Chapter 77: HUMAN FANTASY

The deepest door in K-17 did not lead to another laboratory. Sio realized that after following its connections through three layers of buried locks and finding almost no movement beyond them, unlike every other section of the annex where staff, prisoners and security routes crossed constantly.

Angle stopped beside the sealed entrance while Rhea looked back toward the lift. The rescued prisoners were already moving upward with the stronger beastkin helping those who could barely walk, and stolen access bands had been passed among them so they could keep opening doors on the way out. "We should probably be leaving with them," Angle said, though his attention stayed on the door.

Sio pressed two fingers against its surface and followed the routes hiding inside the surrounding walls. "Probably." Rhea looked from him to the sealed entrance. "You’re opening it anyway." Sio shifted his hand slightly. "That sounded less irresponsible in my head." Angle gave him a flat look. "No, it didn’t."

Gumm leaned from Sio’s shoulder and tapped the door with one small limb. There was no external reader, visible seam or handle, and the only connections Sio could feel descended beneath the floor before dividing through the corridor itself.

He followed one route until it met a pressure mechanism, then another that ended behind the wall opposite them. The system was not simply locking the door; it expected several parts of the corridor to react in a particular sequence before the entrance would release. "If I force one section, the others lock harder," Sio said. "Whoever built this wanted people to know the correct route rather than simply have the correct key."

Angle moved away from the doorway. "That sounds like something designed by people who enjoyed watching others fail." Rhea crouched near the floor and ran one claw along a narrow recess Sio pointed out. "Tell me where."

Sio traced the expected route again rather than forcing his way through it. He opened a small portal beside the first pressure plate and another behind the second so both triggered together, then nodded toward Angle, who pressed his palm against the third mechanism while Rhea caught the fourth with the tip of one claw before it could reset.

Something heavy shifted behind the wall, followed by several locks releasing beneath their feet. The door separated down the middle, and Angle glanced at Sio as the opening widened. "I liked your ability more when it was just holes in walls." Sio stepped through beside him. "I didn’t."

The room beyond was older than the rest of K-17, though somebody had clearly forced modern systems into it over the years. New lighting crossed the ceiling, newer terminals had been mounted against darker walls, and metal ribs beneath those additions curved in the same geometric patterns Sio remembered from Veilhollow.

Rhea approached the nearest console and brushed dust from its edge. "Same system as downstairs?" Angle studied an old emblem partly hidden by newer casing. "No. This predates the current Wayfarer insignia."

Sio recognized the design language even if the symbol itself meant nothing to him. The curves and intersecting lines resembled old Metro maps, and several original interfaces beneath the newer panels still used the same unfamiliar script he had seen inside Veilhollow.

Gumm climbed from his shoulder onto the terminal and began inspecting the controls with both front limbs. Sio caught him before he could press anything. "You did very well upstairs. This one does not need improving." Gumm chirped at him with clear disagreement, but Sio moved him to the edge of the console anyway.

The newer interface requested a clearance level none of their stolen bands possessed, but Sio could feel physical routes continuing behind it. He followed one connection into the old archive hardware, opened a portal the width of his palm and reached through to touch a hidden contact on the other side.

The screen changed so abruptly that Angle leaned closer. Thousands of records filled the display, divided across categories whose dates stretched backward until the calendar format itself became unfamiliar. "How old is this?" Angle asked.

Sio scrolled through several entries, then stopped when the numbers ceased matching anything he recognized. "Old enough that whoever made the earlier records wasn’t counting years the way we do now." Rhea reached past him and selected a category near the top of the archive.

CIVIL POPULATION TRANSITION

Several subfolders opened beneath it.

HUMAN

ELVEN

DWARVEN

BEASTKIN

AERIAL

AQUATIC

OTHER RECOGNIZED PEOPLES

Angle opened an archived census, and a city recording replaced the list. A broad public station appeared beneath curved glass, packed with commuters moving between transport lines while humans walked beside people with long ears, horns, fur, scales and bodies Sio had no modern names for.

