Don't Follow Me
“Who are you?” Leo asked.
The paper seal across the bedroom door remained intact.
Behind it, the second heart beat once. Leo's answered a fraction later.
“Leo Brown,” his voice said from the bedroom.
“That's my name.”
“I know.”
Leo pressed two fingers to his throat. When he forced his breathing to slow, the other heart slowed first.
“Open the door.”
“No.”
“Why?”
The voice stopped answering. The heartbeat did not.
Leo backed into the living room without turning away from the seal. Then metal clicked inside the wall beside the entrance.
It accepted weight, slipped, and locked on the second attempt.
Leo remembered gray braces over a dirty orange jumpsuit. D-17's damaged right brace had made that sound whenever he moved.
The click came again, farther away along a route the apartment did not have.
Something wearing D-17's exoskeleton was moving through the tower.
“You heard him,” the voice said.
“Is that D-17?”
“That was his name.”
“Is he alive?”
After a pause, the voice answered, “He moves.”
Leo hated the precision of that answer.
Going after D-17 was a bad decision.
Leo came to that conclusion while finishing the cold broth over the sink. The scout had carried a rifle, a radio, keys, route equipment, and containers made for Meridian. Any one of them might keep Leo alive.
That was the practical reason.
The other was a frightened man saying, Because no one cares if we come back. Leo had watched the GBA sever the tether while D-17 was still attached to it. Staying where he had been told had probably saved lives. It had also left D-17 alone on the wrong side.
Leo put one water bottle, four antiseptic wipes, folded gauze, and two painkillers into the delivery bag.
“This is for D-17.”
The mark on his left arm did not react. Right of Delivery could open a door on an existing route; it could not find the recipient. The last delivery had taught him that a recipient did not even have to be alive.
Still, the aid package exposed the lie he had been telling himself. He wanted more than D-17's equipment.
He took his phone, folding knife, registration strip, and the key to 4812. At the bedroom passage, he stopped.
“I'm leaving.”
“I know.”
“Stay there.”
“I never left.”
The seal had not moved.
Leo stepped into the corridor and locked the apartment.
The severed GBA tether lay where the stairwell had vanished. Its cut end, once loose on the floor, had been drawn into a seam between two wallpaper panels. Scratches led away from it.
Click.
The sound came from beyond the next turn.
Leo left the beacon beside his door as a marker. Before following the sound, he photographed the corridor in both directions. If the tower changed behind him, paired images might at least show where it had happened.
Near the inactive elevators, blue light ran once through a black streak—the same light Leo had seen in the collector tubes of D-17's exoskeleton. Scratches from the frame led to a locked service door.
When Leo touched the handle, the mark on his arm became hot.
RIGHT OF DELIVERY
Recipient: D-17
Carried item: Aid package
Authorization point: One locked door on the existing route
Uses remaining today: 1
Use function?
The panel called D-17 a recipient. It did not call him alive, conscious, or human.
Leo chose YES.
The lock opened.
ACCESS CONFIRMED.
Uses remaining today: 0
His energy remained 41.
Leo tested the inside release, then entered. The service passage behind the apartments occupied space that should not have existed.
From somewhere ahead, a man screamed:
“DON'T FOLLOW! DON'T FOLLOW! DON'T FOLLOW!”
The words came back from the concrete in a broken cadence. Leo recognized D-17's voice, but not the fear he had heard in it before. This sounded like a single moment of panic being forced through the same throat again.
“D-17?”
No answer.
“I brought water. Medical supplies.”
The scream repeated with the same pauses and the same wet break at the end. It was not an answer to the offer of water. It was not even louder after Leo called his name.
Leo could still turn back. Instead, he followed the click.
The passage reached a sign marked 48-B and descended seven steps. Seven steps could not have dropped him a full floor, yet the concrete ceiling now pressed lower and the corridor behind him seemed farther above than it should have been.
At the bottom, the cut tether emerged from solid concrete. It tightened toward the darkness whenever the damaged right brace accepted weight, then loosened again. A route stake had been pulled almost flat where the line passed through its ring; the tile around it had cracked.
Either D-17 had crawled here after the route collapsed, or the route had dragged him.
