

The old transit station had a wrongness to it: the lights were too sharp, the vending machine hummed too loud, and the strangers did not get involved. Touma kept his eyes on the service gate, where the handoff was supposed to happen. He was tired, and he had been used to trouble before, but he was not heroic. Trouble outside could be outrun. Trouble inside the skull could not.

The recruiter in the gray coat moved with procedural calm. Touma noticed the hand inside his coat. The headache was already blooming, with extra edges. That was the first warning. The second warning followed: a paperknife pressed to the edge of thought, a pin through the inside of the world, a private appointment with gravity. He moved. The station settled into a tableau: the gray coat, the hand closing around a wrist, the small-built teenager with the schoolbag. The boy’s face went blank with terror.

Recognition came.

Six steps.

“Hey.”

Keep moving. Keep the kid quiet. Finish the handoff. Touma aimed at the thought and unmade it. The unthink was clean and sudden. The grip released. The boy stumbled. Relief came in halves. For half a second, it was only relief. Then the second half arrived, clean, quiet, and cruel, as if something had been taken. A memory hiccuped, and the boy’s face went strange.

It was not gallantry. It was recognition.