Chapter 82: TRAITORS

The archive warning remained on the screen after Sio closed the sealed file, as if the old system had decided one word was enough to explain the rest of his father’s life. Angle kept his eyes on TREASON PROTOCOL while the modern network continued probing the archive from somewhere beyond the dark glass, but Rhea had already turned toward the corridor with one hand around the band holding Tavi’s room assignment.

"We have the location," she said. "Whatever happened to them can wait until Tavi is out." Sio agreed, though Silas did not move away from the memory pressing behind his thoughts. The word had disturbed something deeper than the Architect records had, not a complete scene, only the sense of a decision made under pressure and the certainty that Arch had been standing beside him when it happened.

You remember being called a traitor? Sio asked. Silas took longer than usual to answer. I remember not being surprised.

That was not enough to justify staying in a room the modern system was actively searching for. Sio copied the final status page and followed Rhea out, and the dark glass began closing behind them while Silas’s young portrait disappeared beneath the treason seal.

They moved through the eastern administrative corridor without running. R-4 still looked more like a private hospital than a prison, and drawing attention before they reached the lower level would only make the rescue harder. Workers crossed distant junctions carrying tablets and sealed sample cases while soft lights marked patient routes along the floor.

Angle walked beside Sio and kept his voice down. "Can he remember what they did?" Sio answered, "Bits," which earned a doubtful glance. When Angle muttered that the timing seemed convenient, Silas answered from inside Sio with immediate irritation.

Tell Arch’s son that if I had control over which parts of my dead brain survived, I would have chosen something more useful. Sio glanced at Angle. "He says being dead damaged his filing system." Angle gave him a flat look. "That sounded more like you."

The map from the archive placed Lower East beneath the public treatment levels, but the nearest stairwell rejected Rhea’s stolen transfer code. Sio was considering a portal when Silas reacted to a small service terminal built into the wall and told him to open personnel routing.

Why? Sio asked, and the answer came with more certainty than the memory itself. Treason investigations suspend normal access before they erase it. There used to be a summary attached to every suspended clearance.

Sio touched the terminal, entered the old archive identifier still cached on the band, and searched the personnel-routing history rather than the sealed case itself. Two records appeared together.

SILAS FLORAN: CLEARANCE SUSPENDED

ARCH: CLEARANCE SUSPENDED

Beneath both names sat a short administrative abstract that had survived because it was tied to access revocation rather than the treason archive. Sio opened it while Rhea watched the corridor and Angle leaned close enough to read.

CAUSE FOR SUSPENSION:

UNAUTHORIZED RETENTION OF RESTRICTED SOURCE MATERIAL

OBSTRUCTION OF CONTINUITY REVISION ORDERS

DISSEMINATION OF CLASSIFIED PRE-FALL RECORDS

REFUSAL OF ARCHITECT COMPLIANCE DIRECTIVE ℯℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

Angle’s attention fixed on the third line. "Dissemination to who?" The answer had been redacted, but an attached incident summary remained partially intact, and Sio scrolled until the first readable paragraph appeared.

SUBJECTS SILAS FLORAN AND ARCH CONTESTED APPROVED CONTINUITY REVISIONS FOLLOWING SOURCE VERIFICATION. BOTH SUBJECTS ASSERTED THAT CIVILIZATION RECORDS HAD BEEN MATERIALLY ALTERED AND THAT SURVIVING POPULATIONS WERE BEING OMITTED FROM PUBLIC HISTORY.

Rhea turned from the corridor to read the screen again. Everything they had found at K-17, in the old Metro, through the census records and inside the erased species lists suddenly connected to two young Architects who had worked from within the Organization and reached the same conclusion years earlier.

A fragment broke loose from Silas. He and Arch stood in a white review chamber, both younger than the men Sio had known, with an old population map spread across the table between them. Colored districts marked settlements across several regions, while the approved revision beside it showed stretches of the same land as empty.

Arch leaned over the comparison with his jaw tight. "They aren’t simplifying it. They removed the settlements." A woman outside the edge of Silas’s memory answered that continuity policy existed to prevent instability, and Silas asked what kind of stability required changing living people into myths.

The memory tore apart before anyone answered. Sio found himself gripping the edge of the terminal harder than he meant to, and his next thought came out sharper than intended. You knew. Silas did not sound proud when he answered. Apparently.

Angle noticed Sio’s expression and asked what Silas had seen. Sio told them while another portion of the incident report unlocked beneath the first.

