He ducked into a maintenance alley behind an old subway station — a half-collapsed loading zone littered with warped pallets and rusted doorframes.
No one followed. No footsteps. No shadows.
Only the low mechanical wheeze of the city breathing in static and exhaust.
Aiden slid down behind a dumpster and pulled his hood over his head. His fingers were shaking — just a little. Not fear. Not cold. Recognition.
He had stepped into the Marvel Universe.
He had been seen by S.H.I.E.L.D.
Not in theory. Not on a screen. In real life.
And the Interface, for all its miracle logic, had said one thing loudest of all:
Visibility Equals Vulnerability.
He stared at his hands again. Still shaking. Not from panic — from acceleration. The crash of adrenaline. His body wasn't used to this.
"Okay," he whispered. "Deep breath. Think like a system."
He squeezed his eyes shut and laid it out like an equation:
Timeline: 2010. Tony Stark has just outed himself.
Major Anchors Active: Natasha, Fury, S.H.I.E.L.D.
Threat Level: Already escalating
Status: Civilian anomaly, spotted by Class-A entity
Next Move: Disengage from visible areas. Gather information. Build utility.
The Interface pinged in the dark, as if responding to his internal report.
[Tagging Complete – Initial Divergence Chart Forming…]
[System Protocol Advice: Avoid Anchor Events until Tier Upgrade Achieved]
[Interface Progression: 0.7%]
Not even one percent.
"So that's the game," he muttered.
The Interface wouldn't guide him toward greatness. It wouldn't dump powers in his lap or unlock cheat codes. It was the opposite.
It punished contact. It resisted fiction. It ran like a threat analysis A.I. wrapped in a hazard tape manifesto. This wasn't a game. It was a cold war between cause and consequence — and every step he took into "the story" made the timeline worse.
"The more I touch, the more things shift."
It hit him like a brick: He was the butterfly.
And this world didn't do soft consequences.
This meant something simple and terrifying:
Until he could fight the system with real leverage, he couldn't afford to be seen.
Not by heroes. Not by villains. Not by anyone the plot cared about.
He needed to be noise in the background.
A thread no one tracked.
A ghost in the data.
He pulled his phone from his hoodie — the old flip one. No GPS. No apps. No camera. He flipped it open and clicked through the contacts. There were six. All teenagers. Names he didn't recognize. A fake life stitched together by whatever or whoever brought him here.
He deleted them all.
Then, quietly, he slid the phone into the dumpster behind him.
No signal. No GPS. No ID.
He would become someone else.
He would vanish from the record.
Not invisible.
Not dead.
Just uncounted.
The Interface blinked in the darkness again. It offered no praise. No encouragement.
Only one new line of data:
[Environmental Status: Neutral Zone Secured]
[Risk Profile: Declining]
Aiden leaned his head back against the wall and exhaled.
He wasn't safe.
But for the first time today — he wasn't losing.
The city moved around him like a sleeping animal.
Somewhere out there, taxis honked, trains screamed, windows slammed. But here, in the dark between buildings, the noise didn't touch him. Just the rustle of trash, the drip of a broken pipe, and the silence between his thoughts.
He waited for the Interface to blink again.
It didn't.
Not until he exhaled and said quietly, "She saw me, didn't she?"
The answer appeared instantly — as if the system had been holding it back for effect.
[Entity Tag Confirmed – Romanoff, Natasha]
[Observation Recorded: Line-of-Sight Engagement – 3.2 Seconds]
[Response Action: None Initiated]
[Analysis: Subject Chose Not to Engage]
He read the line again. Then again.
Chose not to engage.
Not hesitation. Not confusion.
Choice.
That was worse.
He ran a hand through his hair, thinking. Natasha Romanoff — spy, assassin, professional skeptic. She didn't miss things. She didn't accidentally let anomalies walk away. If she saw you, you got logged. Questioned. Tagged by agents. Tracked.
But she hadn't moved.
Why?
