The door to Lucian's office was already open. I stood on the threshold, my knuckles resting against the frame where I'd meant to knock. He was at his desk, a data-slate in one hand, a stylus in the other. He didn't look up.
"Come in, Vera."
I stepped inside. The room smelled of old paper and the sharp, clean scent of ozone from an overworked air purifier. I placed the sample case on the edge of his desk. The camera was in my pocket. A cold, hard rectangle.
"The Ascendant potion from the outpost rotation," I said. My voice was flat. A report, not a conversation. "Chemical contamination. Not a manufacturing flaw. Deliberate adulteration with a catalyzing agent. It accelerates cellular metabolism to unsustainable levels. Mimics a breakthrough, then induces systemic collapse."
Lucian set the slate down. He didn't reach for the case. "Source?"
"Supply chain traces back to a Dark Flame subsidiary. Third-tier distributor. The paperwork is clean. The product isn't."
"And the batch was routed to your rotation specifically."
"Yes."
He leaned back. His chair didn't creak. "You're presenting this as a targeted attack."
"I'm presenting the data. The targeting is an inference."
"A correct one." He picked up his stylus again, turned it between his fingers. Left hand. A deliberate, slow rotation. "What else did you find?"
This was the moment. Calculated transparency. Concealing the camera would be more suspicious than reporting it, if he already knew. If he didn't, reporting it made me look vigilant. Useful.
I reached into my pocket, pulled out the small device, and set it on the desk beside the sample case. It made a soft *click* against the wood.
"This was in the archive. Basement level four. Planted in a structural conduit overlooking the primary procurement ledgers." I kept my eyes on his face. "It's a high-grade surveillance unit. Military surplus. Not Guild-issue."
His expression didn't change. No surprise. No alarm. He looked at the camera as if I'd placed a spare stylus on the desk. Then he set his own stylus down, aligning it perfectly parallel to the edge of the slate.
"You found it faster than I expected," he said.
The air purifier hummed. I didn't move.
"It's mine," Lucian said. "The camera. I installed it two weeks ago, after the first decay case was logged. The one you treated."
Dean Holt. The name hung in the room like a stain.
He continued, his voice level, explanatory without being apologetic. "The contamination in the potions wasn't accidental. The distribution was too precise. Someone inside Iron Edge had to be facilitating it. Leaking supply schedules. Suppressing quality reports. Redirecting batches." He nodded toward the camera. "I needed to know who was accessing those ledgers, and when. The archive is the only place the unredacted procurement chains are kept. So I placed a watcher."
My right hand was cold. I pressed it against my thigh. "You used the archive as a trap."
"I used the information as bait. The archive was the container." He finally looked at me. "You walked into it. Voluntarily."
"You didn't warn me."
"If I had warned you, your behavior would have changed. The person I'm looking for would have noticed. The trap would have been useless." He picked up the camera, his thumb brushing over the lens. "You found it. That means you were looking. Why were you looking, Vera?"
The question was genuine. He actually wanted the answer. That was worse.
"I was tracing the potion," I said. The lie was ready, practiced. "The ledgers were the next logical step. I noticed a discrepancy in the conduit covers. Dust patterns. It was out of place."
"You have a sharp eye for out-of-place things."
"It's a necessary skill."
"I believe that." He set the camera down again. "Your sharp eye may have compromised my investigation. Whoever is leaking the schedules hasn't returned to the archive since the camera went live. Now they might not. You disturbed the environment."
"I removed a surveillance device from a secure Guild area. Standard protocol."
"Protocol assumes the surveillance is hostile. This wasn't."
"How was I to know that?"
"You weren't." He held my gaze. "That's the point. You weren't supposed to know. You were supposed to be part of the background. A temp healer doing temp healer work. Not someone who finds military-grade surveillance in a basement." He leaned forward, elbows on the desk. "So tell me, honestly. What were you *really* doing in that archive?"
The office felt smaller. The hum of the purifier was a physical pressure against my ears. I had two choices: cling to the potion story, or pivot. Clinging would make me look stubborn. Pivoting could look evasive.
I chose a third option. A fragment of truth.
"I was looking for a name," I said. "A healer named Ana Reed. She was a Shield Guard. She died on a mission about a year ago. The paperwork was… lost. I wanted to see the original mission logs."
Lucian went very still. Not the stillness of surprise. The stillness of recognition. "Ana Reed."
"You knew her."
"I knew of her. The mission was Ash Valley. An A-rank Rift collapse. No survivors logged." His eyes didn't leave my face. "Why are you looking for her records now?"
"I knew her." I let the past tense sit there. Hard. Final. "I heard the records might have been altered. I wanted to see for myself."
