The white corridors spilled into a perfect maze that was originally built for evacuation but now repurposed for containment. Lucy moved at a measured pace, counting her footfalls, each step echoing off the polymer walls in a rhythm designed to soothe. Every five meters, a camera mounted flush with the ceiling panned to follow her progress, its iris whirring in precise focus, sometimes zooming tight enough for her to feel the digital scrutiny on her skin.
She fixed her mood tag to “Composed-Green,” set her gait to the average, and forced herself to think of nothing at all. The visor overlay—a gentle pastel now, thanks to the anti-SHREW hack—floated a running notification in her periphery: “Time to Exit—3 minutes, 42 seconds.” She used the number as a mantra, reciting it under her breath to drown out the sound of her own blood hammering through her ears.
At the next junction, the corridor branched—one path marked with a standard wayfinding icon, the other with a maintenance glyph. Lucy took the latter, trusting Anya’s advice that the maintenance elevator would be less monitored. The walls here had no windows, no art, no attempt at humanization. Only the soft pulse of the emergency lighting, blue and cold, flickered with the system’s heartbeat.
A camera on the ceiling followed her, then blinked red as she passed beneath it. For a heartbeat, she was certain it would lock her in place, summon a drone, or flood the corridor with neutralizing gas. But the doors ahead hissed open instead, leading into a pocket vestibule lit even more harshly than the corridor behind.
In the vestibule, two compliance officers stood at parade rest. Their uniforms were the pure, impossible white of top-grade MuseFam fabric, with silvered visors that hid their eyes. Lucy’s mind ran through a dozen possible exit routes, calculated the odds of sprinting past them, then discarded all but the most boring and plausible option: walk straight through, slow and unremarkable.
She stepped forward, chin up. One officer glanced at her badge, then at her face. Their own mood tag read “Neutral-Grey,” but the subtext was clear: they were hunting. Lucy smiled, not too wide, and let her tag pulse “Mild-Productive.” The officer’s gaze lingered for half a second longer, then slid off. She kept walking, careful not to let her breath hitch.
The lobby was cavernous and antiseptic; its far wall dominated by a projection of the city at sunrise. Every pixel was tuned for wellness: no shadow, no sign of decay, only a radiant sky and the predictable geometry of new towers. The air here had a faint sweetness, the signature MuseFam “Hope” blend, and Lucy almost gagged on the synthetic undertone.
She joined the crowd of early-morning arrivals—analysts, techs, janitors, and more than a few sleepwalkers being guided by personal drones. The crowd flowed around the compliance officers like water around stones. Lucy matched the cadence, blending her movements with the general surge, never letting herself stand out even as the cameras on the mezzanine tracked the entire parade.
At the exit, she passed through a final set of glass doors. The rain outside was relentless, a membrane of water that transformed the street into a reflective grid of light and movement. She pulled up her hood, kept her face angled down, and walked into the current.
Above the street, billboards broadcast “Productive-Calm” faces in a never-ending loop, each one perfectly diverse and identically serene. The city’s moodprint floated overhead, a real-time infographic of community wellness that never dipped below the “Target” threshold.
Lucy’s pulse only slowed when she ducked into a side alley, shielded from the billboards and the overhead cams by a tangle of obsolete wiring and a drainage pipe. She waited, counting her breaths, until her hands stopped shaking. Then she thumbed the drive Anya had given her, feeling its sharp edges bite into her palm.
She navigated home through back alleys and construction detours, crossing no checkpoints twice and avoiding all areas with security glass or active sensors. It was early enough that most of her neighbors were still asleep, or else watching the “Wellness Bulletin” in their living rooms, eyes glazed but tags glowing in the prescribed hue.
In her own apartment, she did a sweep for hidden monitors. The anti-SHREW hack made the process easier by filtering out synthetic harmonics and revealing the telltale white noise of active surveillance. She found none. She closed the blinds, then double-locked the door.
She collapsed onto the floor, the drive still clutched in her hand. Her head buzzed with exhaustion, but the SHREW lullaby was gone, replaced by a dull, throbbing silence. She waited there, motionless, for an hour or more, until her body finally convinced her that she was, for the moment, safe.
It was after dark when her neural interface pinged again.
The notification was framed in pastel blue, the font rounded, the language perfect:
“Dear Analyst L-7: Your recent activity suggests you may be experiencing emotional dysregulation. For your comfort and safety, please report to the nearest MuseFam care facility for recalibration. Attendance is mandatory. Thank you for your commitment to city harmony.”
The words blurred on the screen. She read it twice, three times, hoping the message would change.
She deleted the notification. It came back. She turned off the neural interface. The message appeared in the afterimage of her vision, refusing to fade.
Lucy closed her eyes and let the terror wash over her, knowing it would be the last feeling the system allowed her to have for a long, long time.
