Chapter 79: EARTH COMPATIBILITY

The rescued beastkin could not stay anywhere near K-17. Security vehicles were already spreading through the jungle behind them, and Sio could feel search routes widening away from the annex as the Organization stopped trying to secure the building and started trying to recover everyone who had escaped it.

Rhea guided the survivors through dense growth while Angle stayed near the rear, checking each break in the trees whenever an engine drifted closer. Sio kept one eye on the routes moving through his Scar and the other on Sterling’s communicator, waiting until two search teams spread far enough apart to leave a narrow path between them.

"There." Sio pointed through the undergrowth. "South-west until the stream, then we cut west behind the ridge. If nobody changes direction, we stay between both teams."

Rhea adjusted their route without slowing. Angle glanced toward the communicator in Sio’s hand. "You planning to call him?"

"I’m deciding whether calling the richest person I know every time we cause a disaster establishes a bad habit." Gumm leaned from Sio’s shoulder and tapped the communicator with one small limb. "I already have several."

"You had those before Sterling," Angle said, and Sio gave him a wounded look. "That sounded unnecessarily personal." The slight movement at Angle’s mouth vanished when he turned back toward the trees.

Sio activated the communicator while they kept moving. Sterling appeared above it almost immediately, hair untidy and several transparent screens suspended behind him. "Please tell me you’re calling because you found somewhere comfortable to sleep."

Sio looked toward the exhausted captives following Rhea. Several needed help walking, while two survivors carried an older beastkin between them. "Depends how flexible your definition of comfortable is."

Sterling’s expression changed as soon as he noticed them. "How many?"

"More than twenty from K-17, plus the survivors from Rhea’s settlement. We also stole part of a classified historical archive, transfer routes and evidence that the Organization has been experimenting on beastkin and humans."

Sterling stared at him before looking toward Angle. "I gave him that communicator yesterday." Angle stepped closer to the projection. "Can you get these people out without using Organization transport?"

The humor disappeared from Sterling’s face. His fingers began moving across something outside the projection. "Send me your approximate region, not the settlement coordinates. I’ll route civilian medical aircraft through separate operators so nobody gets the whole picture."

Rhea looked over her shoulder. "How long?"

"Fast enough that several scheduling departments are going to hate me by sunrise." Sterling checked the incoming location. "There’s an abandoned agricultural landing site roughly six kilometres west of you, near an old irrigation basin. I can put enough transport there without attaching your names to the request."

Sio checked the moving patrol routes. "We can reach it if they keep spreading instead of doubling back."

"Then please reach it without discovering another classified facility."

"No promises."

Sterling closed his eyes briefly. "I walked into that."

They continued toward the basin while Sio kept the communicator active. When one search route drifted too close, he redirected the survivors through a shallow stream and later around a ridge that broke the nearest patrol’s line of sight. By the time the jungle opened around the abandoned agricultural site, darkness had settled across the canopy.

Old solar collectors leaned around a cracked landing surface, most swallowed by vines, while an equipment shelter gave the survivors somewhere dry to sit. Rhea settled near its edge beside the vulpine child and the older woman from K-17. The child fell asleep against her side, but Rhea’s attention kept returning to the soil beneath her bare feet.

Sio noticed her pressing her toes lightly into the dirt. "Anything?"

"Dirt."

"That sounds promising."

She looked at him. "You asked if I could feel anything."

"And technically dirt qualifies."

"You’re becoming less helpful."

Sio crouched nearby while Gumm climbed down to investigate a broken irrigation pipe. "Earlier you could feel everyone through the floor. Try something smaller. Don’t reach for the whole area. Just see if you can tell where I’m standing without looking."

Rhea studied him before closing her eyes and placing one palm against the ground. Nothing changed, even when she shifted her weight, slowed her breathing and tried again. The muscles around her shoulders tightened gradually, but the earth remained still and her expression only grew more irritated.

After several attempts she pulled her hand away. "Nothing."

"Good," Sio said, which made her ears angle toward him.

"You keep using that word strangely."

"You nearly cracked a building because you were angry enough to stop noticing where you ended and everything under you started." Sio rested his arms across his knees. "If you could repeat that immediately while calm, I’d be more worried."

Rhea looked back at the soil. "So I learned nothing."

"You learned anger isn’t a button."

"That is less comforting than you think."

Sio lifted one shoulder. "Most of my comfort is accidental." Angle was checking the perimeter several metres away, but he turned enough to make it obvious he had heard them. "That explains a lot." Rhea’s mouth twitched before she looked down at the sleeping child again.

The communicator lit after the group had rested for a while. Sterling returned surrounded by copied K-17 records, several damaged badly enough that entire sections were missing.

"I found something useful in the Nine-Tail research," he said. "Not another explanation of what they’re trying to create. This explains why they keep failing."

Rhea carefully shifted the sleeping child toward the older woman before joining Sio and Angle. Sterling expanded a compatibility chart containing decades of trials. Human sequences had been layered with vulpine traits thousands of times, and nearly every attempt ended in rejection, instability or death.

Angle folded his arms. "We already saw the failures." Sterling enlarged an older section of the data. "Look at the older notes."

