He walked home through the predawn quiet, sleeve down, Resonance running low in the background the way a new sense always ran when it was still finding its range.
The surface world had frequencies too. Quieter, less layered than the Rift, but there. The pavement. The buildings. The air above the street. He catalogued them without deciding to, building a baseline for what normal felt like so he would know when normal changed.
It changed three blocks from his apartment.
He was walking under the orange streetlights, hands in his pockets, when something caught his attention that was not a building frequency and not pavement and not the air above the street.
It was the frequency coming from six feet behind him.
He did not stop walking. He focused on it. It was moving, maintaining exact distance, stopping when he slowed, moving when he sped up. The frequency was cold. Wrong. The specific wrongness of something that had learned to approximate the right shape but had not quite gotten there.
Kael turned left at the corner.
He walked to the middle of the block. He stopped and bent down as if checking his shoe. In the reflection of a car window, he looked behind him.
The street was empty.
He straightened up.
The frequency was still there. Six feet back.
Standing still.
He could not see it but he could feel it. Present and patient and wrong in the specific way the Rift's shadows were wrong when they oriented toward him.
He thought about what Gordo had said. Things come through.
He thought about the door in the grey building. RETURN WHEN READY.
Something had returned with him.
Kael walked the rest of the way home at a normal pace. He unlocked his door. He went inside. He locked the door behind him. He stood in his hallway and focused on the frequency outside.
It did not come through the door.
It stayed on the street. Present. Waiting. The way something waits when it is not in a hurry because time means nothing to it.
He went to bed.
He did not sleep.