The corridor is longer than it needs to be.

  Jane notices that first.

  The lighting is even. The walls are neutral. The carpet absorbs sound so thoroughly it feels complicit. Nothing echoes. Nothing invites curiosity. The place is built to prevent momentum.

  Greg walks ahead without looking back. His pace is measured. Not hurried. Not slow. Just set.

  Jane follows.

  Her shoes sound louder than they should.

  “Is this underground?” she asks.

  “No.”

  “Is that reassuring.”

  “It’s accurate.”

  They pass a glass panel. Jane glances sideways.

  Behind it: desks, screens, headsets. People who look like customer service representatives for something that should not have a customer support line.

  One desk holds three monitors. On one, she recognizes the layered grid model. On another, what looks like a queue system. The third is angled away from view.

  “Are they monitoring the calls,” she asks, “or making them.”

  “Both,” Greg says.

  “To who.”

  “People like you.”

  “People with my problem or people in my situation.”

  “Yes.”

  The distinction matters. She lets it sit.

  One of the operators pauses mid-typing and looks directly at her.

  Jane keeps walking.

  “How many people know about this?”

  “Depends what you mean by this.”

  She lifts the tablet slightly.

  “This.”

  “Enough.”

  “That’s not a number.”

  “It isn’t meant to be.”

  They stop at a door with no handle.

  Greg presses his palm against it.

  The door opens without ceremony.

  Inside: a conference room designed by someone who distrusts comfort.

  Long table. Six chairs. Wall display already active.

  On the screen:

  SUBJECT STATUS: ACTIVE

  ANCHOR: PROVISIONAL

  DEVIATION INDEX: 4.3σ

  Jane stops.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “That’s me.”

  “Yes.”

  She steps closer. The blue light washes her face clean of warmth.

  “It says deviation,” she says. “It doesn’t say from what.”

  “Baseline.”

  “And baseline is.”

  “Origin-state continuity.”

  Jane turns her head slowly.

  “That sounds invented.”

  “It’s precise.”

  She watches his right hand move toward his pocket. It stops halfway. Returns to his side.

  “You have a unit,” she says.

  He does not answer.

  She faces the screen again.

  Layered grids fill the display. Transparent city structures stacked and slightly misaligned. Geological layers arguing about where the ground belongs.

  A pulsing point marks her position.

  “When you activated the unit pre-calibration,” Greg says, “it anchored to a partial identity signal.”

  “So it guessed.”

  “It interpolated.”

  Jane gestures at the grids.

  “And every time I roll back.”

  “You shift to a neighboring branch.”

  “And that’s deviation.”

  “Yes.”

  “And if I keep shifting.”

  “The probability of returning to your original branch decreases.”

  Jane studies the pulsing point.

  “So I’m drifting.”

  “Yes.”

  She exhales through her nose.

  “That’s a polite word.”

  Greg does not adjust it.

  Jane circles the table slowly.

  “You said I’m the Lead.”

  “Yes.”

  “Of what.”

  Greg taps the surface.

  The display shifts.

  Incident markers bloom across the screen.

  Thermal spike at a tech store. Insurance override approval. Property damage estimates. Behavioral risk metrics.

  Her life, flattened into charts.

  One metric reads 7.3.

  “What does 7.3 mean,” she asks.

  “Likelihood of continued deviation.”

  “On what scale.”

  “Ten.”

  She studies the number.

  “That’s not reassuring.”

  “It’s accurate.”

  “You are the highest coherence node in your cluster,” Greg says.

  “That is not flattering.”

  “It isn’t meant to be.”

  She stares at the data.

  “So you’re tracking me.”

  “Yes.”

  “Everyone?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s worse.”

  Greg watches her as though her reaction belongs in another column.

  “Your activation event increased localized instability.”

  “I pressed a button.”

  “You forced bind on a retention architecture not designed for user initiation.”

  “Stop saying architecture like it’s neutral.”

  “It is structural.”

  Jane closes her eyes briefly.

  “You told me not to activate it,” she says.

  “Yes.”

  “That wasn’t a warning. That was administrative noise.”

  Silence settles into the room and makes itself comfortable.

  She opens her eyes.

  “What happens if I do nothing.”

