartbeat that's forgotten its pattern. The hum in his ears has changed. It isn't the distant, blurred buzz anymore. It's sharp—wire scraping the inside of his eardrum—again and again, pointing somewhere.
"Hold on!" Marcus's voice comes from the front, hard as a barked order. "No talking. No lights."
Daniel hugs a heavy pack stuffed with batteries and jammers. His mouth still moves, but he keeps his voice low. "This is brutal, man. Middle of the night and they won't even let us slack off…"
Sophia sits across from Li. The cargo bed is dark; he can only make out her outline. The bandage on her arm is new, but he knows what's under it hasn't healed. She watches him without speaking.
Noah curls in the corner, rifle locked in his arms, eyes too wide. He shivers suddenly and whispers, "Someone… someone's reciting serial numbers…"
No one answers him.
Erin sits beside Li with a clipboard on her knees, writing whenever the outside light flashes across the page. She asks, "Headache. One to ten?"
Li opens his mouth. No sound comes. He holds up three fingers, then changes it to five.
Erin notes it. "Tinnitus?"
Li nods.
"Emotional response?"
Li looks at her. Emotional response? He can't feel it. There's only cold—like someone pinched out the flame inside his chest and left nothing but ash.
Erin watches him for two seconds and writes: Emotional isolation deepening.
The truck jolts hard. Far away, the watchtower beam sweeps past, but the light is only half a column—like something has bitten it clean through. What remains disperses into the fog and illuminates nothing.
Brian's voice crackles through the radio, frost-flat. "Attention. Entering the Thin Corridor. Maintain formation. Maintain silence. Window is two hours. Miss it and you wait for the next cycle—and the transfer moves with it."
Li's shriek of sound detonates in his skull.
He clamps his hands over his ears. Blood surges from his nose at once. He wipes, and it keeps coming.
"Li?" Sophia leans forward in the dark.
Li waves her off. He can't afford to be not okay. His daughter's next transfer is inside this window.
He forces himself to listen through the pain. The sharpness comes from straight ahead—yet something is wrong. The road looks flat, straight, easy, but the hum there is like a fine saw cutting at the thickness of space. He hears that route as thin as paper, with chaotic echoes under it.
He slaps Marcus's shoulder.
Marcus turns.
Li shakes his head hard and points right—toward a black tangle of ruined alleyways.
"Reroute?" Marcus frowns. "That's longer."
Li nods. He taps his ear, points forward, then makes a tearing motion with his hands.
Marcus holds his stare for three seconds, then grabs the radio. "Officer Cole. Request reroute. Main road has Thin Point risk. Recommend detour through right-side ruin grid."
A few seconds of silence.
"Approved," Brian says. "But the clock stays the same. The window doesn't wait."
The truck turns into the right-side alley.
The fog thickens instantly, wet cloth smeared over their faces. Headlights get swallowed down to a few meters. Everyone feels it—their sense of direction starts to slip.
Daniel whispers, "Why does it feel like we're turning left? The wheel's right—"
Noah points out into the haze. "There—two people! No, three… no, that's… it's doubled—"
Li looks. On the alley wall, blurry shapes move—like people walking on two overlapping roads at once. But there's nobody there.
The radio hisses. A voice bleeds through: "…safe… continue forward…"
But it isn't anyone on their channel.
"Kill the radio," Marcus orders.
Daniel fumbles to shut the unit down.
Erin writes fast: Group disorientation. Double-image illusion. Anchor-edge effect.
She turns to Li. "Any change in your perception?"
Li listens. The hum is still there, but the pitch has shifted—lower, steadier. This path is slower, but thicker. He gives Erin a hand sign: safe.
Erin nods—then her eyes flick down to Li's wrist.
The band's green light has been blinking steady. Now it suddenly stutters—rapid spikes, a peak, then a slow drop.
Something flashes in Erin's gaze. She doesn't write immediately. She looks up and asks, "Can you estimate how far we are from the target?"
Li blinks, then understands. She's stalling—waiting for the peak to pass before it gets logged cleanly.
"Approximate distance," Erin repeats, voice calm. "Use your spatial sense."
Li holds up two fingers, then curls one down—about one and a half kilometers.
Only then does Erin lower her pen and write a few lines. As she writes, she angles her clipboard, deliberately shielding the top half.
Li watches her.
It's the first time anyone has covered for him.
The truck stops.
"Out," Marcus says, dropping the tailgate. "On foot. Target is two hundred meters ahead."
They climb down. The ground under their boots feels wrong—soft, like stepping onto thick carpet.
The place looks like half a warehouse district. But something lies on the ground: metal drag tracks, running into darkness. Beside them, plastic fragments are scattered—disposable restraints, torn apart.
Daniel crouches and shines his light on a tipped metal crate. Stenciled on the side: 7–4–23.
"Another 7–4 prefix," Daniel murmurs. "Same as the data case we pulled last time."
Li steps closer. The hum responds—but not as a needle-sharp resonance. This is different. A low, sympathetic vibration.
"There's a log locker." Daniel pries open a half-collapsed cabinet and pulls out a few charred sheets. He reads under his flashlight. "'Transfer window'… 'Adaptive'… the rest is burned."
"Photograph it. Take it." Marcus says. "Fast."
Noah is on watch, rifle up, scanning. Then his whole body goes rigid.
"Ceiling…" he whispers, voice trembling.
Everyone looks up.
On the remaining ceiling panels, several clots of blackness cling—slowly writhing, like ink bleeding across paper.
Shadowbinders.
"Don't fire," Marcus says under his breath. "Back up—slow. To that door—"
He doesn't finish.
