The fog presses my hood to my scalp and turns drone beacons into smeared stars. The wind tunnel hums like an organ pipe, drawing air from the bay straight into the building’s lungs. I taste salt, then disinfectant, then the burnt-sugar echo of the food hall’s last fryer closing for the night.
“Heartbeat drop in thirty seconds,” Jonas says in my ear, voice low, steady. He appears from the vapor with a grin he wears only when he’s terrified. He hands me a laminated square in a gray sleeve.
“Badge clone?” I ask.
“From the maintenance tech who hates overtime,” he says. “He thinks he lent it to a vending machine repair. We’ve got a window.”
I hold the clone, smooth and heavy as a lie you plan to use for good. The service door ahead is painted hospital white and everything-proof; a reader blinks a bored green. I slide the clone down the sleeve of my glove.
“You sure?” he asks.
“You asked that before coffee at the Strand,” I say. “You didn’t like my answer then either.”
I press the badge to the reader. The light blooms. The lock squeals, then chirps like a small bird greeting morning.
“Door chatter,” I whisper, because hearing it name itself steadies me. I shoulder it open and taste recycled cold.
We slip inside. The fog holds its breath behind us. The hallway is polished concrete, walls white-on-white, the same citrus cleanser I carry in my fingerprints. Elevator screens whisper headlines between floors somewhere above; down here the whisper is reduced to a pulse through ductwork, language smoothed into beat. My recorder in my pocket watches with its red eye.
“Asset room should be two levels down,” Jonas says, reading a stolen floor plan like a map of his own shame. “Label says ‘Janitorial Overflow.’”
“Because truth lives in brooms,” I say.
He allows the corner of his mouth to move. “Because lawyers prefer euphemisms to locks.”
We take stairs because stairs don’t rat us out. At the landing, a poster of the halo—two concentric rings pretending to bless—reminds me the icon appears on everything: receipts, wristbands, contracts, a symbol of purity that is actually capture. I touch my pocket where my foil-wrapped band sleeps like a cut wire.
The “overflow” door waits at the end of a short hall, behind a vending machine that offers hot sugar in twelve forms. Fog curls under the threshold from a ventilation grate, dragging bay-cold into the antiseptic.
“Ready?” Jonas asks.
“No,” I say, and open it.
Inside, the light is the kind that describes itself as neutral but still bruises faces. The air tastes like lemon and warm plastic. Rolling metal carts are stacked with clear bins labeled in the tidy handwriting of someone who resents chaos. Mop heads, coils of cable, a box of identical wristbands sealed like candy. On the far wall, a steel desk sits in front of a tower the size of a refrigerator, its fan whispering. Next to it, a workstation blinks a login screen with a cursive “Curalis” flourish and a background image of the marina on a day without fog. I breathe out and watch my breath not fog the air. That’s the trick here. Warmth never wins.
Jonas moves like he should have been born a cat. He slips behind the desk and pulls a handkerchief from his pocket, folds it twice, and drapes it over the keyboard. “No prints,” he murmurs. “Air-gapped terminal. Local-only spreadsheets. They trust the lock.”
“They trusted a vending machine repair,” I say, and my grin feels like an unlicensed procedure.
He inserts a tiny dongle with a hum, not a click. The screen shakes, then accepts him like it’s bored. A directory opens. The columns look pleased with themselves.
“Look for words that sound like kindness,” I say. “That’s where they hide harm.”
He scrolls. My eyes catch a folder named PIVOTS and, nested, Contingencies. Another called Orientation_Capture. A third labeled Benevolence_Queue. I swallow the taste of copper.
“Open PIVOTS,” I say.
He taps. Sheets unfurl like stage flats: Narrative Pivot – Family Edition, Sibling Pivot – Monster Frame, Contingency Red, Greenhold Failover. Each one a meticulous insult.
I pull my small camera and set it to silent. I photograph the directory like it’s a face.
“We don’t have time to be precious,” Jonas says. “We shoot, we move.”
