I take one more step.
The room reacts instantly.
Not pain. Not sound.Information.
Every screen ignites at once, flooding the room with overlapping footage of me almost stopping. Of me hesitating. Of me choosing.
They show me the moment of decision from a dozen angles.
“This is where you believe you are free,” the voice says. “This is where you are most exposed.”
I feel it then – not fear, not anger. Violation.
They are inside the gap I live in.
I straighten slowly and face the cameras head-on.
“You think seeing everything gives you control,” I say quietly. “But it doesn’t. If you had control, she would never have been taken.”
“It gives us prediction,” the voice replies tersely.
“Then predict this.”
I move.
Not fast. Not slow.
Wrong.
I perform a sequence that contradicts my own established patterns. A misstep. A stumble. A choice I would never make under threat.
The cameras lag. Just a fraction. But it’s enough.
The screens stutter, probabilities recalculating, models scrambling to adjust.
“Deviation detected,” the voice says, sharper now.
I smile properly this time.
“You don’t understand,” I say. “I am not unreadable because I hide.”
I take another wrong step. Then another. I become noise. “I am unreadable,” I continue, “because I adapt.”
The room hums, irritated. The cameras refocus aggressively, trying to pin me down again. But now they’re chasing. And chasing means reacting. Which means I am no longer the only one exposed.
They escalate.
The screens return, but now they show futures again – darker ones. Consequences. Pain. Isolation. Loss. They show me Ghost fading. Honey empty. Bones breaking again. They think this will anchor me back into predictability.
They are wrong.
I look at the images without flinching.
“I see you,” the voice says. “You cannot disappear from observation.”
I nod once. “True.”
Then I sit down in the middle of the room and close my eyes.