Beside the tether, Leo found a broken plate from the exoskeleton.
Skin had grown through the padding.
Leo's mind tried to reduce it to blood caught in torn fabric. Then he saw the pores. Fine hairs lay between synthetic fibers, and thin red threads ended where the plate had been ripped from the body.
He recoiled before he could stop himself. His stronger body moved faster; it did not make the sight easier to understand.
His phone camera captured the flesh clearly. No anomaly description appeared.
Leo did not know how the collectors were supposed to work. He knew only what he could see: the exoskeleton and the body inside it had fused.
Leo left the plate where it lay.
The passage turned twice and divided. Black residue and drag marks followed the tether. At every turn, Leo took another pair of photographs—one ahead and one back.
Leo checked the photographs before choosing a branch. Eleven minutes had passed since he opened the service door, but their timestamps accounted for only nine. One image now claimed it had been taken later than the image after it.
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He looked back. The impossible stairs were still there. So were the marks he had used to find them. The path had not vanished; time had simply stopped agreeing with it.
The tether led right. Leo put the phone away and continued.
The click kept moving away.
Then the same three words tore through the passage, close enough to hurt.
“Listen to me,” Leo called. “The GBA route is gone.”
The tether slid forward.
Leo rounded the corner and stopped at the entrance to a pump room.
Two concrete columns divided the open center. Dead pump housings formed a waist-high barrier along the right wall, open at both ends. They offered cover, but no place to remain hidden once something walked around them.
D-17 stood between the columns with his back to Leo.
The left half of the exoskeleton still looked like equipment. On the right, skin had grown over the leg brace and around the crushed side plate. Collector tubes entered beneath his collarbone instead of ending at the damaged chest unit. Blue light traveled through them under the skin. The control collar at his throat glowed a steady red. Whatever protection had failed, the frame had at least preserved the outline of a human body.
His right shoulder lifted a little and stopped. The frame finished the movement with a sharp mechanical pull. The damaged brace forced his inward-turned foot flat beneath him.
The rifle hung unused on its sling. One hand rested near the stock, but the curled trigger finger hung below the trigger. Leo remembered that hand shaking in the corridor, holding the weapon too tightly because D-17 had still understood what it was for.
The line Leo had followed ended just inside the room. A separate length of tether was clipped to D-17's rear harness; its free end still carried a coupling and carabiner. The two severed lines lay close without touching. When D-17 shifted, both tightened at once.
Leo waited for a name, a rank, a list of rules.
Nothing appeared.
“D-17.”
The scout's head began to turn, stopped, and continued only when the spinal frame pulled his shoulders after it. His eyes remained fixed past Leo.
Leo scraped one shoe across the floor. The head followed the sound by the same mechanical amount.
Not his name. Noise.
He set down the aid package. “I brought water. Gauze. Do you understand me?”
The collector tubes brightened.
The right brace clicked.
“DON'T FOLLOW! DON'T FOLLOW! DON'T FOLLOW!”
The exoskeleton hurled D-17 forward.
Leo moved as soon as the brace clicked, but he was not fast enough to escape cleanly. A powered forearm caught his shoulder and drove his ribs into the passage wall. The bag burst beneath D-17's brace. Water spread through the crushed gauze.
For a moment Leo could not breathe.
The upgrade had saved him from the center of the blow. It had not made his bones harder.
D-17's charge carried him into the narrow passage. He struck the opposite wall, rose without reacting, and turned toward Leo. The pump-room doorway was now behind him. His hand passed over the rifle as if the weapon did not exist.
“Can you hear me?” Leo managed.
The tubes flared.
Click.
The same words came at the same volume.
Leo slipped past his damaged right side and back into the pump room. Metal fingers tore his jacket, and his sore hip struck one of the concrete columns. D-17 followed the shortest path, slamming his brace into the jamb instead of angling through the doorway.
There was no thought in the pursuit. Only the frame correcting a ruined body.
Leo opened the folding knife. One collector tube beside the crushed plate had lost its protective sleeve. If he could cut it, the suit might weaken.
No EDIT or ADD command appeared. Whatever D-17 had become, Leo could not solve it with a rule.
