The screen was already lit. Black background, green glyphs. Corporate interface, not Archive standard. A cursor blinked at the bottom of the text field, waiting.

  [AUTHORIZED USER: VANCE, KAELEN]

  [REMOTE SESSION: ACTIVE]

  [BIO-CONFIRMATION PENDING: COUNCIL DIRECTIVE 7 PROHIBITS LETHAL ACTION AGAINST UNCONFIRMED VARIABLES WITHOUT FORMAL REVIEW.]

  Then new text, typed in real time.

  [VANCE, KAELEN: "Hello, Variable Seven. You've been busy."]

  I stared at the words. My hands hung at my sides, palms raw and weeping. My skin still felt cooked. The furnace heat hadn't left my lungs. My ears rang with the memory of the purge alarm, a high, fading whine that had nothing to do with sound.

  The room was cold. Sterile. The contrast made my nerve endings misfire.

  Another line appeared.

  [VANCE, KAELEN: "You retrieved the interface plate. I'm curious how you knew it was there."]

  I didn't answer. I scanned the test bay. Workbenches. Diagnostic equipment. A rack holding the second Omega-Null casing, intact and gleaming. Shelves lined with components I didn't recognize. My eyes moved, cataloging, while my body remained still.

  [VANCE, KAELEN: "Silence is an acceptable response. It tells me you're thinking."]

  A pause. Then the screen updated. A new window opened, displaying a schematic.

  Sector 7-C. Tents. Supply cache. The relay tower's service bay. Seven orange blobs clustered inside. Not a drone feed. The resolution was too low, the outlines too clean. A projection model. The Archive's best guess, triangulated from the relay burst.

  [VANCE, KAELEN: "Compliance remains the most efficient outcome. I can route medical treatment to your current location. I can route it to Sector 7-C. Your team is still mobile, but the pathogen progression in your engineer has accelerated. Eli, yes? His lung capacity is now at forty-two percent of baseline."]

  My jaw tightened. He was reading medical telemetry. From the relay burst. The null packet had left a backscatter trace, and the Archive had pulled data from it.

  [VANCE, KAELEN: "I don't need you to trust me. I need you to understand arithmetic. You have something I want. I have something you want. We can transact."]

  "What do you want."

  My voice was a rasp. My throat was still raw from the superheated air.

  [VANCE, KAELEN: "Confirmation. You are the Deviation. Echo Four. The scarred timeline."]

  I said nothing.

  [VANCE, KAELEN: "I already know the answer. The interface plate is calibrated to your biometrics. The furnace should have killed you. The fact that you're standing here tells me everything. But I need you to say it."]

  "Then you don't need confirmation. You need consent."

  A pause. Longer than the others.

  [VANCE, KAELEN: "That's a distinction without a practical difference."]

  "It's a difference."

  Another pause. Then:

  [VANCE, KAELEN: "Fine. I have your confirmation by omission. Proceed."]

  He moved on. I had given him nothing, and he had taken it anyway.

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  [VANCE, KAELEN: "You made contact with an external relay. You received a null packet. The content mentioned 'Rule Zero' and 'Null Pocket.' I need to know who transmitted that packet."]

  Still nothing.

  [VANCE, KAELEN: "Your reluctance is noted. Let me reframe."]

  The projection map updated. Seven orange blobs, still clustered. A timer now overlayed the schematic.

  [VANCE, KAELEN: "I have flagged Sector 7-C for priority processing. The queue is currently four hours. Resources allocated to the search pattern are adequate but not aggressive. I can make the search pattern faster. I can allocate aerial drones, ground assets, biotracker teams."]

  His cursor blinked.

  [VANCE, KAELEN: "Or I can slow it down. I can reassign personnel to other sectors. I can generate a report indicating your team already fled the area. Compliance is arithmetic. What do you want the numbers to look like?"]

  I looked away from the screen. My hands were shaking. Not fear. The burns. The nerve endings were misfiring, sending random pulses to muscles that no longer listened properly.

  I moved.

  Slowly. Deliberately. I walked to the nearest workbench, keeping my body angled so the overhead camera could see my hands at all times. No sudden movements. Nothing that looked like aggression.

