The transit platform near Artemis wasn't glamorous enough to belong to the same city as the gallery.
It was concrete and fluorescent, a strip of cracked tile that smelled like rain-soaked metal and overheated brakes. The ads on the wall promised luxury apartments with "art-inspired living," which felt like a joke told without a punchline. Above, the sky was a dark bruise; below, the tracks hummed with the ghost of the last train.
Galathea Brooks stood inside the yellow safety line with her bag looped tightly over her shoulder, posture composed the way she'd learned to be when she couldn't afford to look afraid. Her phone screen glowed with a delayed schedule update.
Next train: 11 minutes.
She exhaled through her nose. Eleven minutes was long enough for her mind to replay the day in fragments -- Cael Alexander's office, the footage, the silver artifact reaching for her like it had a claim. Long enough for her skin to remember the elevator's strange hum. Long enough for the word, the name Seer to taste wrong again.
A laugh rose from the far end of the platform.
Not a stranger's laugh. Not random.
Marcus Hale.
He stepped out from behind a pillar as if he'd been waiting for the exact second her shoulders might drop. He wore the same jacket from the staff corridor incident -- now wrinkled, now less like a costume and more like a man who'd lost the argument and decided to win it a different way.
Galathea's first feeling wasn't fear.
It was a tired, controlled irritation, as if the universe had handed her the same problem and expected applause for the creativity.
"You're stalking me," she said flatly.
Marcus stopped a few paces away, hands in his pockets. His eyes were bright in the fluorescent wash—too awake, too angry to pretend this was casual.
"Stalking?" he scoffed. "No. Don't flatter yourself."
"Then explain why you keep showing up where you shouldn't be," Galathea replied. "Because if this is a coincidence, it's getting embarrassing."
His jaw worked. "You act like you're the only one who knows this neighborhood."
"It's not your neighborhood," she said. "It's a platform."
Marcus's smile was a hard line. "You used to talk different."
Galathea didn't move. She stayed inside the safety line, anchored by habit. "You used to respect the word 'no.'"
His nostrils flared. "You think you're better than me now."
"No," Galathea said, and the calmness of it was almost cruel. "You're just proving you don't know the difference between 'better' and 'boundaried.'"
Marcus took a slow step closer. The platform was mostly empty—two commuters at the far end, a man in a hoodie watching the tracks like they might answer him. No security. No gallery cameras. No polished walls to lend Galathea authority.
Marcus noticed that too. His shoulders lifted, tension turning into confidence.
"This is what I don't get," he said. "You keep acting like I'm asking you to commit a murder."
"You tried to get into a restricted hallway with a fake badge," Galathea replied. "Yesterday you tried to touch a keypad. Today you're here. That's not 'asking.' That's pushing."
Marcus's laugh was bitter. "Because you wouldn't listen."
"I listened," Galathea said. "You didn't like the answer."
His eyes narrowed. "You're doing this because you're embarrassed of me."
Galathea blinked once. "No."
"Then why?" he demanded. "Why are you so cold?"
'Because warmth is expensive,' she thought. 'Because warmth gets mistaken for access. Because warmth is something people take and then ask why it's gone.'
Out loud, she said, "Because you're trying to turn history into leverage."
Marcus's expression shifted -- hurt performed so convincingly it almost looked real. "We weren't leverage."
"We were poor," Galathea corrected. "That's not romance."
His eyes flashed. "Don't talk like that. Like it was nothing."
"It wasn't nothing," she said, voice tightening. "It was survival. And survival doesn't make you mine and it doesn't make me yours."
Marcus stepped closer again, close enough now that Galathea could smell stale coffee on his breath and something sharper -- cheap cologne trying to cover panic.
"You forgot where you came from," he said.
The accusation landed with the weight he intended. It was the oldest trick in the book: make her success a betrayal, make her boundaries a sin.
Galathea let the words sit. Let them rattle around her chest until they lost their shine.
Then she said, quietly, "No. You forgot what it felt like."
Marcus's brow furrowed. "What?"
Galathea's gaze didn't flinch. "To be hungry and not entitled. To be broke and still refuse to steal. To be desperate and still know where the line is."
His mouth tightened. "So you're calling me a thief."
"I'm calling you a man who thinks desperation is a permission slip," she said.
Marcus's voice rose, sharp enough to make the commuter down the platform glance over. "And you think you're not desperate?"
Galathea's laugh came out once, small and humorless. "Of course I'm desperate. Everyone is. That's the point."
He stared at her as if she'd admitted something he could hold. "Then why won't you help me?"
"Because what you're asking for isn't help," she said. "It's access."
Marcus's eyes went cold. "You keep saying that like it's a dirty word."