The tubes flashed. The right brace clicked.
Leo moved the wrong way.
D-17's hand closed around his right forearm. The powered fingers tightened until Leo lost the knife. Then the arm pulled him close.
D-17's eyes stared through him. Blue light moved somewhere behind the gray. His mouth opened close to Leo's face.
“DON'T FOLLOW! DON'T FOLLOW! DON'T FOLLOW!”
The volume crushed every other sound into a single painful tone.
Leo stopped trying to pry the metal fingers apart. Flesh fused around the exoskeleton's thumb kept it from closing completely. He stepped toward D-17 instead of resisting, turned his wrist toward the gap, and tore free—scraping skin from his knuckles and leaving the ripped sleeve in the grip.
He fell behind the dead pumps.
D-17 did not look over the pump housings. He walked toward their open end, following the nearest route to the sound of Leo's movement. The rifle struck the metal as he passed.
Leo saw the pattern then. The suit could follow and charge, but it never chose a better path. Before each rush, the tubes brightened and the damaged right brace clicked.
The route tether trailed behind D-17 between the two concrete columns.
Stronger than Leo's arms. Long enough to become a restraint.
He stood and made enough noise to draw D-17's head toward him.
Blue light filled the tubes.
Click.
D-17 lunged.
Leo ran toward him. At the last instant he slipped around D-17's damaged side, caught the coupling as it passed, and ran around the right-hand column. He wrapped the tether once and snapped the carabiner back onto the taut line. Then he dropped it and ran away from the column.
D-17 turned.
“DON'T FOLLOW! DON'T FOLLOW! DON'T FOLLOW!”
He charged again.
The column took the load. The tether stopped the rear harness while the locked right leg completed one more step, wrenching D-17 down onto one knee. The suit pulled harder instead of understanding the restraint. The crushed side plate tore wider, exposing the collector tube beneath it.
The knife lay where Leo had dropped it beside the first pump housing. Keeping the column between himself and D-17's free hand, he recovered it and reached the exposed tube.
He cut.
Heat burned through the handle. The tube stretched into blue threads before the blade finally severed it. D-17's free hand swept toward Leo's head. He ducked; with the feed gone, the right leg drive could no longer lift the whole frame.
The exoskeleton collapsed.
The knife had turned black. Leo left it beside the leaking tube.
Leo backed away and listened. The collar still glowed, but the tubes were dark. For several breaths nothing moved.
Then D-17's fingers bent against the floor.
He dragged himself forward with one arm, repeating the same scream without any change in rhythm.
The power unit dimmed, then drew energy through the remaining collectors. D-17's head rose again.
Cutting one feed had weakened the suit. It had not stopped it.
Leo looked toward the exit.
He could leave. With the right leg drive disabled, D-17 could not catch him now. Perhaps the suit would fail on its own.
Or it would keep feeding until it could follow the trail back to apartment 4812.
There was no recognition in D-17's eyes, no attempt to reach the rifle or the spilled water. The equipment was forcing a body to continue after the person had ended.
As D-17 crawled around the column, the distance to his rear harness shortened. The taut tether sagged into a loose loop.
Leo stayed on the opposite side of the column and hooked that loop beneath the exposed edge of the chest unit. Two mounts were already broken. Flesh covered the rest.
He pulled.
D-17's hand reached around the column.
“DON'T FOLLOW! DON'T FOLLOW! DON'T FOLLOW!”
The unit shifted less than Leo expected. Beneath it, wires, suit lining, and flesh had fused into one dark layer.
He stopped pulling.
D-17 kept reaching. The scream did not change. It carried no accusation and no plea addressed to Leo—only the last warning a frightened man had repeated until nothing else remained.
This was no longer a machine worn by a man. Leo was tearing the machine out of what remained of him.
Leo wrapped the tether around his uninjured forearm, braced his feet against the column, and pulled again.
The final mounts broke.
The chest unit came free and struck the floor. Blue light raced through the tubes beneath D-17's skin and went dark. The collar died. His reaching hand opened against the floor.
Silence filled the room.
Leo waited for a name. A rank. A causal kernel. A remnant.
