I tried to see her that afternoon.
Didn't work out.
Health services had kept Maya for observation—precautionary, according to Jenna's irritated text. Something about ruling out low blood pressure or a concussion or any number of things that had nothing to do with the actual problem.
Which was me.
Or more specifically, whatever I'd done that the system had decided to bill.
I stood outside the health center for a while, phone in hand, trying to figure out what I'd even say. Hey, sorry you collapsed. It was probably my fault. No, I can't explain. Yes, I know how that sounds.
I put the phone away.
The building had glass doors. I could see the reception desk from here, the bored student worker scrolling through something on their computer. If I walked in, asked for Maya, maybe they'd let me see her.
Then what?
Apologize for something she didn't know had happened?
I turned and walked the other way.
The campus was busy—afternoon class change, people streaming between buildings with that particular blend of urgency and exhaustion. I kept my head down and my hands in my pockets.
My phone buzzed.
I pulled it out.
Maya:im fine btw. jenna is being dramatic
I stopped walking.
Someone bumped into me from behind, muttered something annoyed, kept going.
I typed a response. Deleted it. Typed another.
Me:Good. What'd they say?
Three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again.
Maya:nothing useful. probably just didnt eat enough
Maya:you were weird this morning
There it was.
Me:Sorry. Distracted.
Maya:about what
I stared at the question.
The afternoon light was too bright. The noise around me was too loud. I wanted to tell her. I wanted to explain the whole insane structure—the system, the consequences, the fact that intimacy had become a transaction I couldn't control.
I wanted to tell her I had no idea which decision had put her on the floor.
Me:Nothing important. Glad you're okay.
The dots appeared again. Stayed there for a long time.
Then disappeared without a message.
I pocketed the phone.
That night, I pulled up the system interface in my dorm room.
The consequence tab was still blank. No new entries. No retroactive explanations. Just the same cold architecture I'd been staring at for weeks.
I tried filtering by target type.
Nothing.
Tried searching for Maya by name.
Nothing.
The system didn't index people by name. It indexed them by interaction, by intent, by whatever invisible metrics it used to decide who paid when the bill came due.
I leaned back against the wall and closed my eyes.
The notification had said indirect. That meant the harm hadn't targeted her specifically—she'd just been close enough to the blast radius. Collateral. A rounding error in whatever equation the system was running.
That should have made it better.
It didn't.
SYSTEM NOTICE
Indirect harm confirmed.
Mitigation: Unavailable.
I opened my eyes.
The message was new. It hadn't been there a second ago.
Mitigation unavailable.
"What does that mean?" I said aloud.
The system didn't respond.
Of course it didn't. It never did. It just dropped these little grenades into my vision and then went silent, leaving me to figure out whether unavailable meant impossible, or just not offered, or contingent on something I hadn't unlocked yet.
I pulled up the consequences tab again.
Still nothing.
Then I noticed it—a small gray icon in the corner of the interface. It hadn't been there before. Or maybe it had, and I'd just never looked closely enough.
I tapped it.
A new window opened.
HARM LEDGER
Tracked interactions: 47
Pending resolutions: 12
Indirect escalations: 3
My stomach dropped.
There was a list.
Not names—the system didn't give me names. But there were entries. Timestamps. Incident classifications. A few had resolution markers. Most didn't.
I scrolled down.
There, near the bottom.
Incident #34
Type: Indirect physical
Target proximity: Tertiary
Severity: Minor
Status: Resolved
Resolved.
Maya's knee. Her confusion. The way she'd gripped the table while insisting she was fine.
Minor.
I closed the window.
Then opened it again, because I couldn't stop myself.
Scrolled through the rest of the list.
Twelve pending resolutions.
Twelve consequences that hadn't landed yet.
I didn't know who they'd hit. I didn't know when. I didn't know if they'd be minor, like Maya's, or if the system's idea of minor and mine were even in the same universe.
I just knew they were coming.
And I couldn't stop them.
My phone buzzed.
I almost didn't check it.
But I did.
Claire:You should probably talk to her.
I stared at the message.
Claire didn't text me often. When she did, it was usually because I'd screwed something up and she was giving me one chance to fix it before she stopped caring.
Me:Who?
Claire:You know who.
Claire:She thinks you're avoiding her.
Me:I'm not.
Three dots. Then:
Claire:Lying to me is optional. Lying to yourself is just sad.
I put the phone face-down on the desk.
She was right.
I was avoiding Maya. Not because I didn't care. Because I cared enough to know that getting closer would just add her name to more lists, queue more consequences, turn her proximity into another variable the system could weaponize.
The safest thing I could do was stay away.
The system disagreed.
The harm ledger was still open in my vision. I could see the entry for Incident #34, sitting there with its neat little Resolved tag, and I wondered if that's what the system wanted.
Not safety.
Distance.
Proof that I'd learned the lesson.
I closed the interface and turned off the lights.
The room went dark, but the cold feeling didn't leave.
Somewhere across campus, Maya was probably fine. Jenna had probably stopped fussing. Tomorrow, everything would go back to normal.
Except it wouldn't.
Because the ledger was still running.
And I still had twelve pending resolutions.