บททั้งหมดของ You Will Regret Rejecting Me: บทที่ 71 - บทที่ 80

Voss was already moving before Lucien finished giving the order, which meant he'd started before it was an order at all."Node 3B," he said into the comm, already at the door. "Decommissioned annex, east archive wing. That's where the ping lands once you filter out relay noise. I've got two on the ground now, ETA 90 seconds.""Decommissioned," Kaela repeated."Fourteen years," Adair said, still at the screen. "Sealed after the claimant intake reforms went through the first time. Nobody's badge should even register there."Adrian's head came up."That's not an archive wing," he said. "That's a processing annex. Recalibration chambers. Six of them, back when claimant status still ran through direct conditioning instead of paperwork." He said it flatly, the way Lucien had taught the room to expect from him now: information, bounded, no reach past the question. "If she's in there, she's not reading files. There's nothing to read. It's hardware."Lucien was already pulling up a floor schem

The annex door gave easier than it should have.Voss stopped Adrian with a hand before he could push through. "That's not resistance failure. That's a door somebody left unlatched on purpose."Adrian was already looking past the frame, at the seam where the hinge met the wall. "Claimant corridors run a secondary bolt behind the visible one. If the visible lock gives easy, the second one's still live." He reached past the handle, found the recessed panel exactly where memory said it would be, and thumbed it dark. "There. Now it's actually open."Inside the annex was cold air, a bank of monitors black and unpowered, and chairs pushed in.Voss ran a hand along the nearest console. There was no warmth, no hum. "This hasn't run tonight.""It ran recently, though." Adrian crouched by the base unit, where a cable had been pulled loose rather than unplugged; it had been yanked, not shut down. He checked his watch against a log sheet clipped to the wall, half-filled in a hand neither of them r

Isara's line picked up on the fourth ring.It was not Isara who answered."This channel isn't monitored past intake," said a voice Kaela didn't recognize. It was female, unhurried, with the kind of calm that came from training rather than nerves. "State your business or disconnect."Lucien didn't disconnect. "This is Varkas. I need to speak with the principal.""The principal isn't taking contact requests." A pause followed, textured with something that wasn't quite hesitation. "But I was told, if this number called, to say something back."Kaela leaned into the frame of the comm, close enough that Lucien's jaw tightened at the proximity, not the message."Say it," Lucien said.“ 'Ask him what he thinks he was protecting.’ " The voice recited it flatly, like a line memorized without being understood. "That's the whole message."The comm went dead on the other end. There was no confirmation of who had sent it. No denial either.Lucien set the receiver down with more care than it needed

The sheets were already spread across the table when Kaela and Lucien reached the annex. Sera's team fanned out around them like a jury that hadn't agreed on a verdict."Talk," Lucien said.Mira didn't look up from the loupe. "Paper first. It's not ordinary stock. Cotton-rag, watermarked, restricted grade. Three archives in the territory still stock it. One of them's ours. One's decommissioned. One's Orveen's.""So it's her.""So it's her paper." Mira set the loupe down. "Batch stamp on the torn corner puts this sheet at eleven weeks old. I pulled Orveen's movement log an hour ago. She was in Council custody for testimony the entire week this was cut." She slid the log across. "She didn't hand-deliver this. Someone with her access did, or someone stole from her stock before she was in the building to notice."Kaela read the log twice, the way she'd read Reyna's text twice, filing it before she let herself feel anything about it. "So she's not the hand at the desk.""She's not the hand

The records room smelled like old toner and colder air than the rest of the wing. Odile didn't look up when Kaela came in; she just kept her hand flat on the ledger like she could stop Kaela from reaching it by will alone."I need the sign-out page for that slot," Kaela said. "Not the digital copy. The paper.""It's not here.""It's a bound ledger. Pages don't leave."Odile turned it around. The binding gapped where a page should have been, a clean tear an inch from the spine, too clean for an accident, too careless for someone who meant to hide it."When did you notice?""This morning. I assumed maintenance pulled it for the audit.""Nobody pulled it for the audit,” came Voss's voice, from the doorway. "I run the audit."Odile didn't flinch, which told Kaela less than she wanted it to. "Then I don't know.""Who else has key access to this room?""Four people. It's on the sheet." Odile said it like she was already tired of being the answer to that question.Kaela didn't have time to wa