They found the first fresh cut fifty steps below the registry room.
Lira stopped so abruptly that Drax nearly ran into her shield-side shoulder.
"What?" Ren asked.
She pointed to the left wall.
At first glance it looked like the rest of the lower route—patched stone, old shell braces, dead script bands, dust settled into seams no one had touched in years. Then the wrongness emerged. One brace housing sat a fraction too shallow. The seal compound around it had been pressed in by hand instead of heat-set. Fine scratches marked the edge where tools had slipped recently.
"That was opened," Lira said.
Vera crouched and studied the scoring. "Not by scavengers."
Corven, from the back, said, "That's an assumption."
"No," Nyx said. "It's generosity."
Everyone looked at him.
Nyx crouched beside the wall, eyes moving over the housing. "The careful operator released the outer brace cleanly. The second one forced the lower catch. See the split here?" He pointed to a snapped inner lip barely visible beneath the seam. "That only happens when someone gets impatient."
Ren's gaze sharpened. "You read that awfully fast."
Nyx stood. "Would you prefer I pretend not to?"
Seris cut in before the tension could spread. "Drax."
He moved without another word. Shield-frame shifted, boots planted, hands under the edge. The reset brace tore free with a brittle crack of old seal and a rasp of metal.
Behind it was not a support channel.
It was a service void.
Narrow, deep, and full of stripped relay lines.
At the center sat the empty cradle of a missing archive cylinder.
Silence followed.
Because the shape of an absence could say more than a full room.
Vera exhaled slowly. "Someone extracted a core."
"Not just a core," Lira said. She leaned in and brushed dust from the inner plate. "A specific one."
Vera's face changed.
Seris saw it. "Say it."
The quartermaster hesitated just long enough to be noticed by everyone. "Escort registry extension."
Ren frowned. "Meaning?"
"Meaning this housing held linked custody records," Vera said. "Transfer trails. Escort notations. Lower-route movement logs."
Children, Kael thought immediately.
Or anyone the system had decided should move without a name.
Corven folded his arms. "Then this proves current interference."
Lira straightened. "You say that like it's exciting."
"It narrows the field."
"It confirms the field," Nyx said.
Kael stepped closer to the open wall.
He should have kept his hands to himself. He knew that now. The route had already answered him too often today, and each answer had left something behind.
But the empty cradle held residue. Direction. Pressure still clinging to the metal.
He placed two gloved fingers against the inner edge.
At once the pattern came alive.
Three people.
Maybe four.
One had known exactly where to press and in what order. Clean. Efficient. Trained.
A second had hovered too close, then forced the lower release before the first operator had finished clearing the lock cycle.
Impatient.
Urgent.
A third had stayed back in the corridor with a weapon ready, pulse steady, attention outward.
Professional.
Kael pulled his hand away.
Ren noticed immediately. "What?"
"Three," Kael said. "Maybe four. One careful, one rushed, one on watch."
Lira looked at the housing, then at him. "Recent?"
"Yes."
"Good," Nyx said softly. "That matches the bracket."
Drax turned. "You knew that too."
Nyx met his gaze. "I know what rushed extraction looks like."
The answer was true enough to be unsatisfying.
Seris looked down the corridor. "Then they were interrupted."
"Or working against a timer," Vera said.
Ren glanced at her. "Convoy timing?"
She did not answer directly. "Upper relay flow resets in intervals. Anyone using lower routes would know they had windows."
Again, just enough knowledge to matter.
Lira stepped back from the wall and folded her arms. "So let's say it plainly. A current team entered a hidden lower custody route, removed escort records, and left in a hurry. That's not ruin scavenging."
"No," Kael said. "Outer hands."
The phrase changed the room.
No one liked it because it fit too well.
Not ghosts. Not old systems waking on their own. Not command oversights. Someone current was moving through ancient routes on purpose.
The floor pulsed once beneath their boots.
Everyone froze.
A faint transit-light run flickered under the floor seam and raced deeper into the route.
Not from their gear.
From the structure.
Nyx went very still. "That's a sweep."
Seris's hand went to her blade. "Meaning?"
"Meaning something below just asked who's moving through the line."
Drax raised the shield-frame. Ren's hands lit with a thin curl of current. Vera killed her transport lamp, plunging the corridor into darker red.
Corven said, too quietly, "Then we should leave."
Lira turned toward him. "You only get urgent when the route starts confirming things."
Seris made the decision. "Move."
They left the service wall and pushed deeper.
The passage narrowed into a relay throat, then opened suddenly onto a suspended bridge crossing a vertical transit shaft. The walkway was old iron patched with newer shell plates. On the far wall, dead pylons lined the stone like ribs. One at the center still flickered faintly.
Drax tested the first plate with his boot. "Holds."
"For now," Lira said.
They crossed in a staggered line. Drax first. Ren close behind. Kael next with Seris near his shoulder. Nyx moved lightly ahead of Vera. Corven came last.
At the center pylon, Lira stopped.
"There."
Carved low into the housing was another mark.
Not the split spiral.
A partial ring cut by three descending strokes.
Vera went pale. "Convoy cut-sign."
Ren looked at her. "Meaning?"
"Compromised line," she said. "Do not return through the marked channel."
That sank in.
Someone current had been using old convoy shorthand down here.
Corven stared at the sign and said, before he could stop himself, "That shouldn't be here."
Every head turned.
He heard himself a fraction late. "I mean—a private lower route shouldn't carry public convoy notation."
Nyx's eyes narrowed. "You keep finding very specific wrong answers."
Before anyone could push harder, the pylon woke.
A pale line of transit-light raced up its conductor hoop, spilled across the bridge rail, and vanished downward into the shaft. The whole walkway shivered once underfoot.
Kael felt the signal continue below them, splitting into deeper lines.
Something was passing the news on.
"They know we're here," he said.
No one asked who.
Seris snapped, "Move."
They cleared the bridge faster this time.
At the far landing, Nyx stopped again beside a side seam half-hidden under broken patchwork shell. "There."
Ren's voice sharpened. "How do you keep doing that?"
Nyx did not answer.
Seris drove her blade into the seam and forced the panel outward far enough for Drax to tear the rest open.
Inside was a narrow equipment alcove stripped almost bare.
Almost.
A torn black field band hung from one broken latch.
Lira took it down and held it to the red light. Reinforced inner thread. Faded silver stitch mark near one edge.
"Anyone?" she asked.
No one answered.
But Corven looked at it one heartbeat too long.
Nyx saw.
So did Kael.
Vera's voice came low. "That isn't convoy office standard."
Ren looked at her. "What is it?"
She hesitated, then said, "Old private convoy stitch. Off-record."
Silence again.
That was enough.
Private teams. Hidden lower routes. Cut-signs. Stripped escort records. Fresh extraction.
Outer hands.
Organized enough to erase.
Current enough to fear discovery.
Kael looked at the torn black band in Lira's hand and felt something cold settle into place inside him.
They were not the first live team in this sector.
They were only the first team foolish enough—or unlucky enough—to arrive after someone else had started cleaning the truth out.