I don't notice what's missing at first.
That's how it happens, I think—how you lose parts of yourself without anyone raising an alarm. No blood. No screaming. Just a quiet subtraction that only becomes obvious once you reach for something that used to be there.
We run until the city stops feeling like a city.
The service corridor spits us out behind a row of closed storefronts, then another alley, then a back stairwell that smells like damp concrete and old cigarettes. Ardan moves like he's done this a hundred times. He never hesitates. He never looks up.
I try to keep my eyes forward.
I try not to look at the ground, because the ground is full of shadows that don't belong to anyone walking above them.
Some of them creep along the curb like spilled ink.
Some of them cling to the undersides of cars, hanging there like bats.
And some of them… turn their heads as we pass.
The girl stumbles once. I catch her. The thread between us snaps tight, then settles again—strong and straight, like a line drawn with purpose.
It hurts every time it moves.
Not like a wound.
Like a muscle you didn't know existed being forced to work.
Behind us, somewhere out in the street, there's a scrape.
Not loud. Not dramatic.
Just steady.
Patient.
Like something is following a scent.
Ardan throws open a metal door and shoves us inside.
A stairwell. Emergency lighting. Peeling paint the color of old teeth.
He slams the door. A chain rattles. A lock clicks.
"Don't breathe," he whispers.
"That's impossible," the girl hisses back.
"You can breathe," Ardan says, still listening, "just don't—don't make it feel you."
I stare at him.
"That's not how anything works."
Ardan's eyes flick toward my shadow, then away like it burns.
"That's how it works now," he says.
We stand there in the half-light, shoulder to shoulder. The emergency light above us flickers, and every time it flickers I see my shadow shift.
Not because I move.
Because something inside it moves.
SELF-DEFINED still sits above it like a brand.
I can't see the other word right now, but I feel it the way you feel a bruise without touching it.
TARGET.
The girl wipes her face with her sleeve, furious with fear.
"Those things in the street," she whispers. "The… people."
"Not people," Ardan says.
He rubs his face hard with one hand, like he's trying to wipe off the last minute of his life.
"That first one was a collector," he says. "A responder. The kind of thing that answers a tag."
"Like TARGET," I say.
Ardan nods once, sharp.
"Yes."
"And the bigger one?" the girl asks.
Ardan doesn't answer immediately.
He listens again, head tilted, like a dog trying to catch a distant whistle.
Then he says the word like it tastes bad.
"Ledger."
The stairwell creaks.
Not from us.
From above.
The girl freezes.
I feel the thread between us tighten, and for a second the pain is so sharp I see white.
Ardan swears under his breath.
"Mark," he says, voice low. "How do you feel?"
"Tired," I say.
It's the truth, but it's not the whole truth.
I feel hollow.
I feel like someone scooped something out of my chest and left the edges raw.
My heartbeat is wrong. Too slow, then too fast, like it's trying to remember the rhythm it used to have.
And there's cold in my bones.
Not outside cold. Not weather.
Inside cold.
The kind that makes your teeth ache even when your mouth is closed.
Ardan looks at me like he already knows what that means.
"You did it," he says.
"Did what?" I snap.
I don't mean to snap, but the sound comes out sharp anyway. My nerves feel stripped.
Ardan's jaw tightens.
"You forced a designation," he says. "You didn't just refuse their choice. You wrote your own."
"I didn't write anything," I say. "I survived."
Ardan's laugh is short and bitter.
"Same thing, in this world."
The girl's gaze flicks between us, confused and angry.
"Stop talking in riddles," she says. "What happened to him?"
Ardan takes a breath.
Then another.
As if breathing is difficult for him too.
"There are three ways people get labeled," he says quietly. "Most don't know it. They just feel it—like luck, like shame, like sudden fear. But it's there."
He taps the side of his head, careful.
"One: the world labels you. That's the small stuff. The everyday cruelty. The words you can almost ignore."
He looks at his own shadow without letting his eyes linger.
"Two: the market labels you. Brokers. Deals. Trades. Protection for a price."
His hand trembles slightly.
"And three…"
He looks at me now, and there is something like grief in his face.
"You label yourself."
The emergency light flickers.
My shadow twitches.
The stairwell feels narrower.
"What's the cost?" I ask, and I hate how my voice sounds—too calm, like I'm asking about parking fees.
