I didn’t stay long.

  That was always the mistake people made, lingering after something decisive, as if the moment needed to be acknowledged. As if standing still would somehow make it safer.

  It didn’t.

  I left the apartment quietly, closing the door without a sound and stepping into the dim stairwell. The city noise filtered in through the walls, distant traffic, muffled voices, life continuing as if nothing had almost gone very wrong.

  Behind me, three heartbeats remained.

  Uneven. Bruised. Alive.

  Good.

  I moved down the stairs at an unhurried pace, senses stretched outward. Not searching, not panicking, just aware. The kind of awareness that came from living too long between worlds, where danger rarely announced itself.

  By the time I reached the street, the air had changed.

  Not visibly. The lights were the same, the crowds familiar, the city still pretending to be ordinary. But beneath it, something had shifted. Threads tightening. Routes adjusting. A quiet response to an error that wasn’t supposed to exist.

  Three operatives didn’t vanish.

  And neither did I.

  I blended into the crowd, hoodie low, posture relaxed. No magic. No tricks. Just movement. Trains swallowed me, streets released me, reflections fractured my image into pieces that didn’t linger long enough to be remembered.

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  They would search methodically.

  Not for the girls, at least not at first. Assets could be replaced. Lost tools were regrettable but manageable.

  An anomaly was not.

  I crossed an intersection just as the light changed, ignoring the brief flare of irritation from a driver forced to stop. My phone buzzed in my pocket, not a message, just a soft vibration followed by static crawling across the screen before disappearing.

  A probe.

  They were checking ranges. Confirming presence. Measuring silence.

  I exhaled slowly and kept walking.

  That was when the practical problem finally caught up to me.

  I had nowhere to go.

  My apartment wasn’t an option anymore. I’d left three marked lives there, and sooner or later someone would trace that thread back. Akari’s place was worse. Completely off the table. Not just because it was predictable, but because if she found out I’d been involved with other girls… especially dangerous ones…

  I didn’t finish that thought.

  Some risks weren’t tactical. They were personal.

  I slowed near the edge of a pedestrian bridge, resting my hands on the railing and watching the river below. The surface reflected broken lights, distorted and restless.

  Then it clicked.

  There was that place.

  My jaw tightened.

  Of course it would come to this.

  The girls would wake fully soon, if they hadn’t already. They would talk. Argue. Decide whether fear or pride spoke louder. Whether survival meant running, hiding, or clinging to the first thing that refused to discard them.

  I had no intention of staying to see which choice they made.

  I hadn’t saved them to gain followers.

  I had saved them because execution disguised as procedure disgusted me.

  That line mattered.

  It had to.

  The city shifted again as evening settled in, lights flickering on one by one. Somewhere far above, surveillance patterns overlapped. Somewhere deeper, names were being reviewed, files reopened, assumptions quietly rewritten.

  My existence had forced that.

  That alone was dangerous.

  I pushed off the railing and disappeared back into motion, already changing my route.

  Wherever I was headed next, it wouldn’t be safe.

  But it would be familiar.

  Loose ends didn’t stay loose.

  They pulled.

  And sooner or later, something always snapped.