Aiden left before dawn.
Not because it was dramatic, but because mornings created noise—commuters, delivery trucks, routines that made patterns easier to spot. He wanted the gap between night and day, when movement blended into maintenance and fatigue.
He packed fast. Everything fit in the backpack. Nothing he couldn't abandon.
He wiped down the room with a towel from the bathroom, hit the obvious surfaces, then left it on the bed. He didn't know if that mattered, but it cost him two minutes and might save him trouble later.
Outside, he walked. No rideshares. No buses. No trains.
He followed service roads and back streets until the motel fell behind him, then kept going until the skyline thinned and the buildings dropped in height. He crossed under an overpass and used the opportunity to check his phone.
Still no signal.
That was consistent now. Interference, not outage.
He powered it off again.
By mid-morning, he reached the edge of the industrial district. Warehouses gave way to rail yards and empty lots. Fewer people. Fewer cameras. More space.
He stopped near a drainage canal and ate standing up, eyes moving while his hands stayed busy. Nobody approached. A freight train passed a few minutes later, loud enough to cover any small noise he might make.
He waited for it to clear before moving again.
Leaving the city wasn't hard. Leaving it quietly took longer.
He avoided highways and followed local roads that ran parallel to them. He checked his reflection in a darkened storefront window—hood up, jacket zipped, gloves on. From a distance, he looked like anyone else trying to stay warm.
Up close was another story.
He kept distance.
Around noon, he found a gas station with an attached diner just off a two-lane road. Old enough to be forgotten by most traffic. Busy enough to blend.
He went inside and ordered food. Sat where he could see the door. Ate slowly.
Nobody stared. Nobody whispered.
That mattered more than comfort.
He paid cash and left without lingering.
Outside, a local news van drove past, logo unfamiliar. No lights. No urgency.
Aiden watched it until it disappeared around a bend.
They were spreading the story outward now.
By early afternoon, he crossed into a neighboring county.
He felt it immediately—not physically, but in the absence of pressure. Fewer patrol cars. Fewer cameras on streetlights. Less visible infrastructure.
That told him something important: whatever response existed was still local.
That wouldn't last.
He stopped at a public restroom near a park and checked himself again in the mirror. The green tone was still there. Not fading. Not intensifying.
Stable.
He washed his hands and left.
At the same time, fifteen miles away, a temporary command room was forming in a municipal building that hadn't seen real use in years.
No one called it a task force yet.
Not officially.
Engineers reviewed photos of the construction site. Structural analysts replayed footage frame by frame. Someone had already ruled out gas. Someone else had flagged the crater as inconsistent with any known industrial accident.
A report sat unfinished on a desk, its title still generic.
Incident Analysis — Eastside Construction Collapse
No names. No conclusions.
Yet.
Aiden reached a small town by evening.
He didn't stop there.
He passed through instead, bought food at a grocery store on the far side, and followed a rural road until the streetlights disappeared entirely. He found a tree line near a fallow field and sat with his back against a trunk, eating quietly.
Bugs buzzed. Wind moved grass.
Normal.
He stayed until dark, then moved again.
Sleeping outdoors wasn't ideal, but it kept him off records. He chose spots with cover and multiple exits. He didn't light fires. He didn't linger.
He slept in two-hour blocks.
The second text came just after midnight.
His phone vibrated once inside the backpack.
He didn't grab it immediately.
He waited thirty seconds. Then another thirty.
No follow-up vibration.
He pulled the phone out and powered it on. One bar appeared and held.
Message preview only.
You crossed the county line. That buys you time.
Aiden stared at the screen.
That was enough to confirm two things.
One: someone was tracking the incident, not him personally—yet.
Two: someone was guessing his behavior, not watching him directly.
Pattern recognition, not surveillance.
He didn't reply.
He powered the phone off again and put it back.
Morning came quietly.
He washed at a public sink, changed socks, and continued moving. He followed a river for several miles, then crossed it using a pedestrian bridge far from traffic. The farther he got, the thinner the coverage became.
By noon, he reached a mid-sized town that looked like it lived on through-traffic and didn't ask questions.
He blended in easily.
He found a cheap room above a closed-down bar and paid cash for two nights. The owner didn't ask for ID. Didn't care.
Inside, Aiden tested the floor, the walls, the furniture. No reactions.
He slept for four hours straight.
When he woke, he checked the news.
The incident had evolved.
Still no mention of him.
But the language had changed.
"Unidentified individual."
"Non-standard energy signatures."
"Federal consultation requested."
That last one mattered.
Federal meant coordination.
Coordination meant databases.
Databases meant pattern matching.
He shut the phone off.
That afternoon, he changed his route planning.
Leaving the region entirely would attract attention. Staying put too long would do the same.
He decided on controlled drift.
Move every two days. Stay within rural corridors. Avoid landmarks. Avoid repeating behaviors.
He wrote nothing down.
He memorized.
Back in the city, someone finally connected two details that hadn't matched before.
Gamma traces without radiation sickness.
Structural failure without blast residue.
The report was updated.
Still no conclusion.
But a note appeared at the bottom.
Recommend consultation with enhanced phenomena specialists.
The request went out.
Quietly.
That night, Aiden stood at the window of his rented room and watched headlights pass on the road below. He didn't feel hunted yet.
But he felt the window closing.
He didn't think about heroics. He didn't think about responsibility.
He thought about routes. Timing. Mistakes.
He knew one thing now:
The incident wasn't being ignored.
It was being reclassified.
And once that finished, the questions would stop being theoretical.
He stepped back from the window, packed his bag again, and set an alarm for early morning.
He planned to be gone before anyone decided what to call him.
Not because he was afraid.
Because staying put was how people got labeled.
And labels were hard to escape.