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[indent]They weren’t perusing wares.

They weren’t exchanging goods.

They weren’t pilfering valuables.

They were tailing her.

Selene’s lips parted gently, yet silence remained her chosen ally. The metallic case beneath her arm suddenly assumed an intangible heaviness, weighty not in the literal sense but as if infused with newfound consequence—as desirable as a truth to ears thirsting for secrets. Her secrets. 

What, then, was the appropriate response here?

Lose them? Too easy. Too soon. A tail like this wasn’t about getting close. It was about seeing where she was going—and that was another part that concerned her. 

Selene had grown up knowing that the most dangerous eyes weren’t always the ones looking at you. They were the ones waiting for you to lead them somewhere.

Her family never needed to chase her—they’d had systems for that. Logs of her movements, coded access, people in the right places at the right times to keep her within reach. They didn’t watch in the obvious sense. They let her believe in the illusion of autonomy—until the moment she unwittingly walked herself straight into their grasp.

And the Council? They weren’t much different.

The broadcast reminded them all of this. People who asked questions and went looking for things that weren’t meant to be found didn’t get warnings; they vanished.

So this person wasn’t the problem. 

It was whom they might be watching for.

Selene moved past a stall selling modified power cores and into a tighter alley, where the overhead pipes hung low and steam vents hissed from the cracks in the walls. The glow of the market behind her became distant, muffled, leaving her in the spaces where only the careful tread.

Then she stopped.

Waited.

And there it was. The hesitation of someone who had anticipated movement but not its sudden cessation.

“Are you tailing me for amusement?” Selene inquired, then, tilting her head just so. “Or are you hoping to part ways with one of your limbs?” A bluff. She hoped one not so obvious. 

Only then did she pivot slightly, just enough for her gaze to capture the person in full. 

A boy.

Young. Sixteen, maybe younger. Hood up, stance practiced, hands deep in the kangaroo pocket of his hoodie like he had nowhere better to be. Just another street rat, a fixture of Dominion’s lowest rungs—someone meant to be ignored.

“Who sent you, kid?” [/indent]