Chapter 78: LOST BLOODLINES

The archive door had barely sealed behind them when the routes above K-17 began changing. Sio felt it through his Scar before any footsteps reached the lower corridor. The scattered security paths they had slipped around earlier were gone, replaced by three groups descending from separate levels toward the prisoner evacuation floor.

Angle caught the shift in his expression as they started back through the experimental level. "How organized are they now?"

"Enough that I’m starting to miss the confused ones." Sio adjusted Gumm against his shoulder and followed Rhea toward the service corridor. "Three teams are descending together. Something else is waiting instead of coming to us."

Rhea carried the access band containing the transfer destinations between two claws because its casing had grown warm during the archive copy. "Can they erase this remotely too?"

"Probably, which is why I’d like it off their network before they remember they own it." Sio glanced toward the second band Angle carried beneath his coat, still blinking faintly with whatever fraction of the historical archive had survived. "Sterling is either going to love these or complain about our storage methods for an hour."

Angle tucked it deeper into his coat. "Both, definitely."

They passed the altered-human laboratories again, where most terminals had gone dark during the sanitization attempt. One beside the disabled lift remained active long enough for new text to catch Rhea’s attention.

RESIDUAL LINEAGE BREACH CONFIRMED

ARCHIVE EXPOSURE: SEVERE

SPECIMEN RECOVERY PRIORITY UPDATED

A list of subject numbers followed, including the vulpine child they had freed upstairs and several others from the containment floor.

VULPINE SURVIVORS: RETAIN IF VIABLE

Rhea’s claws pressed against the terminal casing. "They’re still calling them specimens." Angle read the update over her shoulder before looking toward the gathering routes above them. "Then we get them outside before whoever wrote that gets another chance to decide what ’viable’ means."

The main lift had been locked between floors, including the emergency controls Gumm opened earlier. Sio searched the annex until he found a maintenance staircase circling the lift shaft, though two security teams already occupied the route.

Angle flexed his left wrist before they entered and stopped himself before locking the joint straight. Sio noticed the correction, and Angle immediately narrowed his eyes at him. "Don’t."

Sio opened the stairwell door. "I didn’t say anything. I was thinking about how emotionally mature you’ve become." Angle followed him through with a flat look. "That’s worse." Rhea moved ahead of both of them, though the corner of her mouth shifted before she turned toward the stairs.

Rifle fire tore through the upper door before they cleared the first landing. Sio opened a portal across the stairwell and swallowed the initial burst, dropping the rounds into an abandoned laboratory below while Angle pushed forward before the shooters could reposition.

Instead of throwing heat directly at them, Angle drove it through the railing beneath their hands. Both officers released the glowing metal, giving Rhea enough room to reach the landing. She caught one by his harness and drove him sideways into another before a third planted both boots against the floor.

Tiles folded upward beneath Rhea, forming a slab that pushed her away from the security line. Sio saw the route moving through the material and opened a portal along its edge, sending the rising slab toward its own user. The officer cancelled his Scar before the floor struck him, and Angle used the opening to warp two rifle housings with a concentrated flash of heat.

The fight ended quickly, but the routes above bothered Sio more once the landing fell quiet. Angle pulled an access band from one unconscious officer and followed his gaze toward the ceiling. "Where did the larger teams stop?"

"Same floor as the prisoners." Rhea was already heading for the next staircase, forcing the others to move before she gained too much distance.

They entered the containment level and found both ends of the corridor sealed. Freed beastkin had overturned medical carts and equipment into a rough barricade while stronger captives kept those who could barely stand behind them. Security held the opposite side without advancing. ℴ

A man in a pale Wayfarer coat stood between both groups. He wore no armour and carried nothing except a small black controller, while his attention moved across the prisoners with the detached focus of someone checking damaged inventory.

The vulpine child stood beside the older woman who had carried them during the evacuation. The man touched the controller, and light flashed around the woman’s collar before her legs folded beneath her. The child dropped beside her and grabbed at her shoulders while Rhea stopped at the mouth of the corridor.

The man finally looked toward them. "Return the access bands and move away from retained subjects. Your identities have already been transmitted beyond this facility."

Rhea watched the woman struggle for air while the child shook her shoulders. The officer barely glanced at either of them as he checked the controller again. "Continued resistance will increase losses among viable material."

Something changed beneath Sio’s boots.

A faint vibration passed through the floor and returned through the support frames instead of coming from any Scar user he could see. Rhea raised her head, and red had settled deep inside her eyes.

Rough black markings appeared along her forearms, each like a scratched stroke layered over another shade of black. They formed near her wrists, broke apart and returned higher along her arms as Gumm pressed closer against Sio’s shoulder and released a low sound.

Angle lowered his voice. "Rhea, the collars first."

She did not answer, but Sio saw her path before she moved. Normally his Scar showed trajectories and connections around a person. This time Rhea’s route spread outward through the floor as well, touching walls, support beams and every pair of feet standing against the ground.