EARTHFARER COMPATIBILITY DOES NOT CORRELATE DIRECTLY WITH GENETIC PURITY.

A second line appeared beneath it.

BIOLOGICAL EXPRESSION IS NECESSARY BUT INSUFFICIENT.

Rhea leaned closer. "Then why keep taking bloodlines?"

"Because whoever continued the project understands that the body matters," Sterling said. "They just don’t understand why the body isn’t enough."

Sio scrolled through older subjects. Some had developed tails, reinforced bones, altered senses or vulpine features close enough to resemble natural beastkin, yet every physically successful transformation ended with the same classification.

UNWORTHY

Angle frowned. "That sounds more like judgment than medicine."

Sterling opened one of the oldest surviving notes. Most of the file had been damaged, but one sentence remained intact.

COMPATIBILITY REQUIRES RECOGNITION BETWEEN INHERITOR AND DOMAIN.

Sio read it again and glanced toward Rhea’s feet. She caught him immediately. "Don’t."

"I didn’t say anything," Sio replied, but her ears shifted toward him.

"You were about to."

"I was going to say it fits K-17." Sio tapped the record instead. "They can build something that resembles the inheritance, but resemblance doesn’t make the Earth respond."

Rhea’s gaze drifted back toward the dark soil outside the shelter. "It responded to me once." Sio looked toward the same patch of earth. "And not when you asked it to."

Angle looked between them. "Which means the Organization has spent decades manufacturing the part they understand while missing whatever actually makes an Earthfarer."

Sterling brought up a newer document layered over the older research.

NATURAL VULPINE INHERITANCE REMAINS PRIMARY CANDIDATE POOL.

SURVIVING BLOODLINES MUST BE RETAINED UNTIL AUTHENTIC EARTHFARER RECOGNITION IS REPRODUCIBLE.

Across later records, RETAINED gradually became COLLECTED, natural candidates became specimens, and the procedures grew more invasive even though the results barely improved.

Rhea watched the terminology change. "They kept hurting people because admitting they were wrong would mean admitting the entire project was built on something they didn’t understand."

Sterling leaned back slightly within the projection. "And because projects this old gather money, authority and people whose careers depend on proving the work was worth continuing."

Angle’s expression hardened. "So they changed the subjects instead of questioning the premise."

Sio thought about the archive under K-17. Humans had rewritten whole civilizations until the records matched the world they wanted remembered. The habit seemed to have survived.

Engine noise drifted across the basin, and Rhea rose before Sterling checked something outside the projection. "Those should be mine."

Three civilian medical aircraft descended beyond the ruined solar collectors, large enough to split the survivors without crowding them together. None carried Sterling’s name or any insignia linked to his companies. Personnel in plain uniforms came down the ramps with stretchers, sealed cases and portable scanners.

"They know they’re evacuating victims from an illegal research site," Sterling said quietly. "They don’t know who attacked it, where Rhea’s settlement is or why several governments may become interested later."

Rhea watched the teams begin helping the survivors. "Where are you taking them?"

"Three clinics under different ownership structures. Nobody gets the entire group, and none of the files identify anyone as beastkin unless the patient chooses to disclose it."

The older woman carried the sleeping vulpine child toward one aircraft, but the child woke near the ramp and pulled away long enough to return to Rhea.

"My brother," they said, holding two of her fingers. "You’re still going?"

Rhea crouched until their eyes were level. "Yes."

The child searched her face. "His name is Tavi."

Rhea repeated it quietly. "Tavi. I’ll remember."

She remained there until the child returned to the older woman, then joined Sio as he opened the second transfer destination. The route extended north-east beyond the jungle toward a region identified only by an administrative code, and Sterling had already opened the facility record.

LINEAGE DEVELOPMENT FACILITY R-4

Angle read the designation. "Not another collection annex."

"No. K-17 gathered and sorted people. R-4 keeps the subjects they consider valuable enough for long-term research."

Sterling expanded the facility index.

PRIMARY PROGRAMS: INHERITANCE COMPATIBILITY / LEGACY RECONSTRUCTION / WAYFARER ASCENSION RESEARCH

Something inside Sio tightened before he understood why. Silas had been quiet throughout most of the escape, watching without interfering, but the terminology on the projection pulled a reaction from him so suddenly that Sio felt it across his chest.

A white corridor surfaced inside his head with glass doors lining both sides and projected records spread across a table. Arch stood over them, much younger than the man Sio remembered, while something beyond the edge of the memory refused to come into focus. Sio tried to hold the image, but the corridor broke apart before he could catch anything more.

Angle noticed the change in his face. "What happened?" Sio kept looking at the R-4 classification while the fragments slipped away inside him. "Nothing. Just give me a second."

Silas’s voice came quietly from somewhere behind his thoughts. I’ve seen that wording before.

Sio kept his attention on the projection so Rhea and Angle would not notice where his focus had gone. Where?

He felt Silas searching. Pieces shifted without joining together, bringing back part of the white corridor and the impression of Arch standing beside him before both dissolved again. When Silas finally answered, the uncertainty in his voice bothered Sio more than recognition would have.

I don’t remember.