Chapter 60| The Analyst

Chapter 60: Chapter 60| The Analyst

Damian looked at her.

She looked back at him.

"You know what’s in there," he said. Not a question.

She was quiet for a moment. "I manage the archive," she said. "I know what every file in this system contains at the classification level my credentials allow." She paused. "Which is most of them. The Level Five suppressed designations require a Directorate override I don’t have." She looked at Sable. "Your colleague appears to have something better than a Directorate override."

"She does," he said.

Elena looked at the transfer cable. At the tablet. At the speed Sable’s credentials were moving through the access layers.

"Where did she get Level Five access?" she asked.

"She built it," he said. "Fourteen months inside Nexarion’s research division. She went deep enough in the archive to find things that weren’t supposed to be findable and used what she found to go deeper."

Elena absorbed this. Something shifted in her expression — not surprise, the specific acknowledgment of someone who had suspected something like this was possible and was now watching the confirmation of it in real time.

"I’ve been here two years," she said. "When I took this position I believed the cover story. Biotech research. Defense applications. Legitimate science with an aggressive classification protocol." She looked at her monitor. "It took me four months to start questioning it. Eight months to understand what I was actually managing." She paused. "Fourteen months to accept that understanding it and doing something about it were different problems."

"What stopped you," Damian said.

She looked at him directly. "Not knowing who to tell," she said. "Not knowing if there was anyone to tell. The kind of organization that builds something like this..." She gestured at the archive around them. "Doesn’t leave obvious gaps for people who want to report it." She paused. "So I started documenting it instead. Quietly. A personal encrypted file on hardware that has no connection to any Nexarion system." She reached into her coat pocket and produced a small drive. "Eight months of documentation. Every suppressed designation file I could access at my clearance level. Every protocol I could observe. Every discrepancy between what the official record said and what I could see with my own eyes."

Damian looked at the drive in her hand.

"Why are you telling me this," he said.

She looked at him with the expression that had been building since the door opened. The one that had several things in it at once, none of them simple.

"Because you came in here and went straight for the Level Five files," she said. "Which means you know what’s in them. Which means you’re not in here randomly." She held his gaze. "And because whoever you’re looking for in those files. I’ve probably been looking at their record for two years without knowing who they were."

The room was quiet for a moment.

Sable spoke without looking up. "Aria Laine," she said. "Suppressed designation, Level Five. Facility Four. I have her."

Something moved in Elena’s expression.

"Laine," she said quietly. "Subject designation AL-001." She looked at Damian. "The first suppressed designation ever filed in this archive. Thirty years ago. I’ve read that file more times than any other in the system because it’s the one that everything else was built around." She paused. "The research protocols, the pathway mapping methodology, the grade classification system. it all traces back to AL-001 as the foundational source material." She looked at him with something that was close to recognition. "She’s not just a Subject they’re holding. She’s the architecture. Everything Nexarion knows about Flux pathway mechanics they learned from her."

Damian looked at the terminal where Sable was working.

"What condition is she in," he said.

Elena was quiet for a moment that was slightly longer than her other pauses.

"The file I can access doesn’t show current condition," she said carefully. "Level Five suppressed designations keep medical and status records at a classification above my credentials." She paused. "But I can tell you that AL-001 has been classified as active research protocol continuously for thirty years. Which in Nexarion’s documentation language means the Subject is functional, cooperative to some degree, and producing research value." She held his gaze. "They don’t maintain active protocol classification on assets that aren’t producing. It would create a documentation discrepancy."

"She’s alive," he said. "And functional."

"As of the last classification update six weeks ago," Elena said. "Yes."

He sat with that for a moment. Six weeks old. Not current. But the most current confirmation anyone outside Facility Four had ever had.

Ding!

[Suppressed designation record accessed: Aria Laine — AL-001.]

[Facility Four confirmed. Level Five suppressed. Active research protocol: continuous.]

[Current status: Active. Last updated: 6 weeks prior.]

[Additional data: Downloading.]

Sable made a sound at the terminal. Not words. The specific sound of someone finding something they hadn’t been looking for.

"There’s a second file," she said.

The room was very quiet.

"Second suppressed designation," she added. Her voice had the careful quality it got when she was delivering information she hadn’t had time to fully process. "Filed twenty two years ago. Level Five. Current facility — Facility Nine." She paused. "The relationship field lists the designation as...." She stopped.

"As what," Damian said.

She looked up from the terminal for the first time since they’d come in. Looked at him directly.

"Sibling," she said. "Of Subject 07."

The archive room held its silence.

Kira was looking at him from the door. Elena was looking at him from her workstation. Sable was looking at him from the terminal with the expression she wore when data had just reorganized everything she thought she knew.

He looked at the terminal.

’A sibling,’ he thought. ’Twenty two years. Facility Nine.’

He hadn’t known. Eren hadn’t known or if he had he hadn’t said so, which was its own question. His mother hadn’t mentioned it in the message the system had carried. Either she didn’t know or she’d had a reason not to say.

The floor of the archive room felt slightly less stable than it had thirty seconds ago and the ceiling felt slightly lower and the four minutes Sable had asked for were almost certainly up.

"Sable," Kira said from the door. Her voice had the quiet urgency of someone who had been tracking the time so nobody else had to. "We need to go."

Sable pulled the transfer cable from the terminal. Closed her tablet. Stood up from the workstation in a single motion.

Elena Vasquez was already standing.

She had her personal drive in one hand and her coat pulled on with the other and she was looking at Damian with the expression of someone who had been circling a decision for eight months and had just found the edge of it.

"I’m coming with you," she said.

Damian looked at her. At the drive. At the eight months of documentation in her hand.

He looked at Kira.

Kira looked at Elena for exactly two seconds. The blink-fast assessment of someone reading a variable and deciding how to file it.

"Can you run?" Kira said.

Elena looked at her. "Yes," she said.

"Then keep up," Kira said. She pushed the archive room door open. "Because we’re not slowing down."