The silence after the lights blow out is worse than the noise.
People gasp, curse, laugh nervously. Someone drops a bottle. Somewhere a child starts crying. The supermarket doesn't go dark completely—emergency lights flicker on, bathing everything in sickly red strips that stretch shadows across the floor.
And shadows…
shadows *move*.
Not walking.
Not crawling.
Shifting. Stretching. Reacting.
The word above my shadow—**CLAIMING**—burns like a brand pressed into living skin.
My knees almost give out.
Ardan catches my shoulder hard enough to hurt.
"Stay with me," he snaps. "Do not faint. If you lose consciousness right now, the system will assume consent."
"Consent to what?" I gasp.
"To anything," he says. "That's how audits end."
The auditor hasn't moved.
He stands perfectly still in the middle of the aisle, emergency light cutting his face in half—human on one side, something smooth and unreadable on the other.
His shadow spasms.
The word above it can't decide what it wants to be.
**AUDITING**
**RECALCULATING**
**CONFLICT**
That last one lingers.
Good.
I didn't win.
But I *hurt* it.
The girl is on her feet now, clutching her arm where the silver thread still glows faintly, half-embedded in her skin like a scar that hasn't finished forming.
Her breathing is shallow.
"I can feel it," she whispers. "Whatever you did… it went through me."
"I'm sorry," I say immediately.
She shakes her head. "No. I mean— I can still feel *you*."
That's not reassuring.
Ardan's eyes flick between us, calculating faster than I can follow.
"That's the tether stabilizing," he says. "Which means your Claim didn't reject her."
"Is that good?" I ask.
"It means," he says carefully, "that whatever authority you just invoked recognizes the bond."
The auditor finally speaks.
"You have exceeded permitted interaction," he says. His voice glitches slightly, as if two tones are fighting for dominance. "Self-Claim without ledger approval constitutes escalation."
"Then file it," Ardan says coldly.
The auditor's head turns toward him with mechanical precision.
"Your interference is compounding the discrepancy."
"Good," Ardan replies. "Let it compound. I'm tired of balancing your messes."
The auditor steps forward.
Every instinct in my body screams to run.
Instead, I plant my feet.
The word **CLAIMING** pulses once—hard.
Pain explodes behind my eyes.
I taste metal.
"Mark!" the girl shouts.
The world blurs, then snaps back into focus sharper than before.
For a terrifying second, I can see *too much*.
Not just words above shadows.
Layers.
Stacks of labels, some faded, some overwritten, some scratched out so violently they look like wounds in the air. People aren't just **HUNGRY** or **TIRED**—they're also **OWNED**, **LEASED**, **DEFERRED**, **PROMISED**.
The supermarket is a ledger.
Every aisle a column.
Every person a line item.
And the auditor—
The auditor is the finger sliding down the page.
"No," I whisper.
Ardan hears the change in my voice immediately.
"Do not open further," he warns. "You're peeking behind accounting. That's how people go mad."
"I see—" I swallow. "I see how much of them isn't theirs."
The auditor stops three steps away.
His shadow stretches until it touches mine.
The air hums.
"Mark Levchenko," he says. "You have initiated an incomplete Claim. Incomplete Claims require resolution."
"I didn't claim *you*," I say hoarsely. "I claimed myself."
The auditor's eyes narrow—not in anger, but in analysis.
"There is no such category."
"There is now," I say.
The words come out before I think them through.
Ardan flinches.
The girl squeezes my hand again, grounding me.
For a heartbeat, nothing happens.
Then the word **CLAIMING** fractures.
New letters bleed through the cracks.
Not replacing it.
Stacking.
**CLAIMING**
**SELF-ASSIGNED**
Ardan sucks in a breath.
"Oh no," he mutters. "That's… that's really not supposed to happen."
The auditor recoils—just slightly, but enough to matter.
"Unauthorized terminology detected," he says. "Source unclear."
"That's because it's not from you," Ardan snaps. "It's from him."
The auditor looks back at me.
Really looks.
Not at my face.
At my shadow.
At the words.
At the *absence* behind them.
"Your record is blank," he says slowly. "And not blank by error."
Something in his voice shifts.
Curiosity.
"Who erased you?"
I don't know.
And the fact that he's asking means someone important did.
"I don't remember," I say.
"That is consistent," the auditor replies. "Memory erasure often accompanies name extraction."
The girl stiffens.
"Name extraction?" she echoes.
The auditor ignores her.
"You were not meant to wake," he says to me. "Your persistence has created cascade effects."
"Then stop trying to erase me," I say. "Let me go."
"Release is not an option," he says. "You are unbalanced."
"So are you," I shoot back. "Your shadow can't even decide what it is anymore."
The word above him flickers violently.
**AUDITING**
**CONFLICT**
**EXCEPTION**
Ardan's eyes widen.
"Exception," he whispers. "Mark, do you have any idea how rare that—"
The auditor raises his hand.
The red emergency lights shatter into white.
Time *stutters*.
People freeze mid-motion—mouths open, hands hovering, carts tilted.
Only us.
Only the auditor.
Only the words.
"This interaction is now isolated," the auditor says. "Further contamination prevented."
The girl panics.
"Mark, I can't feel anyone else," she says. "It's like they're… paused."
"They are," Ardan says. "This is a partial freeze. He's carving a clean space."
"For what?" I ask.
"For judgment," Ardan answers.
The auditor steps closer.
"Mark Levchenko," he says. "State your Claim."
My heart hammers.
This is it.
A hearing I didn't want.
A choice I didn't prepare for.
I look at the girl—at the silver thread tying us together, frayed but holding.
I look at Ardan—tired, flagged, still standing.
And I realize something terrible.
If I Claim myself fully…
I might lose everything I was.
But if I don't—
They'll decide for me.
"I claim—" My voice shakes.
The auditor's eyes sharpen.
I hesitate.
And in that hesitation, something else moves.
Behind the auditor.
Behind the frozen shelves.
A shadow that does not belong to the supermarket.
It seeps out from between the stacked products, long and thin and watching.
Above it, a word forms slowly, eagerly.
**BROKER.**
Ardan's blood drains from his face.
"Oh hell," he breathes. "That's worse."
The auditor stiffens.
"This audit does not involve brokerage," he says.
The shadow smiles without a mouth.
"It does now," it whispers.
And suddenly I understand.
The audit was never about fixing me.
It was about seeing what I was worth.
And someone else has come to make an offer.