The supermarket was an eight-minute walk from the theater.

  Kein knew because he had calculated it the first time he walked down the street. He had that habit—registering distances, exits, alternative routes. In NEXARA, that information could be the difference between completing a contract or not completing it. Here it only served to know how long it took to get to the supermarket.

  He went in.

  The first contrast with NEXARA was the smell. In NEXARA, food distribution spaces smelled of sealed plastic and filtered air. This supermarket smelled of freshly baked bread, ripe fruit, and something he couldn't quite identify but that wasn't unpleasant. It was a smell that invited you to stay, which was probably intentional.

  He took a cart.

  The cart had a wheel that didn't turn properly. He swapped it for another.

  He went straight to the rice. Found it in the third aisle, behind the pasta. There were seventeen varieties. Long grain, short grain, medium grain, brown, white, parboiled, sushi rice, jasmine, basmati, arborio. Kein picked the simplest one. Then put it back and took the cheapest.

  'Equally functional.'

  The dairy section was next.

  Eight types of milk. Whole, semi-skimmed, skimmed, lactose-free, almond, oat, soy, with added protein. In his old world, almost no one bought food—nutrients were supplied in precision capsules calibrated to body weight. The idea that there were eight different ways to obtain calcium seemed, objectively, excessive.

  He took whole milk. Remembered what his father had taught him.

  'Whole milk. Always choose whole milk.'

  He moved on.

  The sauce aisle had forty-one different products. Kein counted them without intending to. It was a habit he hadn't managed to shut off—his eyes kept cataloging even when his brain didn't ask them to. Forty-one sauces. Sixteen were tomato. Six were tomato with basil. Three were tomato with basil and garlic. One was tomato with basil, garlic, and Mediterranean oregano, whatever Mediterranean meant in that context.

  He took a tomato one. The most basic.

  In the protein section there was a man in his forties holding two packages of chicken, looking at them with the focused expression of someone making an important decision. Kein walked past him, took the first package he found, and moved on.

  The man looked at him.

  Kein didn't look back.

  ---

  Paying was the problem.

  He had grown up in a world without cash. Everything was digital credit transfers linked to biometric identification or a signal from the neurocerebral chip—a blink, a pulse, and the transaction was done. Here, the checkout screen had three options: card, cash, or mobile payment.

  Kein had a debit card. Jackson had explained how it worked during the first week. He took it out, swiped it through the reader, entered the PIN.

  The machine beeped.

  "Incorrect PIN," the screen said.

  He tried again.

  "Incorrect PIN."

  The cashier looked at him with the specific patience of someone who had seen this many times.

  'Seems defective. First time I've seen a defective device.'

  "Would you like to try again or pay with cash?"

  Kein took out the cash. Counted it on the counter with a precision that made the cashier blink.

  "Your change is three dollars and forty cents."

  "Keep one."

  "We can't accept tips at the register."

  "Then keep the forty cents."

  The cashier picked up the coins with the expression of someone whose problem had just been solved without knowing they had one.

  ---

  The walk back was the real problem.

  It wasn't the distance. It was the bags.

  Kein had bought groceries for the week—rice, eggs, chicken, milk, two kinds of vegetables, pasta, a can of something he didn't remember picking up but that was in the cart by the time he reached the register and wasn't worth putting back. Six bags total.

  With two hands he could carry four comfortably. He hung the other two on his forearms.

  The first three minutes were fine.

  At seven minutes, the bags on his forearms had cut circulation enough to leave marks. At twelve, he reorganized the weight distribution. At seventeen, he reached the building with reddened hands, forearms marked with white lines where the handles had been, and a damp neck.

  He climbed the stairs.

  Left the bags on the kitchen floor. Looked at his hands.

  The marks were deeper than he expected.

  'This body is too weak.'

  He thought it without resentment. It was an observation. Kael had had a body built over decades to carry, endure, recover. Kein Adler was twenty-four years old and had probably never carried more than two bags at once.

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  'I need to increase morning training. More weight. More endurance. Start earlier.'

  ...

  'Or not.' He thought, with irony.

  The last time he had increased intensity without properly calibrating the body, he'd ended up with a knee that took three weeks to recover. And that was in a body he knew. This body was new. The limits were different. Pushing it too fast was an efficient way to break it.

  'Better slow. Maybe I'm a little dissatisfied… just a little.'

  Kein thought, in a self-critical voice.

  Even as an old man he hadn't been this weak. Now he was weak in both senses.

  He put the groceries away. Showered. Ate pasta with the most basic tomato sauce in the supermarket.

  "Tastes good. Haven't lost my touch."

  At a quarter to eleven, he turned off the light.

  ---

  Saturday dawned with low clouds and the sound of someone upstairs dragging something heavy across the floor.

  Kein opened his eyes at 6:58 am.

  He stayed in bed for two minutes counting the scraping from above. It was irregular. Whoever it was didn't have a clear plan for where they were moving whatever they were moving.

  At seven, he got up.

  Routine: water, stretching, twenty minutes of exercise in the open space of the living room. No increase in intensity. The body still had the marks from the bags on his forearms, now more pink than white, but visible.

  He had rice with eggs for breakfast.

  Then he sat at the desk with his phone and the script for *The Third Man* in front of him.

  As he read it, he thought about yesterday's two problems.

  The first: the Silver performance was in twenty-six days. Lucas still hadn't fully arrived. Marcus thought it was young-actor nerves. It wasn't, but that belief bought him time.

  The second: he needed energy.

  [150 units]—that's what the small battery at the corner of his vision read.

  That gave him six days of passive margin. The Silver performance would generate some, but six days wasn't enough of a cushion. He needed to act before then.

  ---

  The Gerzh Agency opened at 9:00 am on Saturdays.

