The hall was full, yet nothing crowded it.
They had gathered without planning it—Silence, Andrew, Lucia, and the others—drawn not by urgency, but by the quiet need to be in the same place. The long windows filtered a dull, colorless morning. No sunlight. No shadow. Just presence.
Someone had dragged chairs into a loose circle. No hierarchy. No center.
That alone said enough.
Andrew leaned back, arms crossed, eyes unfocused—not disengaged, just thinking too far ahead to look normal.
Lucia sat on the floor, her back against the wall, the old teddy bear resting beside her like a misplaced relic. She traced patterns on the carpet without realizing it.
Silence stood near the window, not looking out, but listening to the glass. It always carried echoes longer than people did.
The conversation had started nowhere.
It always did.
"People think philosophy is about answers," Andrew said suddenly. "But it's really just organized discomfort."
Lucia glanced up. "Psychology says something similar. That we create meaning to survive contradictions we can't resolve."
Silence turned slightly. "No. Psychology creates models. Meaning comes later—if at all."
Andrew smiled faintly. "That's not disagreement. That's sequencing."
Lucia frowned. "So which comes first? Meaning or survival?"
Silence didn't answer right away.
"When survival fails," he said finally, "meaning becomes aggressive."
No one laughed.
That sentence settled too cleanly.
Andrew exhaled. "That explains fanaticism. Obsession. Why people cling harder to ideas when reality stops cooperating."
Lucia hugged her knees. "Or why some people want the world to end. If it's broken enough, destruction feels like honesty."
Silence's reflection in the glass wavered.
"Destruction isn't honesty," he said. "It's impatience."
Andrew tilted his head. "That sounds like someone who's been tested."
Silence met his gaze. Held it.
"Everyone is tested," Silence said. "Most just don't notice."
For a moment, the hall felt balanced—like a thought held between breaths.
Then the pressure arrived.
Not sound.
Not movement.
A distortion in rhythm.
Lucia was the first to react. Her fingers stilled mid-pattern.
"Do you feel that?" she asked.
Andrew frowned. "Feel what?"
Silence's spine straightened.
"Yes," he said quietly.
The air near the far wall bent inward—subtly, like heat over stone. Not an opening. Not a tear.
An assertion.
The windows rattled once. Not violently. Precisely.
Then—
Impact.
The wall did not break.
It yielded.
A concussive force rippled through the hall, throwing chairs aside, knocking Lucia backward. Andrew hit the floor hard, breath driven from his lungs.
Silence didn't move.
He couldn't.
Because what entered wasn't an attack.
It was an arrival.
Figures stepped through the distortion—not phasing, not teleporting. Forcing reality to accommodate them.
They wore no uniform.
That was the uniform.
Different builds. Different silhouettes. Same wrongness.
Opposing Gang was too simple a name.
They were structured absence.
One of them laughed softly. "So this is where the unresolved gather."
Andrew pushed himself up, coughing. "Who the hell are you?"
The figure tilted its head. "Observers."
Another voice layered over the first. "Collectors."
A third, quieter: "Correctors."
Silence felt it then.
The same pressure the Septet carried—but without restraint.
This wasn't judgment.
This was appetite.
Lucia scrambled to her feet, clutching the teddy. "They're not here for us," she whispered.
Silence's eyes narrowed.
"They're here for context."
The tallest figure stepped forward. The floor beneath it darkened—not shadow, but reduced certainty.
"We sensed an anomaly," it said. "A convergence failing to resolve."
Andrew's heart pounded. "You mean Claude."
The figure smiled.
"We mean consequence."
That was enough.
Silence moved.
Not forward.
Sideways.
The hall shuddered as if it had misremembered its dimensions. The figures reacted instantly—too fast, too coordinated.
One lunged.
Silence caught Lucia's wrist and pulled her back as the space she'd been standing in folded inward, compressing air into a sharp implosion.
Andrew rolled, narrowly avoiding another strike that cracked the floor in a perfect circle.
"They're mapping us," Andrew shouted. "Every reaction!"
"Then stop reacting," Silence said.
He slammed his palm against the wall.
Not with force.
With refusal.
The glass exploded outward—not shards, but collapsing reflections. The hall screamed as its boundaries destabilized.
"Now," Silence said. "We leave."
"Where?" Lucia cried.
Silence didn't answer.
Because the answer was dangerous.
They ran.
Through corridors that stretched too long, stairwells that descended faster than gravity allowed. The building resisted them—not maliciously, but confused.
Behind them, the opposing gang advanced without haste.
They didn't need speed.
They needed inevitability.
Andrew burst through a side exit, lungs burning. Lucia stumbled after him. Silence emerged last, slamming the door shut—
And feeling it not matter.
The pressure followed.
Always.
They didn't stop running until the city swallowed them—noise, crowds, contradiction. Places where meaning blurred enough to hide in.
Only then did the pressure recede.
Not gone.
Just… deferred.
They stood in an alley, gasping.
Lucia's hands shook. "Who were they?"
Silence stared at the sky between buildings.
"People," he said, "who believe unfinished things are mistakes."
Andrew wiped blood from his lip. "And we're…?"
Silence looked at them—really looked.
"No," he said. "We're evidence."
Far away, in a place that traded stories like currency, something adjusted its alignment again.
The hunt had begun.
And this time—
It wasn't subtle.