The estate changed again before sunrise.
Not dramatically.
Not visibly.
That was what made it dangerous.
Elize noticed it the moment she stepped into the corridor outside her room. The estate still looked the same—same muted lighting, same controlled silence, same polished architecture designed to suppress emotional presence.
But the rhythm underneath it had shifted.
Doors opened a second slower before recognizing clearance authorization. Staff movement patterns had tightened into narrower routes. Communication terminals glowed longer before dimming, as though transmitting additional encrypted traffic beneath standard operation.
The system wasn’t recalibrating internally anymore.
It was responding to observation.
External observation.
Elize walked slowly through the corridor, att
