Jaden Banks didn't come here to chant.
He didn't come here to fight either.
He came because the air in his apartment felt too tight lately, like the walls were slowly leaning in and nobody else noticed, and the street—loud, dumb, crowded—at least made his thoughts harder to hear.
Bad reason. Still his reason.
He stood at the edge of the protest with his hands in his hoodie pocket, shoulders loose, face blank like he was waiting for a bus. His hair hung over his eyes the way it always did, black and messy, like it wanted to hide him on purpose. Dark eyes behind it. Heavy-lidded. Tired in a way sleep didn't fix.
Seventeen. Five-eight. Lean enough that the wind could've bullied him if it wanted.
He didn't look like a threat.
That was the whole point.
The crowd roared in waves. Signs bobbed. People shoved forward, then back, then forward again. Somebody's speaker squealed, feedback sharp enough to stab the ear. Above it all, drones hovered and watched, buzzing like flies that got a paycheck.
Jaden didn't look up at them.
Looking up was how you got remembered.
He watched the street instead. The curb. The drains. The little gaps where things could crawl out.
Because he'd lived in the Megasprawl long enough to know the city didn't need much excuse to turn ugly.
A stroller bumped his leg.
A woman pushing it didn't even see him. She mumbled "sorry" like her mouth did it on autopilot. The wheel clipped the curb and jolted. The baby inside let out a thin, panicked cry.
That sound hit Jaden weird.
Not emotional. Not sentimental.
Just… sharp.
Like a needle through his skull.
He exhaled slow. His fingers tightened in his pocket around nothing.
Stay out the way.
That had been his whole plan for life. Don't get noticed. Don't get recruited. Don't get tagged. Don't get turned into somebody's tool.
It'd worked, mostly.
Until it didn't.
The stroller wheel got stuck again in the crush, wedged at a dumb angle. The woman's face pinched, frantic, trying to tug it free while bodies shoved her from behind.
Jaden felt the pressure in the crowd shift. His power always noticed shifts first. Not big stuff. The tiny physics. The way weight redistributed. The way a fall could become a stomped-to-death spiral in half a second.
His jaw tightened.
He didn't want to help.
That wasn't even a moral thing. He just didn't want eyes on him. Every time he used his ability in public, even small, it felt like tossing blood into water and pretending sharks couldn't smell it.
But the baby was crying louder now.
And the stroller was still stuck.
So Jaden did something stupid.
He nudged it.
Not a shove. Not a yank. A soft directional push on the wheel hub, barely any force, just enough to roll it up and over the curb like the street decided to cooperate.
The stroller freed. The woman stumbled forward, eyes wide, not understanding why it suddenly worked.
Jaden kept his face blank. Didn't look at her. Didn't move his hands.
Just stayed still, like nothing happened.
The baby's crying faded into the chaos.
Good.
Back to invisible.
For half a second, it felt like it worked.
Then his skin prickled.
Not instinct. Not paranoia.
The little red light.
A drone dipped lower than the others. Its lens rotated like a head turning. A tiny tracking dot blinked and settled on him.
Once.
Twice.
Jaden's stomach sank with a slow, steady certainty.
Fuck.
He didn't move.
Moving was a confession.
The crowd surged again, and down by the curb, metal flexed.
Jaden saw it before most people did. The storm drain bulged like something underneath it had pushed up with a shoulder.
A lot of some-things.
Then the grate popped.
And a pale, wet thing shot out.
Small. Too small. Too fast.
It latched onto a man's ankle like a staple, mouth opening like a seam tearing, clamping down hard enough that the scream sounded like it ripped the man's throat on the way out.
"BREACH!" someone yelled.
The word hit the street and everything snapped.
Bodies slammed into bodies. People ran without direction, which meant they didn't run at all. They just crushed.
Jaden's eyes tracked the mites. He hated how quickly his brain switched into problem-solving mode. Like some part of him loved a crisis because it gave him an excuse to think about something other than his own life.
Mites spilled from the drain in a chain. One, two, four, seven—he lost count as they began to scatter, each moving with that wrong-jointed speed that made them look like they were being pulled instead of crawling.
Command responded instantly.
Too fast.
A hum rolled across the street, low at first, then sharper. It wasn't loud, but it pressed into the teeth. Into the eyes. Into the brain stem. People flinched like the air had slapped them.
Frequency Disruptors.
Jaden had heard about them. Everybody had. Command's favorite toy.
The mites reacted like the hum was a signal, not a weapon. They jittered faster. Some froze for a half-beat, then twitched and kept moving with even worse rhythm.
A woman tripped near the curb.
Three bodies piled on top of her before anyone realized she was down.