Ardan doesn't answer right away.
Instead he steps closer and reaches for my wrist.
I flinch.
The motion is automatic, defensive. My body doesn't trust anyone right now.
Ardan pauses, hands up.
"I'm not hurting you," he says. "I'm checking."
"Checking what?"
"Your edges," he says.
"My what?"
He swallows.
"Your… you."
The girl lets out a shaky breath that might be a laugh if fear wasn't choking it.
"That's not an answer," she says.
Ardan's fingers brush my wrist anyway—gentle, quick.
And the moment he touches me, I feel it.
Not his skin.
A line.
A seam.
A place where something has been stitched wrong.
I jerk away, heart punching my ribs.
"What the hell was that?"
Ardan's face goes pale.
"You feel it too," he whispers.
I swallow hard.
I touch my own wrist.
There's nothing there.
No cut. No scar.
But when I press my thumb into the skin, I feel resistance, like pressing on fabric stretched over a hollow space.
The cold inside me deepens.
"Mark," the girl whispers. "Your nose—"
I wipe it automatically.
Blood again.
But darker now.
Almost black.
It stains my palm in a way that doesn't look like human blood.
Ardan stares at it and swears.
"That's quick," he mutters.
"What's quick?" I demand.
Ardan shakes his head like he doesn't want to say it out loud.
Then, reluctantly:
"The Ledger doesn't just count," he says. "It collects."
The word makes the stairwell feel colder.
The scrape above us becomes clearer.
Slow.
Deliberate.
Like something heavy being dragged across concrete.
The girl's eyes widen.
"It's here," she breathes.
Ardan nods once.
"Yes," he says. "Because you made a debt without a creditor. And that makes you… interesting."
"I didn't make a debt," I say.
Ardan's gaze snaps to me.
"You wrote a name," he says. "SELF-DEFINED. That isn't free."
I look down at my shadow.
SELF-DEFINED hovers there, steady.
I want it to feel like victory.
It doesn't.
It feels like a spotlight in a dark room.
The girl steps closer to me, and the thread between us hums. I feel her fear and mine braided together.
"Is there a way to pay it?" she whispers.
Ardan's expression twists.
"Everything is payable," he says. "That's the point."
The stairwell door above us creaks.
A hinge groans like an animal in pain.
We all freeze.
A shadow spills through the crack under the door, not shaped like a person, not shaped like anything that should cast a shadow at all.
It spreads across the landing like oil.
Then it climbs the wall.
Against gravity.
The emergency light flickers again, and in the flicker I see it:
A mark inside the shadow.
Not a word.
A symbol—like a tally.
One vertical line.
Just one.
My stomach drops.
"One," Ardan whispers. "It already counted one."
Counted one what?
I open my mouth to ask, and the answer hits me from the inside.
A memory.
A small one.
A stupid one.
My mother's voice calling my name from the kitchen when I was a kid.
Mark.
The sound of it.
The way it felt safe.
I reach for it—and my mind closes on nothing.
Blank.
The memory is gone as if it never existed.
I stagger back, grabbing the railing.
My breath turns ragged.
"What's wrong?" the girl asks, panic rising.
I try to speak, but my tongue feels too thick.
Ardan's eyes are wide, horror sharpening his face.
"Oh no," he whispers. "It took a piece already."
"Took what?" the girl snaps.
Ardan doesn't look at her.
He looks at me, voice shaking.
"A payment," he says. "It took a memory as down payment."
My stomach heaves.
That hollow feeling in my chest finally makes sense.
"Give it back," I rasp, and the words scrape my throat raw.
The shadow on the wall continues climbing.
The tally mark inside it pulses once, like a heartbeat.
The girl's grip tightens on my wrist. The thread between us flares, hot and bright, and for a second I feel something else—something in her—tugged toward that darkness too.
Not because it wants her.
Because it wants what binds us.
"Ardan," I whisper. "What do we do?"
Ardan's face is drawn tight, like the answer hurts to exist.
"We don't fight it," he says.
"Then what?"
Ardan swallows.
"We bargain," he says. "Or we run until it finishes counting."
The door above us begins to open.
Slowly.
Not pushed.
Invited.
Darkness seeps through, thick and patient.
And as it does, a new word flickers beneath SELF-DEFINED above my shadow, like a second label being stamped into place.
COLLATERAL.