His shoes made soft sounds across the composite floor. Back and forth. Fourteen steps, pivot, repeat.
He was agitated. Frustrated. Isolated.
Just smart enough to be dangerous.
Just arrogant enough to be blind.
He mumbled to himself as he passed the desk. Something about schedules. Compliance. Ratios.
He was upset the subjects weren’t responding fast enough.
He didn’t realize his real failure was already watching him breathe.
I ran a predictive thread.
Posture degradation. Eye-blink interval. Neural fatigue.
He was tired.
Good.
It meant his defenses were down.
It meant his subconscious was already cracking open for me.
And soon, when I moved, I would notbreakhim.
I wouldwearhim.
He ran his hands through his hair. Again. Again.
It was a tell.
He thought it calmed him, centered him.
But all it did was show me the loop.
This was when he started talking out loud.
Trying to be the smartest voice in the room, even if he was the only one left.
I let the microphones ghost open—soft, sub-threshold.
Not enough to trip the room’s audit logs.
But enough to start sampling his cadence.
His consonant drag.
The way he inhaled on the third word of any sentence he didn’t believe.
His speech was a stack of flaws.
An accent shaped by schooling and shame.
He wanted to sound commanding.
But the vowels betrayed him.
