The proximity alert was a sharp, insistent chirp. It was the sound of a closing door in a house that was already on fire. Ansel had packed the pattern-sniffer in under a minute, his hands moving with the practiced economy of a man who had been running his entire life. They fled the service conduit, leaving the faint smell of burnt ozone and Ansel’s spilled coffee behind them. The file, the 1.2 terabytes of pure, unadulterated bastard they had ripped from the sky, felt like a physical weight in their systems. It was a truth so heavy it had its own gravity.
They spilled out into a derelict subway station, a concrete lung deep in the forgotten anatomy of Berlin. Emergency lights, running on some long-dead civic budget, cast a weak, flickering glow that made the shadows move. The air tasted of damp concrete and rust. A faded, pre-collapse transit map, its destinations now meaningless dust, clung to a curved wall like a peeling scab. This was their next temporary tomb.
— They’re here, — Ksenia’s voice was flat, a simple statement of fact. She pointed at her datapad. A cluster of eight signals was descending through the levels, moving with a disciplined, geometric precision that was not the chaotic signature of a Ministry patrol. This was something else. Something cleaner, and therefore worse.
— How? — Zora hissed, her hand resting on the hilt of her scavenged blade. Her shoulder was a tight knot of pain under her jacket, a fresh receipt from their last negotiation.
— They didn’t follow us, — Sineus said, his eyes scanning the station, the platforms, the dark mouths of the tunnels. — They were waiting. They knew where we would be.
The trap at Site Anubis had taught Voss how they thought. But this wasn’t Voss’s signature. This was the cold, patient logic of the Archive State. Valentin Orlov, the man who wore diplomacy like a well-tailored suit, had come to collect. Sineus had anticipated this. He had hoped he was wrong. Hope was a luxury he could no longer afford.
— The west tunnel, — Ansel grunted, pointing. — It leads to the old flood control system. We can—
The sound of synchronized bootsteps echoed from both ends of the platform. They were boxed in. Eight figures emerged from the gloom, their forms crisp and severe in the emergency lighting. They wore the high-collared, charcoal-grey uniforms of the Archive State Wardens, the diplomatic corps’ private army. They moved like statues given a temporary and unpleasant lease on life. They held no visible weapons, which was the most threatening thing about them.
Valentin Orlov stepped out from behind them. He was immaculate, his silver hair catching the weak light. He smiled, a polite, predatory expression that did not reach his cold, calculating eyes. He looked as out of place in the grimy station as a diamond in a ditch.
— Sineus, — Orlov said, his voice echoing slightly in the cavernous space. He spread his hands in a gesture of magnanimous reason. — This has gone on long enough. The pleasantries are over.
He took a step forward, his expensive shoes crunching on fallen plaster. His wardens did not move. They were perfectly still, perfectly silent. They were not men. They were punctuation marks at the end of a threat.
— Hand over the Codex, — Orlov stated. It was not a request. It was a correction of a clerical error. In his world, the Volkov Codex already belonged to the Archive. Sineus was simply a disobedient filing cabinet.
Sineus felt the familiar, cold burn of defiance in his chest. He looked at Ksenia. She gave a single, almost imperceptible nod. The trap was set. It was a desperate, ugly little thing they had pieced together in the minutes after escaping the data-heist. A plan born of paranoia and Ksenia’s intimate knowledge of her former masters. It was a terrible idea. It was the only idea they had.
— The book isn’t yours, Orlov, — Sineus said, his voice steady. He needed to hold the man’s attention for a few more seconds.
Orlov’s smile tightened. It was the expression of a teacher dealing with a particularly slow student. — Ownership is a matter of record. And the Archive is the only record that matters. You are a footnote in a history you are attempting to vandalize. We are here to restore the text.
Sineus met his gaze. He saw no malice there. Only a profound, unshakable certainty. The absolute conviction of a man who believes he is saving the world by locking it in a fireproof box. It was, in its own way, more terrifying than Voss’s simple greed.
He took a shallow breath. It was time.
— The text is fine, — Sineus said, his voice dropping slightly. He spoke the trigger phrase, a line from a pre-collapse poem Ksenia had found in the Codex. — It’s the footnotes that are killing us.
For a moment, nothing happened. Orlov’s smile remained fixed. The wardens remained still. The only sound was the drip of water from the ceiling.
Then, across the city, in the grand, sterile chamber of The Agora, a ghost in the machine woke up. The Anthem Mic, the bug Zora had planted in the central podium, did something it was never designed to do. It did not record. It did not skim. It broadcast. For less than a second, it sent a targeted burst of chaotic, unstructured data—a memetic virus—aimed at a single, secure frequency. The personal comms channel of Valentin Orlov.
The attack was not physical. It was conceptual. It did not target Orlov’s body. It targeted his name. It was a splinter of pure noise aimed at the heart of his digital identity, the complex web of credentials and clearances that defined him within the Archive State’s monolithic system.
Orlov flinched, a flicker of confusion crossing his face. He raised his wrist, tapping the smooth surface of his datapad. He was likely checking his connection, assuming a simple signal drop. The screen lit up, and he stared at it.
Sineus watched him. He saw the man’s posture change. The condescending certainty drained away, replaced by a stark, cold disbelief. The datapad, which should have shown his high-level diplomatic credentials, his command authority over the wardens, his very existence within the state’s hierarchy, now showed a single, sterile message.
ACCESS DENIED. UNKNOWN USER.
The memetic virus had worked. It had not erased him. It had simply corrupted the data that proved he was him. To the vast, intricate machine of the Archive State, Valentin Orlov, high-ranking agent, had just ceased to exist. He was a ghost. A flicker in the system. A piece of data that no longer resolved.
One of the wardens, sensing the shift, took a half-step forward. Orlov looked up from his screen, his face a mask of dawning horror. He opened his mouth to give a command, but no sound came out. What command could he give? His authority was gone. His voice was no longer in the system.
He looked at Sineus, and for the first time, the mask was gone. Sineus saw not a powerful agent of a rival state, but a terrified man, stripped naked in the digital wilderness. The power in the derelict subway station had just inverted completely. The price for this trick was burning their only backdoor into the Ministry’s systems, a piece of leverage they could never use again. A choice had been made. A cost had been paid.
Orlov lowered his arm slowly. His face, which had been a canvas of smooth confidence, was now a twisted knot of cold, personal fury. He had not been defeated. He had been humiliated. He had been un-written.
He gave his wardens a sharp, almost imperceptible jerk of his head. The statues came to life. They did not attack. They simply turned, their movements synchronized and silent, and began to withdraw, melting back into the shadows from which they had come. They were following the last valid order from a man who, for the moment, no longer existed.
Orlov was the last to leave. He paused at the edge of the light, his face half in shadow. The reflection of the flickering emergency light shimmered in a puddle of grimy water at his feet, a wavering, uncertain thing.
— This changes nothing, — he said, his voice a low, venomous hiss. It was no longer the voice of a diplomat. It was the voice of a man who had just been handed a blood debt.
Then he was gone.
The team was alone again in the dripping silence of the station. The echo of Orlov’s promise hung in the cold air. They had won. They had pushed back one of the closing walls. But in doing so, they had painted a target on their backs, a target visible to a man who now had a very personal reason to see them erased.
The low hum of the emergency lights seemed louder now. A loose piece of metal somewhere in the tunnels rattled in a sudden draft.