A dwarf man stood arguing with a tall human woman near a ticket terminal while two children with feathered arms chased each other around a bench. Farther back, a beastkin woman carried groceries under one arm while talking to a human man who kept shifting a sleeping child higher against his shoulder.

Sio kept watching because nobody in the recording seemed interested in the differences. There were no nervous looks, no guards separating groups and no signs marking one species from another; everyone moved through the station with the impatience of people trying to get somewhere. Rhea’s eyes stayed on the screen until the recording ended and a population report replaced it.

REGISTERED CIVIL POPULATION

HUMAN: 18.7%

ELVEN: 21.2%

DWARVEN: 14.4%

BEASTKIN GROUPS: 17.9%

Other recognized peoples filled the remaining percentage. Angle rested both hands on the edge of the console and read the figures again. "Humans weren’t even the largest group."

Sio remembered what Ur had said about humanity being the youngest people of the old world. "Not then." Rhea opened the next record before either of them could say more, and the dates jumped forward while the numbers changed with them.

Every population had fallen after something the records called the Fall. Evacuation maps showed closed cities, broken transport systems and entire regions marked with emergency migration routes, while several later files carried the same heading.

POST-FALL INSTABILITY

The language grew colder in the records that followed. One surviving directive described non-human communities not as citizens or refugees, but as populations that could interfere with rebuilding.

SURVIVING NON-HUMAN POPULATIONS PRESENT CONTINUITY RISK

Rhea read the phrase twice before looking toward Sio. "Continuity of what?" Sio opened the attached directive, where several pages discussed fractured governments, damaged cities and the speed at which human settlements had begun consolidating power in certain regions.

The answer appeared deeper in the report, followed immediately by another line beneath it.

UNIFIED HUMAN CONTINUITY REQUIRES CONTROL OF PRE-FALL HISTORICAL CLAIMS.

NON-HUMAN SURVIVOR TESTIMONY PRESENTS CONTRADICTORY CIVILIZATIONAL NARRATIVES.

Angle’s fingers slowed against the controls as he reached the recommendation beneath those statements.

REMOVE COMPETING HISTORICAL SOURCES FROM PUBLIC EDUCATION.

Sio opened the revision archive attached to the directive. Old school records appeared beside later versions, and the changes were so simple that at first he thought he had opened the wrong file.

In the earlier curriculum, elves were listed as one of several recognized peoples across western regions. In the revision, the same entry called them folkloric humanoids produced by primitive human storytelling. Dwarven cities became legends about underground kingdoms, winged peoples were moved into religious imagery, horned peoples into demon stories, and vulpine beastkin into trickster myths.

Rhea’s hand lifted toward the screen without touching it. "They turned people into stories."

Angle kept opening revisions, and the same pattern repeated across different kingdoms and centuries. Human wars remained in the textbooks, human rulers kept their names, and human inventions remained credited to humans even when older records showed mixed civilizations behind them.

"They didn’t forget," Angle said, his voice lower now. "Someone kept rewriting it." Sio stared at a revised lesson describing elves as creatures invented by frightened early humans. "Enough generations read the new version, and eventually nobody needed to remember the old one."

A red warning appeared in the corner of the terminal while they were still reading, and Angle straightened as two lines replaced the archive count.

UNAUTHORIZED ARCHIVE ACCESS DETECTED

REMOTE SANITIZATION REQUEST RECEIVED

"I’m guessing sanitization is not cleaning," Angle said. Sio opened the archive controls. "I would be pleasantly surprised if it was."

Files started disappearing from the oldest sections first. Entire folders vanished between refreshes, and the archive count fell quickly enough that Sio abandoned the normal interface and searched for another route through the hardware.

Rhea moved toward the entrance while keeping one eye on the corridor. "Can you stop it?" Sio shook his head. "Probably not from here, but I might be able to move some of it before they finish."