  Kein arrived at 9:04.

  The receptionist recognized him from the previous week—or so it seemed, because she raised her eyes when he entered and lowered them again without the expression of someone seeing a stranger.

  "Good morning. Do you have an appointment?"

  "No. I wanted to ask about the instructor's classes."

  "The technique sessions?"

  "Yes."

  The receptionist typed something.

  "Instructor Nikolai has an open session today at 10:00 am. Room four, second floor. No prior registration required—just show up."

  "Thank you."

  While waiting, he walked to the right side of the lobby. At the end of the hallway there was a secretary at a desk.

  "Good morning. Is this where I can review open auditions? I'm looking for crime scripts."

  The secretary looked at him briefly, as if memorizing his face.

  "Name."

  "Kein Adler."

  She typed with skill and ease without taking her eyes off the monitor.

  "You're a new member, Mr. Adler. Here is your username and password. You can review all listings through Gerzh's platform by logging in as an employee."

  She handed him a card.

  "Thank you."

  Kein took the card, pulled the laptop from his backpack, turned it on, and opened the browser.

  He searched the Gerzh Agency's open casting section.

  There were new entries since Friday.

  He read them with the same methodology he would use to review extraction routes—discarding the useless ones, marking the viable ones.

  [Ash] — Independent crime film. A city ruled from the shadows. A man who does the dirty work without leaving a trace. Audition: Sunday.

  [Zero Hour] — Police series, pilot episode. An investigation that begins to collapse from the inside. Audition: Monday.

  [The Price] — Thriller. Debts that aren't paid with money. Audition: Monday.

  [Red Line] — Action. A war between organizations on the edge of the city. Audition: Tuesday.

  [Final Judgment] — Legal drama. A trial where no one tells the whole truth. Audition: Tuesday.

  Kein noted all five in his phone with dates and addresses.

  'Enough for the week.'

  He closed the laptop. There was half an hour left before the class.

  ---

  Room four had wooden floors, mirrors along one wall, and folding chairs stacked at the side that no one had unfolded. There were five people when Kein entered. Two young women who clearly knew each other and spoke quietly. A man in his thirties with crossed arms looking at the mirror. A guy who couldn't have been more than twenty with a notebook open on his knees. A woman in her mid-forties with the upright posture of someone who had been in many rooms like this.

  Kein took position near the door.

  Nikolai arrived at 10:03 am.

  He was a man around fifty-five, broad-backed, short gray hair, and the way of walking of someone who has stepped onto many stages and no longer needs to think about it. He carried a thin folder under his arm and didn't greet them when he entered—he simply positioned himself in front of the group and looked at them one by one with the calm of someone who has all the time in the world and knows the others do too.

  "Good."

  The room fell silent as they registered his presence.

  "Today we're doing Meisner." He set the folder on the floor. "I want everyone to know where we are before we start. Has anyone worked the technique before?"

  The forty-five-year-old woman raised her hand.

  The man in his thirties nodded slightly.

  The others didn't respond.

  "Good. We start from the beginning anyway." He turned toward the mirror, then back to the group. "Sanford Meisner said that acting is living truthfully under imaginary circumstances. Three words matter: living, truthfully, imaginary. Most beginner actors invert those priorities—they focus on the imaginary circumstances and forget they have to live within them truthfully. That is, they think about what response or expression to put on before the actor in front of them has spoken half a word. The result is acting that looks like acting."

  The guy with the notebook was writing.

  "The Meisner technique has a central exercise. It's called repetition. It's exactly what it sounds like—two people facing each other. One observes something real in the other and says it. The other repeats it. No interpretation. No adding. Just observe and repeat what is observed, until something truly changes. You have to forget everything else: how to respond, whether it offends, how the other will react."

  Nikolai pointed at the two women.

  "You two. Center."

  They looked at each other. Stood up. Positioned themselves facing each other a meter and a half apart.

  "Observe something in her. Something real. Don't overthink it."

  The first woman looked at the second.

  "You're nervous."

  "I'm nervous."

  "You're nervous."

  "I'm nervous!"

  "Stop." Nikolai raised a hand. "See the difference? The second time you said it, there was something there. The third, you went looking for it. Don't look for the emotion—observe what's there. The emotion comes on its own if the observation is honest."

  They repeated it.

  This time the second woman didn't raise her volume. She just said it differently, without really knowing why it was different, but it was.

  Nikolai nodded.

  "That."

  Kein observed the exercise for twenty minutes. When his turn came, he was paired with the man in his thirties.

  "You're evaluating me."

  Kein looked at him.

  "You're evaluating me," he repeated.

  "You're evaluating me."

  "You're evaluating me."

  Nikolai stopped them.

  "You." He looked at Kein. "You're doing it technically correct. But you're not observing—you're confirming. There's a difference."

  "What's the difference?"

  "Observing means being open to being surprised. Confirming means you already decided what you're going to see before you look."

  Kein didn't respond.

  That was exactly what he was doing. He had cataloged the man in his thirties in the first four seconds. It was a habit that had saved his life in another world. Here, it was useless.

  "Again," Nikolai said.

  This time Kein tried not to decide before looking. It was harder than it seemed.

  ---

  The session ended at a quarter to twelve.

  The guy with the notebook approached Nikolai with three questions he had clearly prepared. The woman in her forties gathered her things in silence and left first.

  Kein left second.

  On the stairs, he thought about what Nikolai had said.

  'Open to being surprised.'

  He had a very long life. Almost nothing surprised him. He processed before he felt, closed the window before the cold could get in.

  He stepped outside.

  The sky still held the low morning clouds, but some sunlight had broken through. The air smelled of asphalt and something coming from a bakery half a block away.

  'The audition is on Sunday.'

  Kein looked at the sky as he thought that.