POV: Audrina Cromwell
Location: Sector 13 – IA Sub-Bureau 2F, Ledger Vault
Time: 22:32 Local
- - -
The hum of Sub-Bureau 2F always sounded like guilt on low volume.
Old systems rarely broke. They just made sure no one noticed when they stopped working. The lights flickered more in here, under the recursive dampeners and active audit suppressors. Deliberate flickers. Like even the walls didn't want to be complicit.
Audrina Cromwell sat in front of a terminal that didn't belong to her. Officially. She'd bypassed her own login using an override string borrowed from a defunct enforcement archive six levels down.
This wasn't protocol.
But nothing about what she'd seen in the tunnel was.
Her locket hadn't stopped vibrating since F-33. Not hard. Not violently. Just… insistently. Not loud. Just enough to remind her the silence wasn't natural. A whisper felt through bone. Every time it ticked, something deep in her stomach coiled tighter, like it knew something she didn't have the language for yet.
She keyed in the glyph data from the wall — spiral folds, heat-cracked plating, flame-burn not logged by utilities. The conduit file redirected her straight into the blacklisted zone.
That shouldn't happen. Unless someone wanted it to.
[ACCESS THREAD: PROVISIONAL – CROWELL_A]
[ALERT: OVERRIDE DETECTED — MIRAGE TRACE SUPPRESSED][CONTINUE?] → YES
The screen flickered once, then dropped her into ghost files.
Stacked wrong. Labeled wrong. Scrubbed to the edge of deletion but not gone.
She saw the first one.
[DELIVERY LOG FLAGGED – USER: H_TAKEDA]
[ANCHOR TRACE: UNSTABLE][TRANSFER REQUEST: NULL // SECTOR 6-C // UNRESOLVED][CLASS: UNREGISTERED CIVILIAN — COURIER]
[STATUS: SYSTEM ARCHIVE REDIRECTED]
A courier. No history. No ID photo. Just a redacted timestamp and one note:
"Subject flagged for unsanctioned off-grid clearance."
Audrina frowned.
She didn't know the name. But it wasn't the only thing that stood out.
She opened a second file.
No subject listed. Just a location.
[SECTOR 9-SOUTH] — UNSOLICITED SCAN LOG // REJECTED]
[SUBJECT: YULA – AGE 9][NOTE: UNREACHABLE // NO TRACEABLE ANCHOR // CASE CLOSED]
A child.
The file was stamped CLOSED — even though it had never been marked OPEN.
Another file blinked.
Then another.
Three children. All flagged with low-level signal bleed and "unscheduled thread drift."
Audrina leaned back in her chair. Quiet. Cold.
The terminal lit up again.
[SURGE RELAY – F-33]
[ECHO RESPONSE: MEMETIC SIGNATURE – "ASH-WARDEN WATCHES"]
[CIVIC TUNNEL PERMISSION — RETROACTIVELY REVOKED]
She whispered under her breath: "It's not just echoes anymore."
The air behind her stirred.
"Pulling ghost threads again, Cromwell?"
She didn't turn. "You need something, Ronen?"
Ronen Vale stepped into the room like he already regretted it. He looked more tired than yesterday, and yesterday he looked like someone who'd survived a building collapse just to file the report.
He looked like he hadn't slept in weeks. His coat was heavy, filled with old tools and older regrets. His gray eyes missed nothing. He moved like a man who used to fight wars but didn't talk about them. When he spoke, it was always quiet—but it stuck.
"You're in a restricted query channel," he said.
"Someone's scrubbing courier records. Children are disappearing. And no one's pulling the audit flag."
Vale exhaled slowly.
"You're digging in sideways, Crowell. That's how people fall into broken recursion patterns. And that's how officers disappear without leaving misconduct reports."
Audrina locked eyes with him. "Three flagged vanishings in five days, and the system marks them 'resolved' before a patrol log even gets filed."
Vale rubbed the scar along his jaw. "And now a courier, too?"
She didn't answer. Just showed him the screen.
He blinked once.
Then said nothing.
Later, in her apartment, Audrina wrote by candlelight.
•Analog. Untraceable. Quiet.
•Courier flagged. Sector 6.
•Child cases closed before acknowledged.
•Glyph reappeared. Flame-etched.
•Echo returned: "Ash-Warden Watches."
•Shadow appeared armed.
•System is suppressing memory, not reviewing it.
She paused. Then underlined one word three times:
"Watches."
Then she burned the page.
As it turned to ash, the locket ticked once.
And on the far wall, her shadow blinked — just once — with eyes that hadn't been hers when she woke up.