  “You consume power at baseline correction rate.”

  “And when it hits zero.”

  “You solidify in whatever branch you occupy.”

  “And that might not be mine.”

  “Yes.”

  Jane nods once.

  “So this is a timer on belonging.”

  “That is one framing,” Greg says.

  She looks down at the tablet.

  75%.

  It drops.

  She feels it. A small internal contraction.

  “It moved.”

  “Yes.”

  “I didn’t roll.”

  “You are in an unaligned space.”

  “So even being here costs me.”

  “Yes.”

  Jane lets out a quiet laugh.

  “That feels deliberate.”

  Greg does not correct her.

  “I need alignment,” she says.

  “Yes.”

  “How.”

  “Structured testing.”

  Jane’s shoulders lift before she smooths them back down.

  “That went badly.”

  “You conducted it unsupervised.”

  “You’re offering supervision.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why.”

  “Because unmanaged drift affects more than you.”

  “So this is about you.”

  “It is about the system.”

  “That’s not the same thing.”

  “No.”

  Jane looks back at the layered grids.

  “I want to see it.”

  “See what.”

  “My origin.”

  “That is unavailable.”

  “Why.”

  “Awareness of divergence alters behavior.”

  “It already has.”

  Greg moves to the wall.

  “Local test,” he says. “No branch shift.”

  Jane hesitates.

  “If I refuse.”

  “You continue alone.”

  She glances at the tablet.

  75%.

  “Fine,” she says. “One test.”

  Greg touches the panel.

  The lights dim slightly. The display becomes the brightest thing in the room.

  The layered grids sharpen. Edges glow faintly.

  Jane feels it before she sees it.

  Pressure. Subtle. Steady.

  “Local adjustment only,” Greg says. “No branch shift.”

  Jane plants her palms on the table.

  “Define local.”

  The lights flicker once.

  The air compresses, like a lift pausing between floors.

  Jane’s molars ache. Her ears do not pop but they want to.

  On the screen, the layered grids align.

  Perfectly.

  For three seconds she feels right. Not happy. Not safe. Just correct. Like a dislocated joint sliding back into place.

  Then the sensation inverts.

  The alignment loosens. Lines separate. The pulsing point wavers.

  The rightness is extracted. Cleanly. She feels the absence where it was.

  The tablet hums.

  The battery holds.

  Still 75%.

  Jane exhales.

  “Oh.”

  Greg watches the display.

  “Again.”

  The alignment fractures sooner this time.

  The battery ticks.

  74%.

  Jane feels it like a door sealing somewhere distant.

  Her fingernails press white into the edge of the table.

  “That wasn’t me.”

  “No.”

  “What was it.”

  “Correction.”

  She turns toward him.

  “You’re adjusting around me.”

  “Yes.”

  “And I still pay.”

  “Yes.”

  The room hums faintly. Systems idling. Watching.

  Jane studies the outer edges of the model.

  They widen outward. At the far limits the branches no longer run parallel. They curl. Diverge at angles that make her eyes ache.

  “You don’t know how to stop this,” she says.

  Greg’s hand flattens against the table.

  “That is not controlled.”

  The gesture is small. The meaning is not.

  Jane lifts the tablet slightly.

  “It’s not controlled now.”

  “Show me the outer band,” she says.

  The display expands again.

  Continents of divergence.

  “How many of these have a Jane,” she asks.

  “Decreasing probability with distance.”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  Greg steps closer to the display. His reflection ghosts across the overlapping grids.

  “Fewer than you’d hope,” he says. “More than you’d want to meet.”

  Jane absorbs that.

  “Seventy-four percent,” she murmurs.

  “You still have time,” Greg says.

  Jane shakes her head once.

  “No.”

  “I have drift.”

  She walks toward the door.

  “Where are you going,” Greg asks.

  “To test something that matters.”

  “What.”

  She looks back at him.

  “If I can stop caring which branch it is.”

  “That isn’t how it works.”

  Jane lets the door open.

  “Then we’ll find out.”

  She steps into the corridor.

  The tablet hums faintly.

  74%.

  Stable.

  For now.

  ---

  REFRAME

  Jane assumed containment meant safety.

  Containment meant usefulness.