She shifted before the first rifle completed its turn. The burst passed behind her, and she moved away from a second muzzle without looking directly toward it. Sio redirected the next shots through a portal while Angle pushed guards away from the prisoners with controlled heat.

Rhea crossed toward the officer holding the controller. He pressed it again, but Sio had already noticed faint connections stretching from the device toward the prisoners’ collars.

Sio opened one portal beside the man’s hand and another over his own palm. He caught the controller, but the officer tightened his grip before Sio could pull it through. Rhea reached them in the same motion and struck the man in the chest, sending him across the corridor while the controller tore free into Sio’s hand.

"Twelve restraints are connected," Sio said as he traced the routes beneath the casing. Angle forced another officer away from the barricade without widening his heat. "Then get them open."

The controller rejected the stolen access code. Sio turned it over and followed the internal connections until he found the authorization route feeding into the restraint network. One of the security bands they had taken carried a matching connection, so he pressed it against the controller and forced the two routes together through his Scar.

The display flickered, rejected him once more, then opened the restraint controls. "There you are." Sio disabled every linked restraint, and across the barricade collars released while the older woman dragged in a ragged breath and rolled onto her side.

Rhea did not relax with them. The black strokes had climbed toward her shoulders while her red eyes tracked every movement around the corridor. A guard stepped from a side room behind her, and Rhea pivoted before he could bring his weapon up.

Her foot struck the floor as she moved.

The tile beneath his leading boot kicked upward several centimetres, ruining his balance. Rhea hesitated at what the floor had done, but instinct carried her through the opening and she drove him into the wall.

Angle stared at the displaced tile. "That wasn’t his Scar." Sio kept his attention on the connections spreading beneath Rhea. "No. That was her."

A stronger vibration rolled through K-17, and Rhea flinched with it. One hand went to the side of her head while the dark marks thickened along her forearm and cracks spread around her boots.

Sio approached without stepping directly in front of her. "Rhea, the collars are off. They’re free."

She turned toward him, and he found something more complicated than anger. Her eyes moved past him toward the child, then toward the laboratories beyond the corridor as though the graves, blood samples, altered bodies and the archive labels REMOVED and EXTINCT had all followed her here.

"Look at them," Sio said.

The child had managed to help the older woman sit upright. Rhea focused there, and her breathing slowly steadied. The markings began breaking apart instead of climbing higher, the red drained from her eyes, and the vibration beneath Sio’s feet weakened.

She looked down at the cracked tiles. "I moved that."

Angle approached from the side while keeping one gauntlet aimed toward the surviving officers. "And you knew that guy was behind you without seeing him."

Rhea pressed her palm against the wall, but whatever sensation she had felt did not return. "I could feel everyone touching the floor. Feet, pipes, movement through the walls. Then there was too much of it."

Sio glanced toward the nine-marked token hanging between her fingers. "Don’t force it again until we understand what happened." Rhea gave him a tired look. "I wasn’t planning to shake another building today."

"Good. I’m running low on buildings I trust."

The remaining security officers withdrew once the prisoners began moving again, and nobody chased them. Sio reopened an evacuation route through an adjacent treatment room while Rhea and Angle helped the weakest captives through first.

By the time they reached the upper maintenance level, alarms had spread through the annex. Vehicles were starting outside, staff paths scattered through service exits, and the remaining security teams had shifted toward protecting whatever evidence they could still remove.

The vulpine child stayed close to Rhea as they crossed the final service passage. "What happened to the others from the village?" Rhea asked.

"They picked people they called strong blood. Me, my brother, some others. They said the rest weren’t worth moving far."

Rhea kept her voice controlled. "Your brother isn’t here?" The child shook their head. "They took him somewhere else."

Sio checked the destination codes recovered from the archive. Three facilities had received prisoners from the settlement, and K-17 had only held one group. Rhea followed his gaze and tightened her grip around the child’s hand without asking him to explain what both of them already understood.

They emerged through the maintenance panel into wet evening air with the last captives behind them. From outside, K-17 still looked almost peaceful beneath the canopy, its pale walls and solar glass hiding everything beneath them.

Angle adjusted his gauntlet while watching the annex. "We can’t hit the next place the same way. They’ll know somebody has their transfer routes now."

Sio checked the archive band. A crack had spread through the casing, but weak light still blinked inside. "Good thing we stole more than directions."

Several metres away, the vulpine child held two of Rhea’s fingers while she studied the nine-marked token in her other hand. No black strokes remained across her skin, but Sio had seen the floor answer her before she understood what she was doing.

Rhea looked toward the second destination code glowing faintly on Sio’s band. "Where did they take the next group?"

Sio brought up the route while Angle moved beside him. Whatever waited at the next facility would know K-17 had been breached, but they were no longer following a trail the Organization had accidentally left behind.

They had stolen the map.