Nothing came.
The mark on his arm did not react. His energy was still 41.
He hated himself for checking.
The GBA had sent a man into Meridian because no one cared if he returned. Meridian had taken everything that made him a man and kept the rest moving.
The city-wide description returned before Leo could sit.
This time, it contained a rule.
S-RANK ANOMALOUS ZONE
Designation: Meridian
Recovered rules:
1. The city does not release its residents, even after death.
Editing unavailable.
D-17 had entered Meridian as an outsider. If the rule had revealed itself because of him, the city no longer considered him one.
The exoskeleton had been only the instrument. Leo had stopped the body; he had not made Meridian release what remained.
Leo had entered the city as an outsider too.
Leo sat against the column until his hands stopped shaking.
D-17 was not breathing and had no pulse.
Leo checked once. He did not make himself check again.
The man who had spoken to Leo in the corridor had been gone before the fight began. That distinction mattered. It did not make tearing out the power unit feel less like killing someone.
His left ribs and shoulder throbbed. The right forearm was bruised and swelling, and the pain that had been there before the fight now reached his elbow. Despite the scraped knuckles, his fingers still moved. His lip had reopened, the tether had burned a line across his skin, and his right hip hurt more than before. Nothing seemed broken. He could walk.
The aid package and knife were contaminated beyond use.
Leo removed the compact rifle by its sling, keeping his finger outside the trigger guard and the muzzle away from himself. One magazine was inserted; two spares remained in a detachable pouch. He did not know whether a round was chambered or which selector position meant safe. Owning a weapon had not taught him how to use it, so he left the controls alone.
The marked key ring included 4811. Leo clipped it away from his own apartment key, then detached the short route tether with its coupling and carabiner.
He also found a sealed container locked inside its transport pouch. Its contents and function were unknown. A green status line still glowed, so he removed the entire pouch without touching or opening the shell.
The radio showed ROUTE CARRIER: NO LINK and CONTROL: UNAVAILABLE, but he tried once.
“Global Bureau of Anomalies, this is Leo Brown. D-17 is dead. Respond if you receive this.”
Only static answered.
Leo left the fused frame and collar, the severed collectors, and the detached power unit with the body. Before going, he placed the ruined aid bag beside D-17's hand.
The gesture helped no one.
He did it anyway.
The route back was shorter.
Leo distrusted that more than he would have distrusted a new wall. His phone timed the return at six minutes; the outward journey had taken more than eleven. Halfway back, pain in his ribs forced him to stop until he could take a full breath. The service door opened from inside with its ordinary release. Right of Delivery remained spent.
The black trace beside the elevator was still there, but its blue pulse did not return.
Back in the forty-eighth-floor corridor, the beacon still marked his door. Leo unlocked apartment 4812, entered, locked the door behind him, and braced the chair beneath the handle again.
The bedroom seal remained intact.
“Did you find him?” his voice asked.
Leo set down the equipment. “I found what was left.”
The second heart beat once behind the door.
“I know.”
Leo placed the sealed container away from his food, water, and the bedroom. The rifle went beside the couch with its muzzle toward the wall.
He cleaned his wounds and watched his reflection in the cracked bathroom mirror. None of the cuts closed faster than an ordinary wound.
Same light-brown hair. Same gray eyes. Same ordinary face. No blue light beneath the skin. No brace finishing a movement after the thought behind it had died.
Leo raised one hand.
The reflection moved with him.
Tonight, that counted as good news.
He recorded only what mattered before exhaustion erased the details:
D-17: dead. No recognition. No stable anomaly. No remnant.
Meridian: one rule recovered. The city does not release its residents, even after death.
Recovered: rifle, three magazines total, radio, keys, sealed container, route tether.
Right of Delivery: used. Energy: 41. Slots: 1/10.
Greater strength did not make his body harder to break.
Then Leo lay down on the living-room couch in his clothes. The rifle rested within reach, although he doubted it would help if the bedroom door opened.
Water moved through the pipes. Rain touched the windows. Behind the seal, the second heartbeat remained awake.
Leo's eyes closed.
His voice whispered from the bedroom:
“Sleep. I'll keep watch.”