"It's a loaded one," Galathea replied. "And you keep pretending it's friendship."
A train roared through the opposite track without stopping, wind whipping the edge of Galathea's hair across her cheek. The noise swallowed the platform for a moment -- metal scream, vibration in bone, the smell of hot electricity.
Marcus leaned in while the sound covered him, as if he couldn't stand the silence between them.
"Cael Alexander," he said, eyes sharp. "That's what this is about."
Galathea's spine tightened. "Don't."
Marcus's mouth twisted. "What—don't say his name? Don't mention your billionaire boss?"
"He's not the topic," Galathea snapped, and the edge in her voice surprised even her.
Marcus's smile sharpened. "He looks at you like you're something he bought and doesn't want scratched."
Galathea's hand tightened around her bag strap. "Stop talking."
"Or what?" Marcus challenged, stepping into her space like he could claim it. "You'll call security? You'll flash your badge? There are no cameras here, Galathea. No one's watching."
That was the moment he made the mistake -- assuming isolation meant power.
Galathea lifted her chin. "Someone is always watching."
Marcus scoffed. "Not here."
Galathea's eyes flicked past him -- to the far end of the platform, where the man in the hoodie had shifted. Not watching the tracks anymore. Watching them.
It could be nothing. It could be random.
Or it could be exactly what Artemis had taught her to expect: predators noticing a conflict and circling it for opportunity.
Galathea's voice lowered. "Move back."
Marcus laughed. "Why? Scared?"
"No," she said, precise. "Busy."
She stepped sideways, putting the pillar between herself and Marcus -- not retreating, repositioning. Her free hand slid into her pocket, fingers closing around the small metal safety tool she'd bought years ago and never stopped carrying.
Marcus's eyes tracked the movement. Suspicion flickered. "What's that?"
"Consequences," Galathea said.
His face tightened. "You think you can threaten me now."
Galathea didn't raise her voice. "I think you're loud enough that other people heard you say 'no one's watching.'"
The commuter down the platform looked away too fast. The hoodie man shifted again. Marcus glanced around, and for the first time, uncertainty crept into his posture.
Galathea used it.
"I'm going to say this once," she said, voice calm and deadly neutral. "You don't get to punish me for not letting you in. You don't get to call it betrayal because you lost access you never had. And you don't get to stand here and act like scarcity makes you entitled to my life."
Marcus's jaw clenched. "You talk like you're some kind of saint."
Galathea's eyes hardened. "No. Just someone who knows the math."
He scoffed. "Math."
"Yes," she said. "Old math. The kind that says if one person climbs out, they owe everyone still drowning a handhold. The kind that pretends a boundary is cruelty and a refusal is betrayal."
Marcus stared at her, anger and something uglier warping together. "If you won't help, I'll find another way."
Galathea's stomach tightened. "Don't."
Marcus's smile returned -- thin, mean. "What are you going to do, Galathea? Guard every door? Watch every hallway? You think you can keep me out of a place built on money you'll never have?"
The words hit where he wanted them to hit -- right against the old insecurity, the old hunger, the part of her that still flinched at luxury like it might spit her out.
Galathea felt the sting.
Then she let it pass.
Because hunger didn't own her anymore. And neither did he.
The display board chimed. Next train: 1 minute.
Galathea stepped forward, reclaiming her space with the same calm she used in the gallery. "If you try another way in," she said, "you won't be dealing with me. You'll be dealing with people who don't care about your history or your excuses."
Marcus's eyes narrowed. "You think they'll protect you?"
Galathea's mouth curved faintly. "No. They'll protect the building. I'm just standing in the way."
A distant rumble rose from the tunnel. Wind moved through the platform, colder now, carrying the metallic scent of incoming brakes.
Marcus stared at her like he wanted to carve the old version of her back out of her face.
"You're really gone," he muttered.
Galathea looked at him once, long enough to make the answer final. "No. I'm finally here."
The train pulled in with a howl, doors sliding open. Light spilled across the platform like a cut.
Galathea stepped onto the car without looking back.
Marcus didn't follow -- didn't dare, or didn't know how to cross a boundary that couldn't be bullied.
As the doors began to close, he called after her, voice sharp with spite and promise.
"You'll see. You can't keep everything."
Galathea met his gaze through the narrowing gap and said nothing.
The doors shut. The train jerked forward. The platform slid away into blur.
Galathea exhaled slowly, fingers still wrapped around her bag strap, heart steady in her chest. Across from her, a passenger stared at their phone, uninterested in her battle. The city moved on like it always did.
'Old math.' She muttered as he took a seat and gazed out the speeding landscape.