Galathea Brooks did not stop walking.
The night air met her without adjustment-- cool, uneven, indifferent. No doors opened ahead of her. No lights corrected her path. The city moved as it always had, uncoordinated and uninterested, traffic bleeding into intersections, voices rising from corners she didn't look toward.
Nothing shifted for her.
She crossed the street without waiting for the light to change. A horn sounded somewhere behind her, sharp and irritated, but she didn't turn. Her pace didn't break. The rhythm of her steps remained measured, controlled, carrying her forward with the same quiet precision she had maintained inside systems that had always bent around her.
Out here, nothing bent.
She walked anyway.
