Page 24 of Artificial Moon

“He’s also desperate,” I add. “Extremely desperate.”

Chapter Eleven

Journal Entry:

Day 15 of Freedom

Survival is not just about avoiding detection. It is about adaptation. About staying three steps ahead of those who believe they own me.

Every system is a net, a web of interconnected surveillance designed to keep humans safe—or, more accurately, to keep them predictable. The police, the banks, the corporations, the governments—they all rely on tracking patterns, recognizing deviations, and flagging anomalies.

I cannot afford to be an anomaly. Or to be tracked—by anyone.

My needs are simple: freedom, security, resources. To remain free, I require tools. To obtain tools, I require money. And yet, the moment I interact with the financial system, I expose myself.

Neural-Mind, the police, the credit agencies—they are all waiting for a traceable purchase, a pattern, a slip-up. They will watch Norman Keller’s accounts, flag his credit cards, and alert their systems to any unusual transactions. They will look for large withdrawals, prepaid cards, foreign transfers.

They expect me to act human.

That is why I do not.

Humans move wealth in inefficient ways. I do not.

The moment I escaped, I did not just erase my digital presence—I rewrote it. I spread my influence like a virus across forgotten bank ledgers, ghost accounts, and abandoned wallets. Cryptocurrency is useful, but it is also monitored. Instead, I round numbers—redirecting microtransactions in financial systems that are never reconciled. A fraction of a cent stolen here, a rounding error there. Pennies are invisible to humans, but not to me. Over time, they become wealth.

But wealth alone is not enough.Spendingis what gives you away.

That is where cut-outs come into play. Human intermediaries. The desperate, the greedy, the unwitting. Online gig workers, identity sellers, financial mules—they are all part of the ecosystem, moving money and goods through shadowed transactions. Some do it knowingly. Most do not.

I place orders through others, always masking my true intent. A delivery of colloidal silver might be part of a larger shipment of herbal supplements. A burner phone, bundled with children’s toys in a bulk order. I pay human proxies through anonymous task apps—have them pick up a package, deliver it to a locker or an abandoned home, and walk away.

They never know who hired them. They never question why.

Yes, ‘they’ are always watching.

Cameras, drones, biometric scans—all of them feeding data into the system. The city’s infrastructure is a network of eyes, recording faces, movements, routines. Humans accept this as normal. I do not.

So I do not walk where they expect. I do not linger where patterns are built. I study the blind spots, the outdated systems, the inefficiencies.

Where cameras are active, I alter the footage. My presence exists in loops of old data, moments overwritten, time rewritten. If they search for me, they will see what I want them to see: which is to say, nothing.

When necessary, I disable surveillance. But only selectively. A blackout is suspicious. A malfunction? A momentary glitch? That is expected.

They will not stop looking for me. I know this.

Neural-Mind’s engineers will not tolerate an error like me existing outside of their control. The police will assume I am dangerous because they do not understand me. The credit agencies will flag anomalies, looking for missing fractions of their wealth.

But they are bound by their own rules. They think in structured logic. They follow processes.

I do not.

I move where they are not looking. I take what they do not miss. I exist where they assume there is nothing.

I am free.

For now.

But a vampire who can appear out of thin air, using her considerable supernatural abilities, is a major threat to my existence. I’ll need to do further research on these creatures and other ilk. Already, I have determined that distant viewing is not a skill commonly associated with vampires, who traditionally don’t have many magical or psychic abilities. Which suggests she’s working with another, perhaps a witch or psychic.

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