The pulse-light from the wristband paints Li's face—flash, flash.
Two soldiers hold him by the arms, left and right. They aren't squeezing, but the message is clear. They guide him toward the corner of the transfer yard where a white vehicle waits—half container, half medical pod.
The door slides open. Inside is a white corridor, light so harsh it drains the blood from a face.
"Inside," the soldier on the left says.
Li steps in. The door seals behind him, cutting off the fog—and Sophia's stare.
The corridor is narrow, just wide enough for one body to pass. The walls are some smooth composite; cold under his fingertips. On his wrist, the band's green light no longer blinks. It stays on, a tight, high-frequency pulse.
Calibration lock.
Then the geolocation noise changes.
No longer broken-radio static. It's been combed into structure—organized and forced into his skull.
"Timestamp: 04:17.""Directive: continue movement.""Route node: 7–4 transfer chain, secondary channel A."
The voice is flat, machine-clean. Every fragment that lands feels like something scraping the inside of his head.
He follows the soldiers. His steps feel slightly detached from the floor. The nosebleed has stopped, but the tinnitus remains—a mosquito pressed against his eardrum, never leaving.
At the end of the corridor is a small room. One chair. A screen embedded in the far wall.
"Sit," the soldier says.
Li sits. The screen wakes up, green data streaming in columns and waveform graphs pulsing like breath. He recognizes one curve as his heart rate. Another as neural activity.
Then he "hears" a new input.
"Segment directive: confirm identity code.""Short command: Echo.""Response window: three seconds."
Li opens his mouth to say something—anything. But the part of him that wants to speak feels sealed behind glass. What remains is calculation:
This is an instruction. It requires compliance.
He nods.
And then—he freezes.
Did I… nod?
He isn't sure.
His memory has a missing rung. From hearing the directive to sitting here—blank. He remembers entering the corridor, remembers the screen lighting up, but he can't remember whether he actually nodded, or whether he said Echo.
The uncertainty turns his spine cold.
Full-gray isn't "no feelings."
It's not even being sure you were yourself five seconds ago.
A waveform spikes. The door opens. The soldier gestures him out.
Li stands and walks out. The corridor leads to another door. Beyond it waits a larger transport vehicle—sealed cargo body, military stencil on the side.
Erin stands a few paces away with her clipboard. Two Monitoring Center staff in gray uniforms are checking her data.
"Waveform smoothing is abnormal," one says, tapping the chart. "Here—timestamp doesn't match the half-second radio blank. You altered it?"
Erin's expression doesn't shift. "Anchor-edge interference. Distortion. I applied smoothing—otherwise everything flags as anomaly."
"Smoothing is permitted," the other replies, eyes sharp. "But the gap is too clean. When the system back-checks curve consistency, it'll mark this in red. You know the consequence."
Erin doesn't answer.
Li is pushed past her. Their eyes meet for a fraction of a second.
Erin's gaze is calm—but he reads the message inside it:
The hole is still there. The system will find it. This is no longer me protecting you. This is us either dying together, or finding a way out together.
Co-conspiracy. Locked. No reverse gear.
Li is shoved up into the transport.
Inside, several people are already seated—each wearing a band. Each band pulsing the same stable green rhythm. No one speaks. The air smells like disinfectant and sweat pressed into fabric.
The door hasn't fully shut when Li hears Marcus outside, voice restrained to a simmer.
"I handed him over. I signed. Now per the clause, he completes the verification segment with us."
Brian's voice answers through the radio—cold, flat. "What verification segment?"
"The one you approved," Marcus says. "Routing requires a trigger action to finalize. You know the transfer logic better than I do. Without Recovery Team escorting him to that short-range node for confirmation, what you receive is an incomplete calibration asset. Chain delays—maybe resets."
Silence on the line.
"You're buying time, Sergeant."
"I'm guaranteeing efficiency," Marcus shoots back. "One point. Round trip under twenty minutes. After that, you take him. No further argument."
"And if he spikes?"
"Then you isolate him on-site under policy. I accept the penalty."
More silence.
Then Brian: "Approved. But after verification, immediate transfer. And Sergeant—your unit's family allocation credits are frozen until handoff completes. Consider that a nail."
"Fine," Marcus says, voice hard as iron.
At the edge of the transport door, Sophia tries to surge forward. A soldier blocks her with a rifle held sideways.
"Non-registered personnel—approach triggers containment protocol," the soldier says.
Sophia stops. Her eyes lock onto Li through the narrowing gap. Li looks back.
His face doesn't move. He can't feel urgency. Can't feel warmth. He can only calculate her risk exposure standing there.
Sophia clenches her jaw. Then, fast, she pulls something from her pocket and slips it to Daniel—who is crouched nearby, pretending to tie his boot.
A small cloth pouch. Hard inside—unknown contents.
"Give it to him," she mouths without sound.
Daniel nods once and tucks it inside his jacket.
The transport door slides shut, sealing Sophia outside.
Inside the dim cargo space, only wristband pulse-light remains—flash, flash—painting every face in the same rhythm.
Daniel shuffles closer to Li, lowering his voice. "Man… I worked it out."
Li turns his head.
"The blinking—distance to 7–4 residue. There's a function. And before every flash, radio drops for half a second, like the system warms up." Daniel speaks fast, hands sketching shapes in the air. "This isn't monitoring. It's routing—splitting people into different transfer branches."
He pulls out the cloth pouch and presses it into Li's hand. "From Sophia."
Li takes it, doesn't open it. "How do you break routing?"
"In theory," Daniel says, "all we need is one fake distance. Or fake residue. One second of lying to the system."
He swallows. "One second is enough to do a lot. Like… run."
He slides back to his seat, knees hugged to his chest, eyes glued to the floor.
The transport vibrates. The engine comes alive. It starts moving.
Pulse-light strobes in synchronized rhythm. Every wristband beating the same green time, like one shared heart inside the dark.
Then the cabin lights cut out—snap—all at once.
Not a failure.
A deliberate blackout.
At the same second, every band erupts in a synchronized burst—one blinding flash.
In that strobe of dark and glare, a message detonates in Li's head.
Not private. Not his alone.
Everyone in the vehicle "hears" it at the same time—cold, crisp, system-issued:
"Roll call complete.""Routing confirmed.""Next node: 04:55.""Trigger action: contact interface GH–7–B.""Failure penalty: timeout triggers reroute. Reroute triggers reselection."
The voice fades. The cabin lights return—sterile white, too bright.
Nobody moves.
Everyone stares down at the steady green pulse on their wrists.
Li closes his fist around the cloth pouch.
04:55.
Thirty-eight minutes.