  The workbench held tools. Diagnostic probes, calibration wafers, spools of fine wire. And a pair of insulated work gloves, lying next to a partial casing assembly. Two-fingered, the seams reinforced with ceramic threading. Heat-resistant. Not medical grade, but better than bare, ruined flesh.

  I picked them up. My fingers wouldn't close properly around the material. The tips of my index and middle fingers refused to curl fully. The nerves were damaged. Maybe permanent.

  [VANCE, KAELEN: "You're selecting safety equipment. Prudent."]

  I didn't respond. I pulled the gloves on. The ceramic lining was cool against my burns. I flexed my fingers. Still clumsy. Still painful. But I could grip now without wanting to scream.

  Next to the gloves was a roll of fibrous silver tape. Thermal insulation wrap. Industrial grade. I picked it up, tested its weight, and tucked it into my waistband.

  [VANCE, KAELEN: "You're equipping. Also prudent. But equipment doesn't change arithmetic."]

  I turned back to the screen. My face was blank. My voice was flat.

  "The packet. It came from Eli."

  [VANCE, KAELEN: "The engineer."]

  "Yes."

  A pause. Then:

  [VANCE, KAELEN: "Eli constructed the packet. He did not transmit it. The transmission signature matches a burst transmitter, which requires line of sight to the relay. Eli hasn't left the medical tent in nineteen hours. The relay burst gave us a snapshot of his biometrics. Bedridden. Low mobility."]

  His cursor hovered.

  [VANCE, KAELEN: "Someone else climbed the tower. But you want me to believe it was him. Which means you're protecting someone else. The woman with the shiv. The soldier. Or the Rival."]

  I held still.

  [VANCE, KAELEN: "It doesn't matter. I'll identify them during processing."]

  He was done. I had given him a name. A false one. But he had already known it was false.

  [VANCE, KAELEN: "You have the interface plate. Damaged, but recoverable. I assume you intend to use it."]

  I didn't answer.

  [VANCE, KAELEN: "The Omega-Null weapon requires two components to achieve critical modulation. You have one. The other is currently mounted on the rack behind you. You lack the tooling to integrate them. You lack the authorization. You lack the time."]

  His cursor blinked. Then:

  [VANCE, KAELEN: "I have your people in a queue. Marcus included. I can make the queue faster."]

  The screen went dark for three seconds. Then a single chime.

  [REMOTE SESSION: TERMINATED]

  [DOOR STATUS: UNLOCKED]

  The blast door's status light shifted from red to green. A soft hydraulic hiss as the seals disengaged.

  He wasn't waiting for an answer. He had already made his threat. The door was open. The cage was unlocked.

  I could stay in the test bay, safe for now, while Kaelen accelerated the hunt on my team. Or I could leave, walk into the corridor where the Salvage Team was waiting, and try to get back to them before the queue became an execution list.

  A sound. Distant. Footsteps, echoing off metal walls.

  Then a voice, tinny through a suit speaker.

  "Test bay access just cycled. He's still in there."

  "Wait for Kessler."

  "He's not responding. I think his comms are jammed."

  "Then we go in now. Vasquez, cover the vent shaft."

  Footsteps. Closer.

  I pulled the thermal wrap from my waistband. I stripped a length of the silver tape, wrapped it around my damaged fingers, cinched it tight. The compression dulled the pain. It also flattened my grip, made my hands into clumsy paddles.

  It would have to do.

  I walked to the rack and looked at the second Omega-Null casing. Complete. Intact. Mounted on a diagnostic frame, its interface port exposed.

  I didn't take it. Too heavy. Too obvious. Too much mass to carry while running.

  But I traced my gloved fingers along its edge, found a small access panel, and pried it open. Inside was a data slug, no larger than my thumbnail, marked with the Stasis-Global logo. Diagnostic logs. Test histories. Maybe something useful.

  I palmed it and turned toward the door.

  The scanner beam swept under the gap, painting the floor in pulsing blue light.

  Vasquez's voice, closer now. "Door is unlocked. He's coming out."

  I stepped through the threshold.