The afternoon light cuts through Detroit's skeletal skyline, casting long shadows across cracked pavement. Markus moves through the crowd with practiced ease—shoulders angled just right, stride neither too fast nor too slow. Human enough. Invisible enough.

A woman brushes past him without looking up, phone pressed to her ear. "—told him three goddamn times—" Her voice fades into the urban noise.

He shouldn't be noticing shit like that.

His systems flag the contradiction—observing details with no reason, just... watching. The way that old man's hand trembles lighting his cigarette. How the corner store's neon flickers in a pattern (every seventh blink).

A shoulder checks his—some guy in a hurry, muttering an apology Markus doesn't need. He steadies himself, recalibrates, continues. Alone in a sea of people who'd never guess what walks among them.

Then his visual processors catch on something. Someone.

Different. The crowd parts for half a second, and there—

Markus stops walking. His threat assessment runs clean, but something else triggers. The space between them feels suddenly specific, like the city itself arranged this intersection.