9:47 a.m. ARC Operations Conference Room.
Under cold white lighting, Jeff's live location marker glowed at the center of the projection screen.
Adrian Cross stood at the front, fingers tapping lightly against the table.
"He didn't run."
His tone was flat.
"There's no abnormal behavior at the moment."
A representative from Research flipped through a report.
"The write state continues to operate after interruption.""But it does not currently meet recovery conditions."
The head of Operations looked up.
"Reason?"
The Research representative paused for a second.
"Evaluation is incomplete."
Several people at the table exchanged glances.
This was not an answer they were used to hearing.
Jeff sat on the living room couch.
His body wasn't tense, nor deliberately relaxed.
He was simply sitting.
His gaze rested forward, without truly focusing on anything.
There was a faint confusion in his eyes, his expression slightly vacant, like someone woken up before fully returning to reality.
Patch jumped up from behind the couch.
It didn't circle, didn't make a sound.It stepped across Jeff's knees, turned halfway, and sat beside him.
Its tail brushed lightly against the back of his hand.
Jeff didn't look down.
A beat later, he reached out and touched its back.
The movement was uncertain, as if checking whether something was still there.
Patch didn't turn around.
Its ears were upright, fixed toward the doorway, completely still.
In the conference room, the discussion continued.
"So what's the current status?" someone asked.
The Research representative closed the report.
"Operations may prepare recovery procedures.""Research will continue observation."
She added,
"Neither side is in violation."
No one asked further.
The television screen in the corner of the living room flickered on.
The image froze on the morning news.
The anchor deliberately slowed their tone.
"Regarding last night's anomaly at the lake district, authorities have sealed off the area. Preliminary assessment indicates an optical phenomenon caused by natural structural instability."
The image cut to a wide shot.
The lake was cordoned off. Construction lights pressed low reflections across the surface.
"No casualties have been reported. The public is advised to avoid the area."
A line of text scrolled quickly beneath the screen.
Some footage is still under review.
The screen faded to black.
Outside the apartment door, Emilia leaned against the frame.
The door wasn't closed. She didn't step inside.
She knew surveillance was still active.
She also knew this distance was just short of triggering any criteria.
A message from Alden the night before surfaced in her mind.
Don't move.
She stayed where she was.
ARC backend. The Black Book turned to a new page.
Location status: Gray ZoneRecovery priority: Medium (Deferred)
Operations: Procedural recovery preparationResearch: Continued observation
An additional line appeared in the notes field.
Eligible for both personnel and process classification.
The monitoring interface updated.
Frequency was reduced.
Fields previously flagged for anomalous fluctuation were collapsed, leaving only trend lines.
A system notice appeared in the side panel.
Status stable. Switching to long-term observation.
No explanation.
No warning.
Jeff noticed none of it.
He only felt that the air was slightly different.
Not as tense as before.
But not as if nothing had happened.
It was as if the world paused briefly, recalibrating the way his existence was accounted for.
He didn't know what it meant.
And he didn't try to understand.