I–90 / 7 / transfer yard / 03:40.
The phrase pins itself into Li's brain like a nail while he's wiping blood from his nose. The camp lights have just dipped and returned; the synchronized green flash on everyone's wrist hasn't even finished fading from his vision.
He looks up at Marcus.
Marcus is already watching him, face turned to stone. "How long?"
"Now," Li says, voice shredded. "The window is shrinking. Not 'tonight'—it's happening."
Right on cue, the radio crackles. Brian's voice lands like ice.
"Recovery Team. All personnel, onboard. Calibration task. Target: I–90 Exit Seven, abandoned transfer yard. Move immediately."
Daniel mutters, "Damn. They don't even let a guy slack off—"
"Shut up and haul," Marcus barks, and he's already dragging the truck's tailgate down.
Erin strides to Li, voice pressed low. "Remember: verification is plug-and-pull. Insert, then extract. Wristband is real-time uplink. Brian is watching from Monitoring Center. One peak over line and he locks you."
"I know," Li says.
"You don't." Erin's eyes hold his. "Your emotional isolation is near threshold. When the noise surges during verification, you might—"
"Might what?" Li asks.
Erin hesitates for a single beat. "You might stop feeling anything. Including the 'want' that's been keeping you moving."
Li doesn't answer. He climbs into the truck.
Sophia tries to follow. Marcus catches her with an arm. "You stay perimeter. This isn't recovery—it's calibration. Brian's people may be close."
"But Li—"
"He's got eyes on him." Marcus glances at Erin.
Sophia stands there as the cargo door shuts. Li sits inside and doesn't look back.
The truck rolls.
Gray fog smears the windows. No streetlights remain—only headlights carving a narrow wedge of dark. The geolocation noise in Li's skull grows louder, harsher, but this time it sharpens.
It isn't chaos anymore.
It's pulses.
"Left," Li says suddenly.
The soldier driving flinches.
"Left!" Marcus repeats.
The truck swerves into a side road. Almost at the same moment, a deep grinding groan rises from the main route ahead—metal twisting, space buckling.
A Thin Point collapses.
Daniel hugs his pack and flips open a notebook. Pen in hand. Eyes on his wrist.
"Here it goes again," he says. "Blinking, intensity… tier three. Interval since last flash… twelve seconds. And the distance from that rusted '7–4' crate we passed… about twenty meters."
He writes like his life depends on the ink.
"What are you doing?" Marcus snaps.
"Recording," Daniel says without looking up. "The flashing isn't random. It tracks distance to anything with a 7–4 prefix. And every time before it flashes, the radio goes blank for about half a second. Like… like the system is warming up."
Erin turns toward Daniel's notebook. "Let me see."
Daniel hands it over. Erin scans three lines. Something changes in her eyes.
"Clustered pulses," she murmurs. "Intensity decays with distance. Repeatable function. This isn't hallucination—this is… a calibration network."
"What does that mean?" Marcus asks.
"It means," Li says, and the pulses in his head are tightening as they near the yard, "we aren't 'accidentally' running into anomalies. Something larger is scanning us. The closer we get, the harder it presses."
He pauses. "And it's speeding up."
As if on command, every wristband in the truck flares green—together—and begins to strobe fast.
Not one blink. Not two.
A frantic run of light, like a heart sprinting downhill.
Then Li feels the world skip.
Not the truck stopping—something else. Everyone's movement drags behind itself by half a second. Marcus opens his mouth to speak and the sound arrives late. Daniel's pen slips from his fingers; the bounce on the floor splits into a double image.
Direction tears.
Li feels himself moving forward and left at the same time. His stomach lurches.
"Jesus—" Daniel clamps a hand to his skull. "What was that?"
"Group desync." Erin scribbles fast. "Anchor-edge effect escalating. Hold steady. Don't stare."
The confusion lasts only seconds, but everyone sweats cold.
The truck stops.
"We're here," the driver says, voice thin.
Li shoves the door open.
A half-collapsed freight transfer yard rises in front of them. The roof has caved on one side; the inside is a black mouth—except a few emergency lamps still glow, bleaching the empty concrete.
Power hasn't died.
Signal has.
"Relay cabinet should be in the southeast corner," Erin says. "Old military model. Likely still has residual charge. Daniel—jam anything external. Marcus—watch the entrances. Li. With me."
Li follows Erin into the yard. Their footsteps echo through the cavernous space with a heavy, too-loud emphasis.
The pulses in Li's head have become a swarm—like a hundred radios shouting at once. He digs through the noise for direction.
Southeast. Yes.
They find the cabinet: iron-gray, faded military stencil on the side. A connection panel sits exposed. A few indicator LEDs glow faint green.
Erin pulls the 7–4–23 data case from her bag and holds it out to Li. "Insert it. Three seconds. Five max. Then pull it. No matter what—don't pass five."
Li takes it. Cold metal. Too cold.
He crouches, finds the port, aligns it—
The instant it clicks in—
The world explodes.
Not with sound.