Jaden's fingers flexed in his pocket.
Stay out the way.
He stared at the drone light in his peripheral and told himself he couldn't do anything else. Not now. Not with that lens on him.
But he kept seeing the stroller. The baby. The way the woman's hands shook.
He hated himself for caring.
Another grate down the curb bulged.
Then another.
A chain.
Planned.
Jaden swallowed. His throat felt dry like he'd been chewing dust.
The drone's red dot stayed on him.
He shifted his weight, casual, like he was just letting the crowd pass. He started edging away from the curb, aiming for a gap between a transit column and a vendor cart. If he could get into the alley—
A Command officer's voice cut through the noise, amplified and flat.
"Hold! Back away from the curb!"
The crowd didn't listen.
They never listened.
A mite leapt toward a cluster of teens. One kid swung a sign. Missed. Another kid slapped it away from his friend's face and accidentally swatted it into their own neck.
Blood sprayed.
The mite latched.
The kid screamed, hands clawing at it.
Jaden's eyes locked on the motion. His power tightened like a muscle he'd been trying not to use.
He could do it.
He could yank it off.
He could twist it.
He could snap it and keep moving.
And he could do it small enough that it wouldn't spike the drone's detection threshold too hard—
The kid's knees buckled.
Jaden moved without thinking.
Not his feet.
His power.
A clean vector pull. Not violent. Not flashy. A precise sideways torque at the mite's hinge point, the angle where its jaw mechanics looked most unstable.
The mite's body twisted.
It popped off the skin like a hook yanked free.
The kid staggered, gasping, blood pouring down their collarbone.
Jaden didn't look at their face. Didn't wait for thanks. He let the mite skitter across the pavement and get slammed by a disruptor pulse a heartbeat later.
He turned his head slightly away, hair still hiding his eyes, like he hadn't done anything.
The drone light brightened.
Just a touch.
Like interest.
Jaden's stomach twisted harder.
He kept backing into his gap.
Then a second drone slid into position above the street, lens angling.
Triangulation.
They were netting him.
A voice crackled from a nearby Command officer's speaker. Not yelling. Not panicked. Administrative.
"Visual confirmed on Armed interference. Tagging adjacent."
Adjacent.
That word meant you didn't get to explain. It meant you were close enough to be useful or blameworthy. Either way, you were owned for a while.
Sometimes forever.
Jaden's heartbeat stayed steady—too steady, like his body was refusing to give Command the satisfaction of panic.
He slipped into the gap between the vendor cart and the column.
A hand slapped the vendor cart aside like it weighed nothing.
Armor stepped in front of him.
A Command officer. Full kit. Visor down. Rifle angled low but ready.
The officer didn't say "are you okay?" or "get to safety."
He said, "Hands out."
Jaden didn't move.
His hands stayed in his hoodie pockets.
The officer's helmet tilted a fraction, like it was deciding whether this kid was going to be a problem.
"Hands out," the officer repeated, sharper.
Behind the officer, the crowd screamed as another drain burst. Mites spilled. Disruptor hum sharpened until it hurt to think. People dropped vomiting. Someone tried to climb a barrier and got yanked down.
Jaden stared at the officer's chest plate instead of the visor.
If he ran, it'd confirm guilt.
If he stayed, he'd be boxed anyway.
If he used his power, he'd be tagged harder.
Stay out the way.
Funny how the world kept dragging him into the way.
He pulled his hands out slowly.
Palms open.
Empty.
The officer caught his wrist and twisted his arm up behind his back with practiced efficiency. The grip wasn't sadistic. It was routine.
Jaden's shoulder twinged.
He didn't react.
Another officer appeared on his left. This one had a compact device in hand—zip cuffs, probably. Or worse.
"Adjacent detention," the second officer said into comms. "One male. Teen. Armed interference caught on drone."
Jaden's jaw tightened.
"I didn't—" he started.
The first officer slammed him into the column hard enough that the back of his head rang. Not a punch. A placement. Like pinning a bag to a wall.
"Save it," the officer said. "You can talk to Compliance."
Compliance.
That was the real word underneath adjacent.
Jaden's vision blurred for a second. Not from pain. From the hum. From the crowd. From the way the street suddenly felt like a cage.
He glanced sideways.
Across the chaos, he saw a COS cadet line holding shakily, faces pale. One of them—Latina girl, sharp eyes—was looking in his direction like she'd just realized what the net was for.
Jaden didn't know her name.
Didn't care.
Not right now.
The second officer raised the cuffs.
The drone above them dipped, red light burning steady.
And somewhere deep in the street, under the screaming and the hum, another grate bulged—bigger this time—like the Breach wasn't done opening its mouth.