Just three lines hanging in the air like a sentence already passed.
USER: UNREGISTERED
STATUS: MARKED OBSERVER
PROTOCOL: DEVIATION
The teenager next to him looked over and went pale.
"Dude... what does that mean?"
Kai swallowed.
"I don't know."
But he could feel something.
A pressure just behind his eyes.
A tug in the center of his chest, faint and wrong, like a hook catching somewhere inside him whenever the creature moved.
The monster shrieked again and sprang at the older man.
The one-armed man didn't dodge in time.
The woman with the paperback moved, but she was too far.
The big man lunged from the side, slamming his wrapped arm into the creature midair. They hit the floor together in a violent tangle.
Claws ripped through fabric.
He roared, more furious than afraid, and smashed the thing against a seat leg.
"Help me!" he shouted.
Kai was already moving.
Not because he was brave.
Not because he had a plan.
Because the pressure in his chest pulled harder, and when the creature hit the floor, something small and silver-blue broke off its shell like a splinter of light.
Nobody else reacted.
Nobody else seemed to see it.
The fragment spun once in the air between bodies and blood and flying panic.
Then drifted toward Kai.
His screen changed.
ANOMALOUS RESONANCE DETECTED
The words flashed so bright they burned into his vision.
The fragment touched his hand.
Cold flooded his arm.
The creature's scream cut off mid-sound.
Every light in the carriage came back on at once.
And every person near him turned to stare.