“Open Contingency Red,” I say.
He does. A spreadsheet fills the screen. Columns: WRISTBAND_ID, SUBJECT_ALIAS, TRIGGER_EVENT, ASSET_CALL, COLOR_OVR, EDITOR_MACRO, NOTES. The rows scroll. Numbers and letters and the occasional nickname that makes my molars ache. Under ASSET_CALL, I read LAB7_HALOFLIP_F1 and LAB7_COMP_OVERLAY. Under COLOR_OVR: RED that spits light.
“Photograph,” I say, and he leans back so my lens can drink. I shoot the screen. I lean closer and catch in the notes column phrases like authorized benevolence script and cohort_3 and Comfort Prep.
“Leo,” I say, and my tongue is suddenly dead wood. “We need Leo’s string.”
Jonas types fast, filters, filters again. “Here.” He points, and there it is: ID: HLC-31-VAL-LEO, because they love their little jokes. SUBJECT_ALIAS: VALE_BROTHER. TRIGGER_EVENT: Mention of ‘storm’. ASSET_CALL: SIB_PIVOT_MONSTER. COLOR_OVR: NUDGE_RED. EDITOR_MACRO: sympathy_floor → accountability_floor.
The words wobble. The room doesn’t. I take the photo. The shutter barely whispers, a mouse sigh in a cathedral.
Micro-hook: I watch my brother’s name anchor a column that can move a nation’s sympathy slider.
“Narrative Pivot,” I say.
He backtracks and opens it. The sheet is all choreography: IF_AUDIENCE_SENTIMENT>68 THEN cue Compassion_Ovrd; IF_SUBJECT_PAUSE>3s THEN soft_bell_F2. The cells hum with macros that translate bodies into buttons. There’s a tab named LIVE_SWITCH_MAP and another called DELAYED_INSERTS. I taste bile, swallow disinfectant.
“Take everything,” I say. “Photograph the tabs, the cells, the dumb jokes in comments.”
Jonas scrolls, I shoot: ‘Green means you forgive; red means you learn’ — R. Pike in a comment balloon; ‘authorized benevolence ok’d by counsel’ stamped near a block of code that references LAB7 again and again.
“Asset IDs match the frame we found,” he whispers. “Same prefix. Same hand.”
I step to the metal cart and lift a clear bin lid. Inside, sealed wristbands lie in rows, each labeled with alphanumerics and a QR that reflects like an eye. A paper inventory sits on top—ISSUE LOG—with columns for Band → Subject → Scenario → Return. Next to Scenario, the phrases Sibling Pivot, Apology Loop, Greenhold. I photograph the paper, the bands, the lot number on the box.
“This is enough,” Jonas says. “We could walk now.”
“I want the queue map,” I say. “I want the part that ties the bands to the editor macros during shows. I want the argument that eats their words before they say them.”
He pulls up LIVE_SWITCH_MAP. A flow diagram blooms: on the left, WRISTBAND_SIGNAL, then arrows to PIVOT_CONTROLLER, MACRO_KIT, and ASSET_ROOM. At the bottom, Lag Tolerance: 0.5s. It’s a machine you could explain to a child if you wanted to ruin one.
I take those, too. My camera’s memory bar crawls like a patient measurement. The server tower blows warm at my legs; the lemon-air dries my eyes.
“We should go,” Jonas says. “We’re greedy.”
“We’re making a parallel archive,” I say. “Greed is the size of the harm.”
There’s a sound in the hallway then: a distant chirp, not the door’s bird but a hawk. Alarms begin their argument with the peace we stole.
“That’s not us yet,” Jonas says—then the workstation throws a gentle pop-up: Maintenance Sweep: Sublevel 2. The green dot next to Overflow turns yellow.
“Now it’s us,” I whisper.
