The apartment is already awake when I open my eyes.
Not alive... Connected.
The walls hum with the block's notifications. Snatches of voices seep through thin plaster, chopped up by beeps, dead silences, and forced, too-bright restarts. The whole building breathes in time with the G.P.U.
Paul is pacing.
Again.
He goes back and forth between the table and the couch, always along the same strip, like the floor has burned his route into itself. His feet barely scrape, but every pass grinds a little deeper on my nerves.
His bracelet blinks.
3.64.
A soft, well-mannered red. Not an alarm. Not yet.
"Stop," I say. "You're going to hit the floor before your score does."
He doesn't.
"At least then I'd be the one deciding where."
He tries to smile. It doesn't land. The word deciding doesn't sound like it belongs to him.
Something shifts on the windowsill.
Lix lifts his head.
Metal fox-ears snap toward us. The blue facets of his eyes refocus, sweep the room, then lock on Paul. A thin line of light ripples down his spine, like a digital shiver.
"Easy, Lix," I murmur.
Lix tilts his head, zooms in on Paul's bracelet for half a heartbeat, then shutters his sensors. No sound. Just that small, rigid set to his body that means: critical threshold.
"Quit staring at me like that," Paul mutters. "I'm not a sim."
"That's kind of the problem," I say.
He finally stops. Turns to face me.
"You really think I don't see the curve? 3.64, Kai. That's prime territory. Too low to be worth an upgrade. Not low enough to justify a rescue. We're perfect profiles great for filling charts without dragging down their success rate."
He says their like everyone knows who he means.
Lix lets out a low, almost-silent beep. Not a logged alert an emotional one.
"The Amplis don't even watch your old matches anymore," I say. "You're just a line going downhill."
"To you too, right?"
His gaze drops to my wrist.
"4.00. Clean. Rounded. Is that who you are now?"
I look down.
Social: 3.5 | Talent: 4.2 | Visibility: 3.9 | Impact: 4.4
R: 4.00
Yesterday I was still stuck right under the line, like the system was keeping a thumb on me. Then, with no warning, something let go.
"It's a glitch," I say.
Paul gives a short, dry laugh.
"The G.P.U. doesn't glitch. It adjusts. If your number went up, it's because somebody saw you. And when they see you, it's never because they're planning a vacation package in your honor."
Lix hops down from the sill and presses against my ankle. His metal tail coils around my leg like a tether.
"You're scared because you're dropping," I say. "I'm scared because I'm climbing. Call it even."
"No."
He steps in too close. Our bracelets brush. A thin flash of white links them for half a second an accidental sync.
"I know they've decided to let me fall," he says quietly. "You just haven't figured out yet why they've decided to pick you up."
Before I can answer, my bracelet buzzes.
Presence required | Sector VY-3
Procedure: enhanced scan
Heat runs up the back of my neck.
Enhanced scan.
Not a headcount. A deep read.
Paul skims the notification over my shoulder.
"There it is," he exhales. "Radar's on."
"Cut it out."
"I'm just being honest. When Resonance jumps too fast, something always gets charged for it."
He doesn't look away.
"What did you do yesterday?"
The hallway snaps back into place in my mind the boy with R: 2.1, his too-fast breathing, my bracelet vibrating, the service door swinging shut behind him. Then the shadow with no bracelet in the alley, chin tipped up toward our window.
"Nothing," I say.
He keeps watching me.
"You're getting better at lying," he says at last. "Just watch who you're lying to. Amplis love opaque profiles. They make perfect stories to smash live sponsors, outrage, redemption arcs if the numbers line up."
An ad kicks in somewhere out in the hallway.
Voice turned up too bright.
Bonus KOR | Stable Resonance: "Engaged citizen rewards."
I grab my bag.
"I've gotta go."
"Sure. Go shine a little. Let it make somebody's day."
Lix pads toward the door. I crouch down in front of him.
"Not today."
His eyes shift to orange. Forced compliance.
"You stay with Paul."
He moves back to the window and settles, facing the room and the street at the same time. Living surveillance.
I pull the door closed behind me.
Outside, NovaHelix is just starting to stretch.
Our block's towers are crammed in tight, stacked like plastic crates, lit just enough to call everything "fully operational." Farther out, the buildings open up smooth glass fronts, more space between them. The light gets there earlier. It lingers.
People barely walk anymore.
Their eyes are locked on FluxPulse.
The moving sidewalks do the physical work.
A woman in a fitted suit straightens her collar.
R: 4.12.
Her shoulders sink a few millimeters. She looks like she's been allowed to breathe for one more day.
Next to her, a delivery guy checks his 3.47, thumb flicking at his feed like he can push the number to 3.50 by sheer insistence. Hit that, and maybe his KOR commute fees shave off a fraction.
No one looks up when a Sentinel glides overhead.
As long as their digits sit in the "acceptable" band, the hum is just another background noise.
On the corner, a café.
A man with R: 5.26 sits by the window, framed perfectly inside his own stream. An interview about "career optimization and sustainable Resonance" auto-plays in front of him; his smile is tuned to the studio lighting he isn't even in.
Each time a heart or clapping icon flickers across the overlay, a tiny KOR counter blinks at the edge of his vision.
A waiter comes up behind him with two paper cups balanced on an overloaded tray.
His bracelet reads 3.41, just enough for a small unit if his tips don't dry up. He looks mid-thirties, shoulders hunched forward from too many double shifts, his uniform a size too big like it belonged to someone else first.
Someone brushes his shoulder.
The tray tilts.
Coffee splashes down the High's spotless shirt.
Silence folds over three tables.
The High stands. Slowly. Wipes at the stain. Looks at the waiter.
"You know what this is worth?" he asks, voice still level.
The waiter stammers out a "sorry," already reaching for napkins.
His hands shake. His bracelet flashes yellow stress picked up.
The client doesn't raise his voice.
He just lifts his wrist, calls up the waiter's profile on FluxPulse, the hologram hovering over the table.
His thumb drops.
Negative feedback received—Impact : -0.03
Note: service incident | insufficient control
The waiter's score flickers. 3.41 collapses to 3.38.
-0.03 is nothing on a graph.
Stack enough "nothing" like that, and the G.P.U. starts offering helpful suggestions about "contract review."
Two teens by the window never stopped recording.
The clip launches straight into a "Morning Fails" channel on FluxPulse. Comments start blooming underneath : laughing emojis, ouch, his fault, classic.
Later today, people will replay the coffee in slow motion.
No one will slow down the exact second something switches off in the waiter's eyes.
I look away.
In NovaHelix, scenes like that are just part of the wallpaper sharp enough to remind everyone of the rule, dull enough that no one has to stop scrolling.
My bracelet buzzes.
Impact: 4.4
R: 4.00—Stable
On paper, everything checks out.
But with every step, I feel like I'm walking toward a line I still can't see.
Another vibration.
Enhanced scan | Phase 2
Sector VY-3: 3 profiles flagged
Three.
A Sentinel cuts across the sky lower than before. Its visor angles toward me for a single heartbeat, then swings away as it keeps going.
I freeze.
For the first time, I'm not sure if getting all the way to school means safety…
or confirmation.
The system doesn't ask me what I want.
It just times how fast I obey.