Kael hadn't slept.
Not really.
Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the thread collapsing again—unraveling like a pulled wire, leaving behind static and something darker: a trace. Someone had noticed him. Someone had marked him.
Now he was hiding in plain sight, hunched in the back corner of Lys Café, a hole-in-the-wall spot lit by too-warm lamps and the occasional flicker of a dying neon sign. He nursed a bitter coffee just to stay seated, his fingers ghosting over the data-slate on the table. Lines of code scrolled in soft pulses, mimicking a heartbeat.
He ran the last jump again, frame by frame. There—just before the moment shattered. A white pulse across the code. Not natural. Not random. A fingerprint.
He didn't know who—or what—it belonged to.
The bell above the door jingled.
Kael didn't look up, not right away. But something changed in the room.
The air shifted, like a breeze no one else felt. Static danced along his neural graft. He raised his eyes.
She stepped in like she owned the silence.
Tall. Maybe just under six feet. A dark braid ran down her shoulder, the kind of braid that said she did it in a hurry but still looked deliberate. Her coat was black, sleek, drenched in the rain outside, and the way she moved in it—like it was armor—made people glance twice without knowing why.
She had sharp cheekbones, eyes the color of ash right before it fades, and a calm to her that didn't match the noise of the city. The kind of calm that made Kael's gut tighten.
She scanned the room once and moved to the counter.
"Coffee. No sugar," she said to the tired-looking barista, voice smooth but low, like she wasn't used to being ignored.
Kael watched her out of the corner of his eye. Her presence didn't just fill space—it rearranged it. Something in her stride, in her stillness when she stopped moving, in the way she kept her hands inside her coat pockets—measured, deliberate.
She turned slightly. Their eyes met.
Kael didn't flinch, but something in his spine stiffened.
She took the seat two spaces down from his.
There was a silence. A sharp one. The kind that expects to be broken.
"You watching the glitch too?" she asked without looking at him. Kael kept his eyes on the slate.
"I don't know what you're talking about."A quiet chuckle. Not amused—more like confirmation.
"You're not very good at lying, Kael." His fingers paused.
She knew his name.
His thoughts raced—had he seen her before? In a future? A thread he hadn't kept?
She took a sip of her coffee. Then, casually, "That thing in your last jump—white pulse. You felt it, didn't you?"
He turned, slowly.
"You saw that?"
She nodded, eyes still on her drink. "I was watching the thread next to yours."
That wasn't possible. Threads ran individually, even in parallel. Watching across threads required—"You're not from around here," he said, quieter now.
That earned him a look. Up close, her eyes were colder than he expected. Calculating, but not cruel.
"No. But I'm not with them either."
Kael didn't need to ask who they were. He felt it—just like her. Something was watching the threads now. Something that shouldn't be.
She pulled a thin silver disc from her coat pocket and slid it across the table toward him. Kael caught it reflexively. It vibrated faintly in his palm.
A trace reader. Old-school, untraceable. He hadn't seen one since—
"I'm Aya," she said, finally. "But that won't matter if you don't stop being sloppy."
Kael glanced down at the disc, then back at her. "Why help me?"
"I'm not." She stood. "I'm helping the timeline stay intact."
"Wait—what does that mean?"
Aya looked over her shoulder as she walked to the door.
"You've left fingerprints in three early threads. If I found you... they will too.
He stood halfway. "Who's they?"
She paused at the door. Rain painted silver streaks down the window behind her.
"You won't see them coming, Kael."
The bell jingled. And she was gone.