He kills the screen; the tower keeps its endless hush. We slide behind the server racks that line the opposite wall, cold light on our cheeks, cable bundles smelling like warmed rubber. I crouch on concrete; grit prints my knee through thin denim. The lemon air sharpens as vents throttle open for whatever sweep protocol means to do.
Footsteps. Two. Not hurried, not slow. A laugh that fails to be human because it vibrates through a radio.
“Breathe small,” Jonas mouths.
I breathe small. My chest learns to live between clicks. The server rack heat crawls up my hoodie and makes a sauna against the cold of the floor. My tongue tastes like metal coins, old cafeteria trays, the weight of a borrowed lie.
The footsteps pause in the doorway. Keys jingle. The clear bins shift on carts as someone pretends to know how to tidy.
“Checklist says scan batteries,” a voice says, lips smacking on gum. “Who moved the cart?”
“Take the picture and call it straight,” the other replies. “Above our pay grade.”
The red light at the ceiling begins to strobe, slow and bored; it paints the edges of the cart in a wound color. I slide my lens along the rack seam and grab one last shot of the LIVE_SWITCH_MAP reflected faintly in the workstation glass, a ghost diagram riding my luck.
My phone vibrates once against my thigh. I freeze; the servers hum on, disloyal to nothing. I risk a look. A single message from Sera: Any word? I watch the dot that is Leo on the map do nothing. I put the phone face-down on the floor and slide it under the rack leg like I’m offering a mouse a home.
The gum chewer blows a bubble that snaps. “You smell that?” he says.
“Lemon,” the other answers.
“No. Hot sugar.”
My throat closes. The food hall’s air rides the ventilators even here. In this city, even the lie of care tastes like dessert.
“You hungry,” the second voice says, amused. “Let’s check the next room.”
The footsteps recede. The door chirps once—bird note—and the hall swallows them. The red light keeps pulsing, but slower, like it’s falling asleep.
Micro-hook: In the pulse of the red bulb, I count how many lives could be tuned by a single macro key.
Jonas taps my wrist, two fingers, question. I answer with a squeeze. We crawl along the rack row to the far corner where a cable tray drops into a low access flap. He lifts the flap with the edge of his handkerchief, and underneath, the small mouth of a service chase breathes cool.
“We didn’t plan the chase,” I whisper.
“We plan the exit,” he says. “Chase plans itself.”
We slide into the chase, bellies to metal, the citrus smell replaced by dust that tastes like paper cuttings and years. The cable bundles are warm ropes at our ribs. My camera knocks once on a bracket; I hold it and murmur apology like it’s human. Behind us, the red strobe loses interest and goes to steady.
Halfway through, a second alarm joins—higher, angrier. Jonas stops. I press into his boots, a chain of bad ideas. He uses two fingers to point upward. Through a grill above, I see shoes pass, then a cart, then the brief shine of a wristband in a clear tray. I recognize the model: the one that winked at me on live TV and pretended I was clean. I feel a laugh trying to pry my mouth open and lock it down with my molars.
The chase opens into another room: plainly the back of ASSET ROOM 1 because a sign turned away from doors says so. The air here is warmer, the server stacks higher. I hear more voices, distant, and a printer chirping like a tiny bird—everything here talks like a creature forced to learn a song.
“We have what we need,” Jonas whispers. “We have more than we should.”
I nod. The camera memory bar is one square from full. The small recorder in my pocket registers my heart as a metronome. I keep thinking of the TRIGGER_EVENT: Mention of ‘storm’ and the way the code will try to eat my mother’s words out of my brother’s mouth.
“One last sheet,” I say, and he gives me a look that could stop a clock. “The ISSUE LOG bin list—top page had return notes. I want one example with a signature.”
We crab back under the cart. I pop the lid with the corner of a card. The paper top sheet flutters and lands facedown. I flip it and find Return: Subject VALE_BROTHER – Notes: upgraded band; prior mapped to Sibling Pivot – tech: R.Pike. The signature is a jag like impatience. I photograph it until the memory bar sings at me.