He checked the system for a pattern. It offered one:
[Subject Status: Alert – Passive]
[Engagement Style: Discretionary / Strategic]
[Note: Subject often probes before pursuing. Predictive Behavior Model Active.]
"She's waiting," Aiden whispered.
Waiting to see what he does next. Waiting to see if he's worth chasing.
He leaned forward slowly, elbows on knees, hands clasped.
The Interface wasn't just showing him raw intel.
It was mapping intent. Predictive profiles. Psychological overlay. Based on hundreds of known variables from the MCU — and new variables forming now.
And Natasha Romanoff had just joined his life as a live-feed variable. Permanently active. Permanently watching.
The system flashed once more:
[Permanent Tag Assigned – Subject Romanoff]
[Observation Priority: Elevated]
[Opportunity Thread: Unknown]
Opportunity?
He snorted once — dry and joyless.
He hadn't even made it to Day Two and already the MCU's deadliest spy had him in her mental file.
"I need to be smarter than her," he muttered.
"I need to be smarter than everyone."
He stood up, pulling the hood tighter around his face.
There were only two ways to live in a world like this:
Stay out of sight.
Or make them look in the wrong direction.
And Aiden Cross wasn't the hero.
Not yet.
He was something else.
A glitch in the pattern.
A shadow in the Interface.
A name they'd forget right up until it was too late.
He stood in front of the mailbox panel, third floor of the crumbling brick complex, staring at the nameplate:
CROSS, AIDEN
Just letters. Aluminum plate. Three screws. Cheap engraving. Still, it looked like a target.
He reached out, pulled the plate free, and slipped it into his pocket. A stupid move — nostalgic. But there was only one rule now:
No one can find you if you don't exist.
Inside the apartment, he moved fast.
Drawers emptied. Anything with handwriting or biometric data — gone. He burned his notes in the kitchen sink with lighter fluid from the bathroom. The smoke stung his eyes. The fire alarm didn't even chirp — it had been broken for months. Or… years. He didn't know which version of "his life" it belonged to anymore.
He opened the laptop one last time. No trail. Nothing logged. No browser bookmarks. No saved passwords.
Still, he pulled the battery and smashed the hard drive against the rusted countertop.
[Interface Notification: Data Signature Severed]
[Civilian Linkage: Eliminated]
[Location Profile: Terminated]
He didn't need confirmation.
But it helped.
A half-hour later, Aiden stepped out the back door with a black duffel, his hoodie pulled low, a scarf over his mouth. The cold bit harder than yesterday.
Not winter yet. But close.
The Interface adjusted accordingly:
[Temperature Drop: 3.1°F]
[Blood Flow Impact: Mild – Movement Efficiency -1.7%]
He'd get used to that. Probably.
He crossed into the alley behind the complex and dropped the keys into a drainage grate. Watched them vanish beneath rusted steel. One last piece of identity — gone.
He didn't flinch.
By noon, he was walking Canal Street. Chinatown. The dense, buzzing sprawl of overlapping lives — a blur of steam, spice, and shouted Mandarin. If anywhere in New York still sold phones without contracts or questions, it was here.
He found a stall tucked between a seafood market and a locksmith. No signs. Just a wire rack of battered electronics and a folding chair guarded by a guy with a gold tooth and a windbreaker two sizes too big.
Aiden stepped up.
"Cheap, no camera. Burner. Doesn't track."
The guy looked at him like he'd asked for a time machine. Then he reached under the table and handed him a phone the size of a deck of cards. Black plastic. Rubber keypad. Looked like it had been pulled from a crime scene in 2002.
"Twenty," the man said.
Aiden handed him forty.
No change came back. That was fine.
He walked two blocks before turning the phone on. The screen lit up in grayscale.
No signal. Perfect.
The Interface pulsed once:
[Device Tag: Clean – No Transmitter Link]
[Communication Capability: Offline Only]
[Suitability: Acceptable]
Acceptable.