With the absence of it.
Every pulse, every hum, even the sound of his own heartbeat—gone. Vacuumed away. He drops into absolute gray silence.
Then the flood hits.
Not through his ears. Straight into the skull.
Coordinate strings. Timestamps. Identity codes. Transfer nodes—fragments firing too fast to read, too sharp to forget. He sees a jumping coordinate—southwest of Chicago—then it fractures and becomes another cascade.
At the same time, he can't feel his hands.
Can't feel breath.
Can't feel—
Anything.
Emotion: zero.
Judgment remains, but only as cold arithmetic:
Return success probability: 87%. Window remaining: 42 minutes. Chance Monitoring Center flags waveform: 63%. Chance Erin's falsification holds:—
He becomes a spectator calculating his own life.
"Li!" Erin's voice arrives from very far away.
Li snaps back.
He's still crouched at the cabinet. His fist still grips the data case. Blood has run to his chin and is dripping onto the concrete.
A hard ring fills his ears and hearing returns—muffled, as if underwater.
His wristband isn't blinking now.
It's solid green, emitting a tight, high-frequency pulse of light.
Calibration lock.
"How long?" Li asks.
His voice is frighteningly even.
"Four seconds." Erin is crouched beside him, her clipboard shielding the band and the cabinet, her other hand scribbling furiously. "Your peak hit ceiling. I'm rewriting it. But the curve smoothness is wrong and the timestamp doesn't match the half-second blank—Brian will see the tamper."
She looks up, eyes complicated. "You live, I live. You understand?"
Li does.
Data falsification is a hanging offense. Erin has created a gap that becomes leverage—each holding the other by the throat.
Li yanks the data case out.
A screen on the cabinet flickers. Text crawls onto it:
[Coordinate Return: SUCCESS][Fragment Received: GH–7 Anchor Edge / Transfer Chain Node B / Passphrase: Gray Raven–Echo–47][Status: Registered / Calibrated / Awaiting Transfer]
That last line turns Li's blood cold.
Not query complete.
Registered.
They didn't find a lead.
They checked themselves in.
"Got it?" Marcus calls from the entrance.
"We got it," Erin answers as she rises, snapping her clipboard shut. "But the coordinates are fractured—jumping. And—"
She doesn't finish.
Marcus's radio chirps.
Not team channel—an encrypted line from Monitoring Center.
Brian's voice pours through, colder than fog.
"Abnormal waveform peak detected. Classification: calibration-phase instability. All onsite personnel: immediately restrain Li Kaine. Remove from Recovery Team. Transfer to Monitoring Center custody."
Marcus grabs the radio. "Brian! Mission's done! We pulled the coordinate!"
"Separate issue, Sergeant," Brian replies without a ripple. "Li Kaine's neural waveform spiked uncontrollably during verification with a brief loss of contact. Under Code 7, Clause 3, he requires immediate isolation. Execute."
"Execute your—" Marcus roars, hand slamming down on his holster. "He's standing. He's talking. You don't get to isolate him because you felt like it!"
"Policy," Brian says. "And if you refuse, I will use Monitoring Center authority to designate your entire unit as high-risk managed. Next mission, personnel replaced. All current unit benefits frozen, including… family allocation credits."
Silence swallows the line.
Marcus's hand stays stuck on his holster. A muscle jumps in his cheek.
Li watches Marcus and computes the probability of Marcus drawing—dropping, dropping. Policy is a sharper weapon than a gun.
"Marcus," Li says. "Stop."
"We can't stop!" Marcus's eyes are red. "Hand you over today, we hand over anyone tomorrow. This is exactly what it is—people as batteries! Used up and tossed!"
"And you want Daniel replaced with strangers next run?" Li asks, voice still flat. "You want Sophia's medical allotment frozen? You want everyone's family credits wiped?"
Marcus can't answer.
His fingers loosen from the holster. Slowly.
On the radio, Brian's voice returns. "Wise choice, Sergeant. Put Li Kaine on the transport. Monitoring Center arrives in five minutes."
Then Daniel shouts, sharp with fear: "Again!"
Everyone looks down.
Their wristbands flash green in perfect synchronization.
One strong, unified blink.
But this time—
After the blink, the lights don't return to normal.
They stay on.
A high-frequency pulsing glow, identical to Li's locked band.
Across the transfer yard, every emergency lamp dips for a heartbeat.
In that slice of darkness, Li hears a voice.
Not in his ears.
Deeper.
Like a system receipt—cold, exact:
"Registered. Calibrated. Awaiting Transfer."
Fog pours in through broken windows, carrying the wet stink of rust and gray moss.
Sophia stands at the doorway, staring into the yard. She sees Marcus's hand slide away from the gun. She sees Li standing too calmly. She sees Erin shut her clipboard.
Sophia opens her mouth to shout Li's name—
But Li doesn't look at her.
His eyes fix on the fog beyond the building, as if watching a countdown only he can see.
The wristband's pulse paints his face—flash, flash, flash.