Queens, New York
The streets of Queens didn't change.
No matter how much the city evolved, no matter how many tech towers or corporate giants clawed their way into Manhattan's skyline, Queens remained its chaotic, indifferent self. Vendors argued over fruit prices, taxis blared for space, and life moved on, blind to the silent wars playing above it.
But Aaron Parker wasn't blind.
He felt it again.
That hum beneath his skin. Not his own anomaly this time — external. Machines. Drones. Surveillance frequencies bouncing between metal and glass, tracing him with invisible threads.
Tonight, Aaron wasn't walking home. He was walking through a grid of eyes.
He kept his posture relaxed, hands in his pockets, his gaze loose, indifferent. But his mind dissected the city around him. Every glass window reflected angles, every gust of wind whispered distortions in drone flight patterns.
They thought they were watching him.
They weren't.
He was watching them back.
It started with sound.
A faint, repetitive whirr overhead — too steady for random city noise, too sharp for a bird. His hearing honed in, filtering out street clutter, isolating the drone's specific frequency modulation. He mapped its arc based on reflection glints bouncing off third-floor apartment windows.
It wasn't the only one.
His peripheral senses caught two more—one trailing behind, another orbiting from the side.
Triangulation pattern. Classic tracking net. Not street-level tech. Corporate grid.
His lips twitched faintly.
They were trying too hard to stay invisible.
Aaron turned left into a side alley, casually, as if avoiding a crowd.
He didn't look up, but his senses sharpened.
The drone above adjusted trajectory, compensating. The side drone slowed its sweep, anticipating an exit through the alley mouth.
Aaron ducked beneath a rusted fire escape, stepping into the shadow between two dumpsters. The cover forced their line-of-sight to adapt. He waited—not long, barely four seconds.
The overhead drone hesitated.
That was their first mistake.
Manual recalibration. They're not running full AI control. Human oversight in real-time.
He moved on.
His walk became a pattern test. He led them through narrow streets, sharp-angled alleyways, places where line-of-sight coverage required coordination. He deliberately paused under reflective surfaces — shop windows, bus shelters, metallic streetlamps — using them as passive sensors.
Their timing wasn't flawless.
Delays in adjustments. Gaps in coverage overlap. Subtle, but detectable to someone whose mind processed the world fifty times faster than any human.
They're not ghosts. They're machines. Machines have blind spots.
He passed a busy intersection, letting the surge of pedestrians mask his movement. On the far side, a van sat idling, no company logos, just a maintenance decal slapped on half-heartedly.
Aaron's eyes caught the micro-flicker of surveillance equipment behind the tinted windshield.
He didn't stop.
But he marked it.
Turning down a quieter street, he quickened his pace.
His plan wasn't about evasion. It was about reflection.
He moved towards one of Queens' old rooftops — a half-abandoned laundry service building that offered a clear view over three intersecting streets. Reaching the rear service ladder, Aaron scaled it effortlessly. Not with showy acrobatics. Just calm, efficient precision.
From the rooftop, Queens spread beneath him — cluttered, messy, alive.
But within that chaos, the pattern was clear.
Two drones held a triangular lock around his previous route. The van had repositioned slightly, moving to a lane that offered direct line-of-sight to two possible exit points.
It was corporate-level surveillance, no question.
But they weren't dealing with a corporate asset.
They were dealing with him.
Aaron crouched low, his eyes narrowing as he analyzed.
He followed the drones' recalibration times, the latency between their visual shifts. He calculated their predictive algorithms, noting how they compensated for his detours, always a fraction slower than real-time adaptation.
In his notebook mind, a diagram formed — lines, angles, zones of blind coverage.
He noticed something else.
The drones never closed in.
They kept their distance, observing.
They didn't know what he was.
That was why they were watching.
But Aaron wasn't in the business of letting people watch uninvited.
He exhaled slowly, his Super Brain piecing the puzzle together.
They had three mobile hubs in play tonight:
1. The van two blocks down.
2. A disguised telecom service truck looping in a circular route.
3. An observation drone van parked beneath an advertising billboard, pretending to be maintenance.
All of them synced, all of them subtle to average eyes.
But to him?
Obvious.
His senses could feel their signal synchronization — faint, like subtle radio waves brushing past his skin. His mind dissected every recalibration, every micro-hesitation.
This wasn't Government Agency.
This wasn't military.
It screamed corporate precision.
And given Queens' current anomaly reports, Aaron knew only one corporate entity with resources patient enough to play this long game.
Oscorp.
He didn't smile.
He didn't feel victorious.
He felt… prepared.
They had made the first move in silence.
He would return it the same way.
He made his way down, rejoining the street's natural flow. His route back home was casual, ordinary. He didn't evade the surveillance grid. He walked through it deliberately, making sure they logged his every step.
Let them watch.
Tonight had been educational.
As the Parker apartment building came into view, Aaron slowed his pace, glancing casually at a street mirror bolted onto a light pole. In its curved reflection, the overhead drone shimmered faintly, adjusting as always.
But this time, Aaron had already mapped its next move.
He stepped inside the building, the door shutting quietly behind him.
He knew they wouldn't follow inside.
For now.
In his room, the world's noise dimmed.
He sat at his desk, pulling out his notebook, flipping to a fresh page.
At the top, he wrote:
Observation Log — Oscorp Surveillance Patterns
He listed:
Drone triangulation speed: 1.2-second recalibration delay.
Ground unit response lag: 2-3 block predictive lag.
Human oversight ratio: 65% manual correction, 35% AI-assisted.
Mobile hubs: Identified three; potential for two rotating out of sight.
His pen moved swiftly, cleanly.
This wasn't paranoia.
This was preparation.
He closed the notebook gently, leaning back in his chair.
The hunters had drawn first blood in the game of observation.
But they had forgotten the first rule.
Every watcher can be watched back.
Aaron's gaze flicked to his window. The city beyond blinked with its usual chaos, but in the reflections, in the patterns, he saw them now.
Their game wasn't subtle anymore.
And neither would his.