ARCHITECT REVIEW REQUEST DENIED. SOURCE MATERIAL ORDERED FOR SANITIZATION. SUBJECTS REFUSED COMPLIANCE AND REMOVED DUPLICATE RECORDS FROM CONTROLLED STORAGE.

Rhea stared at SANITIZATION. "They tried to destroy the originals." Sio looked at the lines above it. "Or enough of them that nobody outside the system could prove the revisions were false."

The next section had been damaged, but the final administrative status remained readable. Sio opened it anyway, and four surviving lines appeared beneath the corrupted block.

RECOVERY OF MATERIAL: FAILED

SUBJECT DETENTION: FAILED

STATUS ESCALATED TO TREASON

EXTERNAL ASSISTANCE: SUSPECTED / UNCONFIRMED

Angle read the result twice. His father had not been declared a traitor for losing a mission or attacking a superior. He and Silas had removed evidence the Organization wanted erased, refused detention and disappeared before the records could be recovered.

Sio searched for a destination, a contact or anything explaining where they went afterward, but the routing summary ended at the treason designation. Whatever happened after their escape had been stripped from this layer of the system. The line about external assistance remained, but every attached identity field had been cut away.

A soft tone sounded from the stairwell door and ACCESS REVIEW IN PROGRESS appeared above the lock. Rhea stepped away from the terminal. "We got our answer. Move." Sio closed the record without arguing, and they continued toward a narrow treatment passage above Lower East while R-4 quietly tightened around the archive breach.

Two security workers stood near the main lift, speaking into their communicators. Sio started searching for another route, but Rhea was already crouching beside the wall with her palm flat against the floor.

At first nothing changed. Sio remembered her attempt after K-17, when she had tried to reproduce the connection calmly and found only ordinary stone beneath her hand. Here her fingers pressed harder, then relaxed as she focused on the movement passing through the structure rather than forcing the ground to answer.

Her ears shifted slightly. "Three under us," she whispered. "One moving toward the lift. Two farther east."

Angle looked at her. "You can feel them?" Rhea opened her eyes, and there was no red in them or black scratching across her skin. "Barely. It keeps slipping."

The failure had not disappeared, but this time she had reached the sensation deliberately. Sio looked toward the guarded lift, then at the service wall beside them. "Barely is enough. We don’t use the lift."

A storage room shared a wall with the lower service shaft. Sio opened a portal no wider than his shoulders through the maintenance gap, sent Gumm through first, then widened the path when Gumm chirped from the other side. They emerged one level below the guards into a corridor with softer walls, warmer lighting and painted shapes near the doors, as if someone had spent considerable effort making a controlled research wing look safe for children.

Rhea’s expression hardened while they followed the room numbers. Twelve and thirteen passed on their left, and she stopped at fourteen with one hand already reaching for the handle.

The lock required an internal identity check. Sio ignored the scanner and opened a small portal around the bolt mechanism instead, letting Angle turn the release from the opposite side. The door opened into a room containing two beds, a low table and a window that showed only reinforced glass behind a projected landscape.

A boy with a bandage around one arm sat on the far bed. He stared at Rhea as if his mind rejected what his eyes were showing him, then slid down so quickly his bare feet tangled in the blanket. Rhea crossed the room and caught him before he hit the floor.

"Tavi," she said, and his hands closed around the back of her coat. He buried his face beneath her chin while Rhea moved her fingers over his hair and ears, checking him with the same care she had used on the survivors back at the village. Sio shifted his attention toward the hall while Angle watched the corridor, giving them what little privacy the room allowed.

When Tavi finally pulled back, relief had barely settled on his face before fear returned. "You have to get the others." Rhea kept both hands on his shoulders and asked who he meant.

"The ones from home. And people from other places." He pointed toward the wall beyond his room. "They moved the strongest ones downstairs after the tests changed."

Sio exchanged a look with Angle while Rhea asked what kind of tests they had started doing. Tavi swallowed and touched the bandage around his arm.

"They stopped asking what kind of beastkin we were," he said. His eyes dropped toward the floor beneath them. "They started asking which of us the earth would answer."

Silas went quiet inside Sio, and Rhea’s hands slowly left Tavi’s shoulders as she looked toward the floor. They had come to R-4 looking for the people the Organization had stolen, but the lower levels were screening those captives for the same recognition Rhea had already shown without understanding it. Somewhere beneath them, the facility was trying to force an Earthfarer response out of people who might never survive the attempt.