The highest praise he'd ever gotten from the system.
He slept in a condemned warehouse that night — long since gutted, still dry, shielded from traffic cameras by crumbling brick and rusted scaffolding. Not ideal. But invisible.
He lay on a cot made of cardboard boxes, staring up at steel beams overhead. Moonlight poured through the cracked windows, throwing long shadows across the floor like prison bars in reverse.
And for the first time since waking in this world, the Interface changed color.
Just slightly — the faintest shift from blue-white to slate gray. Then it spoke:
[Behavioral Profile Adjusted: Subject Entering Ghost Mode]
[Signal Signature: Below S.H.I.E.L.D. Passive Tracking Threshold]
[Current Status: Unregistered Variable]
Aiden didn't smile.
He just rolled onto his side, pulled the duffel closer like a pillow, and whispered:
"Good."
The city was a machine.
He'd always suspected it. But now — with the Interface active and sharpened — he could see it.
He stood on the edge of a crosswalk, hoodie pulled low, steam rising from a vent beside him. The day was crisp, loud, and fast.
Thousands of people flowed past, eyes locked to phones, shoulders hunched, breath fogging in the cold. A tide of humanity, each ripple folding around lamp posts, signs, street vendors, bike messengers.
The Interface lit up with passive data:
"Crowd Flow: South-East Predominant"
"Average Spacing: 0.9m"
"Interruption Patterns: Non-Aggressive"
Aiden focused his eyes not on the people — but on their paths. The invisible tracks they left with every footstep.
Every shift in posture, every hip-check and backpack swerve — it all told a story. A mother adjusted her grip on a stroller and subconsciously widened her arc. A guy in earbuds looked up for 0.3 seconds and veered right. A delivery biker dipped between cabs, knees tensing half a second before turning the handlebars.
Movement was language.
The Interface started picking it up.
"Behavioral Echo Detected: Urban Evasion Tier 0.1"
"Pattern Recognition Threads Forming…"
Aiden didn't smile.
He stepped forward — into the flow.
At first, it was like swimming against a lazy river. Bumps. Obstructions. A guy with a rolling suitcase clipped his ankle.
But the Interface pulsed with every adjustment:
"Obstacle Forecast: Right-Shift 0.4s in advance"
"Collision Avoided: Passive Redirect Success Rate – 68%"
"Try Again."
Try again?
He did.
For four hours.
He walked the avenues. Ducked through side streets. Let himself drift into high-density pedestrian traffic zones. Watched how conversations, headphone use, gait speed, and eye contact formed micro-signals.
When two people locked eyes, one always yielded.
When shoulders squared, dominance was asserted.
When heads tilted inward — cluster behavior.
When brows tensed — pre-conflict tension.
"This is a game engine," Aiden muttered under his breath. "And I'm learning the physics."
The Interface responded:
"Skill Node Identified – Urban Pattern Recognition"
"Progress: Tier 0.4"
"Basic Movement Prediction Active"
That was the moment it clicked.
He wasn't looking at a crowd anymore.
He was seeing vectors.
By dusk, he was weaving through crowds without being touched. No bump. No contact. No eye-lock.
He ducked a shoulder before a messenger bag swung out.
Pivoted between two arguing teens without hearing their voices.
Slid behind a cab just as its door popped open.
He wasn't moving through the city anymore.
He was part of it.
And it felt… good.
Not powerful. Not like a superhero.
More like water slipping through cracks.
Uncatchable.
He turned onto 5th Avenue, blending into the evening rush. His shadow joined a dozen others against the glowing storefronts. No cameras followed him. No S.H.I.E.L.D. agents appeared.
But as he passed a reflective window, he glanced sideways and saw himself for the first time all day — eyes focused, shoulders relaxed, gait smooth and perfectly spaced between others.
"Skill Node Upgrade: Urban Evasion [Rank 1]"
"Progression: 2.5%"
He walked on, a ghost in a living machine.
No name. No trail.
Just patterns.