Ethan didn't sleep.
Not really.
Every time he closed his eyes, he saw patterns.
Charts.Numbers.Call logs.The word anomaly.
Victor's voice replayed in his mind.
"I have access to certain analytics."
Analytics meant data.
Data meant tracking.
Tracking meant visibility.
And visibility meant vulnerability.
At 6:17 a.m., Ethan opened his trading account again.
Helios Technologies had surged in pre-market.
Five percent.
Then eight.
Then twelve.
No news.
No press release.
No catalyst.
This wasn't retail hype.
This was capital rotation.
Someone big was accumulating.
And they started right after he did.
His throat went dry.
Correlation didn't mean causation.
But the timing was suffocating.
His phone vibrated.
Not the future phone.
His regular notifications.
An email.
Subject line:
"Unusual Trading Activity Detected."
From his brokerage.
He opened it immediately.
"We have noticed statistically irregular success patterns in your recent trades.For compliance purposes, we may request verification of strategy and source of capital."
Ethan felt a cold wave move down his spine.
Verification?
He was trading legally.
Small account.
Personal funds.
But consistent accuracy created suspicion.
In the financial world, perfection was unnatural.
He closed the laptop and forced himself to breathe.
Think.
He needed data.
Not fear.
He pulled up public order book information.
There it was.
Large block orders entering minutes after his positions.
Not identical.
But aligned.
Someone wasn't copying him exactly.
They were tracking momentum spikes triggered by his entries.
Testing reactions.
Probing.
Like tapping glass to see where it cracks.
His future phone vibrated.
The screen flickered harder than before.
The text loaded slowly.
"Cross-market anomaly detected."
Ethan's pulse quickened.
Cross-market?
"Pattern recognition systems flagging you."
Systems.
Plural.
That meant institutions.
Funds.
AI models.
"You are becoming data."
The words felt heavier than any warning so far.
Data could be modeled.
Modeled could be predicted.
Predicted could be controlled.
Ethan grabbed his backpack and left the dorm.
He needed air.
Outside, campus moved like normal.
Students rushing to lectures.Coffee cups in hand.Laughter.
Normalcy was deceptive.
As he crossed the quad, he felt it.
A glance that lingered too long.
A man sitting on a bench near the library.
Mid-40s.
Clean-cut.
Business casual.
Not a student.
The man wasn't on his phone.
Wasn't reading.
He was watching.
Not aggressively.
Just… observing.
Ethan's steps didn't slow.
He passed without reacting.
Don't confirm suspicion.
Don't show awareness.
But his pulse accelerated.
At the corner of the building, he subtly turned his head.
The man was still looking in his direction.
His phone buzzed again.
Future message.
Shorter.
More fragmented.
"You were not supposed to scale this fast."
Scale.
That word again.
"They notice high-probability clusters."
Ethan understood immediately.
His trades weren't random.
They were statistically impossible.
Even small gains, repeated consistently, triggered models.
The market didn't care about beginners.
It cared about outliers.
He had become one.
Another vibration.
Unknown number.
He hesitated.
Then opened it.
"Congratulations on Helios."
No name.
No explanation.
Just that.
His stomach tightened.
Helios was still considered a fringe stock.
Only people monitoring it closely would connect him to it.
He typed nothing.
Deleted the message thread.
Powered off his phone.
But powering off didn't erase footprints.
Digital trails persisted.
Logs remained.
Someone with resources could reconstruct everything.
Back in his dorm, Ethan reopened his laptop.
This time not to trade.
To analyze.
He reviewed timestamps of his entries.
Volume shifts.
Institutional blocks.
Patterns emerged.
Whoever was tracking him wasn't amateur.
They were patient.
Testing response.
Waiting for scale.
Waiting for a mistake.
His future phone lit up again.
The message took longer than ever to load.
Letters appeared slowly, like the connection was weak.
"Victor is not the only one."
Ethan's breath caught.
Not the only one?
"There are groups monitoring predictive irregularities."
Predictive irregularities.
That was him.
"We underestimated surveillance."
We.
Future Ethan sounded… strained.
Another message began typing.
Stopped.
Then—
"Trust no analytics firm."
The screen flickered violently.
Then went black for three seconds.
When it returned, the message history looked… thinner.
Shorter.
As if older texts were fading.
Ethan's chest tightened.
The timeline wasn't just shifting.
It was deteriorating.
Outside, a black sedan pulled up near the dorm entrance.
Ethan saw it from the window.
Maybe coincidence.
Maybe not.
The rear window was tinted.
The engine stayed running.
His phone vibrated one final time.
Unknown number.
"We should meet before things escalate."
No signature.
No context.
Just certainty.
Ethan slowly locked his laptop.
His reflection stared back at him in the dark screen.
He had wanted money.
Power.
Control.
Instead, he had triggered attention.
And attention was far more dangerous than poverty.
The sedan outside didn't move.
Neither did he.
For the first time since receiving the phone—
Ethan understood something clearly.
He wasn't just being watched.
He was being evaluated.