By morning, Kazuki had been identified.
Not by name. Not yet. But someone had footage from the bridge , shaky phone video, taken from a parked car, showing the Mark II suit standing in the rain after Titus walked away. The clip was eleven seconds long. It had been watched forty million times before breakfast.
The caption read: IS THIS WHO WE ARE TRUSTING WITH OUR CITY?
He didn't go to school.
He watched from a rooftop three blocks away as the gates opened and students filed in, all of them with phones in hand, all of them watching the same clip. He recognized some of them. Daiki — the boy he had accidentally thrown across the gym three months ago — was showing it to a group of second years, pointing at the screen and saying something Kazuki couldn't hear.
He didn't need to hear it.
He climbed down and walked back toward the garage.
Aeva had been at the monitors since 5 AM. Her eyes were red. Not from crying — from not blinking enough.
"I went through the broadcast frame by frame," she said without turning. "Victor Vane's hands."
"What about them?"
"He moved his right thumb. Once. A single tap against the table." She pulled up the frozen image. "It lasted less than half a second. Most people wouldn't notice."
Kazuki looked at the frame. The thumb. The slight shift.
"A signal," he said.
"A confirmation. He wasn't performing for the city, Kazuki." Aeva finally turned. "He was performing for one person. Someone watching who needed to know the plan was in motion."
"Who?"
She shook her head. "I don't know. But whoever it was — they were already watching before he broadcast. He didn't need to contact them. They were already there."
Kazuki thought about Elena. How she hadn't been at the clinic since yesterday evening. How her coat was gone from the hook by the door.
He didn't say it out loud.
Not yet.
At noon, the government released a statement.
It did not call Victor Vane a criminal. It did not call his claims false. It called the situation developing and urged all parties to pursue dialogue over conflict.
Aeva read it twice. Then she closed the monitor.
"All parties," she said flatly.
"They're not wrong," Kazuki said.
She looked at him sharply.
"I'm not saying he's right," Kazuki clarified. "I'm saying they're scared. And scared people grab whatever sounds reasonable." He looked at his hands. "Victor Vane sounded reasonable."
That evening Kazuki went to the back room alone.
He took off his shirt.
He looked in the mirror.
The new vein had reached his chest. He could see it clearly now — three thin branching lines of blue tracing across his collarbone and down toward the Core. And around the Core itself, the silver of the suit had changed color slightly. Darker. Richer.
Like it was being fed.
He pressed two fingers against the chest piece, over the Core.
It pulsed once. Warm. Almost gentle.
Something had shifted in the last twenty-four hours. Not dramatic. Not painful. The suit felt closer than it had before — less like armor worn on the outside and more like something that lived in the same space he did.
He heard Rina's voice from the other room.
"He's awake. He wants to talk."
Kazuki put his shirt back on.
[To Be Continued...]