Noah screams.
"It's coming down! It's coming down!" Noah empties a burst straight up.
Rounds spark off concrete. The dark clots startle, contract—and drop together.
"Flares!" Marcus roars.
Daniel throws one. White light blooms. The Shadowbinders' fall slows for a fraction—but they don't stop. They hit the ground, flatten, and slide forward, fast as spilled oil.
Marcus blasts the nearest with a shotgun. Fragments erupt. It hesitates—then keeps coming.
And then Li feels a different kind of attention.
Not the Shadowbinders.
Something far away, in the deeper shadow at the other end of the warehouse. No body. No shape. Just the sensation of being seen—cold, precise, measuring—like a scan.
An Observer.
Li's heart stutters out of rhythm.
The wristband goes insane—green flickering like panic given light.
"Noah, back!" Marcus shouts as Noah suddenly charges into that shadow, firing as he runs. "There's nothing there!"
Noah doesn't listen. His eyes are blown wide and unfocused. He screams at empty air, "Get out! Stop reading my number! Get out!"
He disappears into the darkness.
"Damn it!" Marcus lunges after him—but two Shadowbinders slide into his path.
Sophia inhales once. The next second she's beside Noah, gripping his arm, trying to jump them back—
Her face drains white. Her motion locks. Something inside her gives.
A Shadowbinder skims toward them along the floor.
Li's shriek of sound hits a peak that feels like it will split his skull. He sees the corner—the hum there forms a strange echo pattern, like the tremor after fabric tears. He doesn't think. He sprints and slams a boot into the wall.
The wall doesn't crack.
It loosens.
A narrow seam appears—darkness behind it, a maintenance passage.
"Here—!" Li blurts.
The sound rips out of him—hoarse, raw, sandpaper scraping.
Marcus understands instantly. He lays suppressing fire with the shotgun and bellows, "All of you—into the seam! Now!"
Daniel squeezes through first. Erin follows. Marcus shoves Sophia and Noah into the gap. Li goes last.
As he squeezes through, blood erupts from his nose. A hard ring floods his skull—and then he can't hear anything at all.
The seam seals behind them.
They huddle in a narrow service corridor, gasping. Outside, the scraping sound of the Shadowbinders fades, sliding away into distance.
But the Observer's gaze remains.
Through the wall, it clings—cold and close.
Noah collapses to the floor, eyes empty, whispering numbers like prayer. "Forty-seven… twenty-three… eighteen…"
The radio crackles back on as if the channel has decided to exist again. Brian's voice: "Report."
Marcus snatches the handset. "Engaged multiple Shadowbinders and detected Observer presence. Noah Green suffered severe mental destabilization, broke formation, nearly triggered full contact. Request immediate withdrawal."
Silence.
Then Brian, emotionless: "Noah Green is classified unstable asset. Continue mission. Upon completion, return him for isolation."
Marcus's fist clenches. "Sir, he's a person. Not an asset."
"In recovery operations," Brian says, "there is no difference. Execute, Sergeant."
Marcus doesn't lower the radio. His other hand rests on his holster.
The corridor goes dead quiet.
Erin speaks, calm as a scalpel. "Officer Cole. Noah's episode may be environment-driven. I recommend we complete recovery first. Assess him back at base. Conflict now wastes the transfer window."
A few seconds of silence.
"Accepted," Brian says. "But Green must be restrained. Continue."
Marcus slowly loosens his grip on the holster. He shoots Erin a look—complicated.
Sophia leans against the wall, breathing hard. She looks at Li. Li is wiping his nose, hands shaking.
"Li," Sophia says.
He lifts his head. The ringing is too loud; he reads her mouth more than her voice.
She speaks each word carefully, soft but clear. "Don't live yourself into a number."
Li freezes.
He should feel something—anger, grief, warmth—anything. But there's nothing. Only gray. He sees Sophia's bloodless face, the worry in her eyes, and inside him the water is still, dead-still.
It chills him from the inside out.
They find the target crate at last, haul it to the truck, and head back.
On the return route, every wristband in the team flashes at the exact same second.
Green lights on.
Green lights off.
As if one single thing looked at all of them once.
No one speaks.
Back at the recovery point, night is still holding the sky.
Brian checks the crate himself, sees the serial, and nods. "The data case?"
Daniel hands over the charred log fragments.
Brian glances once, pockets them. Then he looks at Noah, who is being held by Marcus. Noah is quiet now, eyes vacant.
"Isolation," Brian tells two soldiers with a flick.
Marcus doesn't move.
"Sergeant," Brian says, watching him.
Marcus grits his teeth, then releases Noah. The soldiers lead him away.
Brian turns to the rest. "Because of the Green incident, wristband thresholds will be lowered by twenty percent starting tomorrow. Any abnormal peak, regardless of cause, will be reported. Any instability—isolated."
His gaze lands on Li. "Next run goes deeper into the Thin. We need a more stable navigator."
He turns and leaves.
Erin steps to Li's side, lowering her voice. "The log confirms it. The transfer chain is directly tied to the A–47 batch. But we're missing the final coordinate segment."
She pauses. "The next window opens deeper in the Thin. I can help you get the roster—but only if…" Her eyes flick to his wrist. "…under band monitoring, you remain consistently stable."
Li looks at her, then down at the green-lit thing around his wrist.
The hum is still in his ears—fine, continuous, patient.
He's closer to his daughter now.
And closer to the version of himself that feels nothing but ash.
Noah's back as they dragged him away won't leave Li's mind.
Will that be him tomorrow?