“Now,” Jonas says, and pulls me by the sleeve toward the chase again.
The alarms pick a new key and go brighter. Radios crackle the word SWEEP with delight. The server fans ramp from whisper to breath. We shimmy, exit into the hallway through another flap, and I smell the world outside these lungs: salt, fog, the hot-sugar ghost. The maintenance door to the wind tunnel glows exit-green like it believes in redemption.
At the door, Jonas stops me. He holds out his palm. I place the camera in it, then my recorder, then the microSD I kept under my tongue for the last crawl like a relic. He nods and hands back the recorder; he tucks the storage into a seam inside his jacket that no one but a lover or a cop would find easily.
“If we split, you go left,” he says. “To the marina rail. I go right to the dumpsters. Meet at the pier ladder.”
“If they take you,” I say, “I publish tonight.”
“If they take you,” he answers, “I do the same.” His smile is a paper cut. “We keep promising this.”
“We keep keeping it,” I say.
We push into fog. The wind tunnel steals the sweat from my neck and salts it. Drones blink, blind as babies. A blimp reroutes so wide I can hear a vendor curse as gossip stalls close their shutters. The city is an audience that has turned off its phone and still hears the show.
“Left,” Jonas breathes.
I move left, soft knees, small breath. Behind me, a door coughs. Boots scatter on concrete. The kind of shout that doesn’t want to wake anyone announces Authorized Sweep like a prayer.
I reach the marina rail and lean into the iron, taste rust on my teeth. The camera’s ghost weight in my hands is replaced by the hoodie’s cotton grit. From the corner of my eye, I catch Jonas slide into the shadow of a dumpster, a cat again, becoming trash to live another hour.
Someone’s radio bursts: “…sublevel overflow clear… anomaly near vents… check exterior.”
I close my eyes and picture the spreadsheets like stars: Contingency Red, Narrative Pivot, Leo’s ID braided through. The proof is a heat in my pocket where the recorder rests; the colder proof rides Jonas’s ribs.
Micro-hook: Proof hurts when you carry it; it sings when you need it to.
Footsteps approach, then stall, then approach again. A beam of light slices fog and swings past my boots. It catches a smear of hot sugar on the rail—someone’s spilled churro dust, tracked on a shoe—and halos it like an unearned blessing.
“You hear that?” a guard asks.
“Wind,” the other says.
“No. The gulls.”
Above us, gulls carve the air like knives, their throats all edge and appetite. I let their noise fill whatever shape fear has left me. The beam moves away. The radio laughs into static.
A hand finds my elbow and I don’t flinch because it’s the hand that knows where my bones end. Jonas. He presses the camera back into my palm. “We have the map,” he whispers. “Bands to queues. Triggers to macros. Leo in the grid.”
I nod. The bay breathes fog on my face like a blessing I paid for with luck and lies. The elevator screens in the building above us whisper a headline I can’t hear, only feel.
“We get him out,” I say into the fog. “We break their board.”
“We start tonight,” he answers. “On your roof.”
We move along the rail, bodies small against the long dark. Behind us, the maintenance door chirps like a morning bird in a place that doesn’t know the sun.
At the corner, a patrol turns into our path—two silhouettes, a beam between them, the scent of lemon trapped in their uniforms. I tuck the camera into the hoodie pocket and thread my arm through Jonas’s like we’re the kind of couple that picks fog for romance.
“Evening,” one says, the beam sliding over our shoes.
“Food hall,” I say, breath steady. “Last churro.”
He sniffs the air and, God help us, smiles. “Hot sugar,” he says. “Can’t blame you.”
The beam passes. The fog keeps our secrets until it gets bored.
We walk past, pace even. My recorder ticks in my pocket, counting the seconds we don’t deserve.
The patrol pauses. “Hold,” the other says into his radio. The beam swings back, lands on the sleeve of my hoodie where a crumb of sugar glows like a star.
“Ma’am,” he says, and raises his light. “Can I see inside that pocket?”