He found an old diagnostic port connected to the archive outside the modern security network. A portal opened against the side of the console while another formed above one of the stolen access bands in Angle’s hand, and Sio forced the data route through the connection.

The band flashed and immediately began heating. Angle dropped it onto the console before it could burn his palm, and Gumm slapped both limbs over the glowing device until Sio pulled him back. "Still not food."

The transfer began even as the deletion continued beside it. Sio skimmed whatever remained before it vanished and found that the historical revisions had only been one part of the program, because a later category opened beneath the heading:

RESIDUAL POPULATION MANAGEMENT

Maps filled the display, showing hidden valleys, underground settlements, isolated islands, mountain communities and forests far from modern cities. Each location carried a status written in language that became more disturbing the longer Sio read.

ASSIMILATED

UNCONFIRMED

REMOVED

EXTINCT

Angle opened one marked REMOVED, revealing casualty estimates and a short report describing the settlement as a successful clearance. Another marked EXTINCT contained a final population count followed by authorization to destroy the remaining community after negotiations failed.

Rhea came back from the corridor and read over Angle’s shoulder. "So the history changes weren’t enough." Sio opened several later records. "No. Some people survived long enough to contradict the new history."

The reports continued across generations, but the organizations responsible did not stay the same. Kingdoms collapsed, agencies disappeared, borders changed and new institutions inherited records from older ones, yet the same categories kept returning under different names.

The methods changed too. Earlier files described soldiers and forced removals, while later ones used population surveys, relocation programs, medical classifications and research authorization. By the modern era, the language had become cleaner, but the purpose underneath it remained recognizable: keep surviving communities small and hidden from the public, preserve useful biological material, and prevent their history from becoming accepted history again.

A modern file opened with the current Wayfarer insignia in its corner. Angle stared at the symbol before scrolling through references to inherited archives, predecessor directives and recovered population records.

"They didn’t start this," he said. Sio opened another document and watched the same terminology continue beneath a newer seal. "No. They inherited it and decided it was useful."

Rhea reached across him and selected a modern folder titled RESIDUAL LINEAGE SURVEY. Dozens of entries appeared, many inactive or crossed out, while a smaller group remained marked in amber beneath a single heading.

CONFIRMED SURVIVING BLOODLINES

Rhea searched through the categories quickly, moving past canid, feline and horned entries until she reached vulpine populations. Several hidden settlements appeared beneath that classification, and one set of coordinates matched the region they had just left.

The status beside it had changed recently, with three new entries listed beneath the location.

POPULATION VERIFIED

COLLECTION AUTHORIZED

FIELD EXECUTOR DEPLOYED

Rhea stopped scrolling. Sio checked the date and found that the authorization had been issued before the attack on her settlement, while another entry beneath it confirmed that the operation had continued after the killing ended.

SURVIVING SUBJECTS TRANSFERRED

PRIORITY LINEAGES RETAINED

Rhea opened the transfer manifest, and rows of identification numbers replaced the settlement record. The people taken from her home had not been kept together, and several of the youngest subjects had been divided between three separate destinations. K-17 was only one of them.

Angle looked toward the corridor as more paths began descending through the annex above. "So rescuing everyone here doesn’t finish this." Rhea copied the other destination codes onto a second access band and checked them twice before closing the manifest. "It was never going to."

Behind them, the old city recording remained frozen on one surviving frame: humans, elves, dwarves and beastkin waiting beneath the same station roof while a child tugged impatiently at an adult’s hand. Sio looked from that image to the modern transfer records in Rhea’s palm. What humans now called fantasy had once been ordinary enough to stand together waiting for a train, and someone had spent generations making sure the world forgot that.

The archive continued disappearing around them while footsteps gathered somewhere beyond the sealed corridor. Whatever had begun after the Fall had changed names many times, but the people who destroyed Rhea’s home were still carrying out a version of the same work.