"Heard from whom?"
"Rumors. Temp network gossip. It's not important."
"It might be." He didn't push. He let the silence expand, waiting to see if I'd fill it. I didn't. After a count of five, he nodded, once. "The records you're looking for won't be in the general archive. If they were altered, the originals would be sealed. Or destroyed."
"Where would they be?"
"That's a different question." He picked up his stylus again. "One that implies you intend to keep looking."
"I do."
"Even though I've just told you there's an active leak investigation, and you've already interfered with it once?"
"My search is unrelated."
"Is it?" He didn't sound skeptical. He sounded curious. "A healer dies. Records vanish. A year later, another healer starts showing decay symptoms from a contaminated potion that leads back to Dark Flame. Now you're here, asking about the dead healer, after finding my camera in the archive." He tilted his head. "You understand how that looks from my position."
"Like a coincidence."
"I don't believe in coincidences." He stood up, walked to a small cabinet against the wall, and took out a plain glass tumbler. He filled it from a water dispenser. He didn't offer me one. "You're either connected to the leak, or you're stumbling into something bigger than you are. Which is it, Vera?"
He drank. Waited.
"I'm not connected to your leak," I said.
"But you are stumbling."
"I'm following a lead."
"Into what?"
I didn't answer. The truth was a box I couldn't open in this room. Not with him.
He set the tumbler down on the cabinet. "I'll make you a trade. You stop poking around the archive. You leave the procurement ledgers alone. In return, I'll pull the Ash Valley mission file. The sealed version. I have the clearance."
"Why would you do that?"
"Because I want to know what's in it, too." He turned to face me. "And because I'd rather you work with me than around me. Around me, you cause noise. With me, you might be useful."
The offer was a trap. A beautifully baited one. Access in exchange for compliance. Visibility in exchange for a leash. My right hand ached with a cold that felt permanent.
"What are the terms?" I asked.
"You report anything you find related to the potion contamination. Or the decay cases. Or Ana Reed. You report it to me. Directly. You don't act on it alone." He paused. "And you submit to a standard imprint scan. At a licensed facility. My choice."
The floor tilted. Just a degree. Enough to make my balance feel thin. "A scan. Why?"
"To rule out a possibility." His voice was calm. Reasonable. Deadly. "Decay can have unusual imprint signatures. If you've been exposed to the contaminated potions, or if you've treated someone who was, it might show. I need to know if you're a vector, or just a bystander."
He was testing me. He'd built a box and was asking me to step inside it willingly. The scan would show nothing from the potions. It would show everything else.
"If I refuse?" I asked.
"Then our professional relationship becomes simpler. You're a temp healer who disturbed an investigation. Your contract with Iron Edge would be terminated. Your access to Guild resources—including any path to sealed records—would end." He didn't smile. "It's not a threat. It's a consequence."
I looked at the camera on his desk. A tool he'd planted. A game he'd been playing before I even knew the board existed. He'd been watching. He was still watching.
"When?" I said.
"The scan? Tomorrow morning. I'll schedule it. I'll accompany you."
"And the Ash Valley file?"
"You'll have it within forty-eight hours of a clean scan result." He returned to his desk, sat down. The negotiation was over. "Do we have an agreement?"
Healing Pool: 91.6%. The number flashed behind my eyes. A ticking clock he couldn't see. A scan would hear it. A scan would see the secondary trace, the nested frequency, the thing inside me that wasn't a healer.
I had twenty-four hours to find a way out of his box.
"We have an agreement," I said.
---
The hallway outside his office was empty. I walked. My footsteps were too loud. I counted them. Seventeen to the stairwell door. I pushed it open, took the stairs down two flights, and stopped on a landing between the third and second floors. The concrete was cool against my back.
He knew. Not everything, but enough. He'd built a story—potions, leaks, decay—and was fitting me into it. The scan was his way of checking the fit. If I ran, I confirmed his suspicion. If I submitted, I gave him proof.
I needed a third option. A way to fail the test without being the cause.
My hand went to my pocket. Not the right one. The left. My fingers closed around the medication packet Sol Mercer had given me. I pulled it out. A small, foil-wrapped rectangle. Pain suppressants. Standard issue. I'd never opened it.
An idea formed. Cold. Reckless. The kind of move you make when all the exits are closing.
I peeled back the foil. Three pills. White, unmarked. I took one out, held it between my thumb and forefinger. Then I put it back, sealed the foil, and returned the packet to my pocket.
The plan was simple. I would contaminate myself.
Not with decay. With something a scan would read as an anomalous imprint reaction. A chemical interference. The pain suppressants were a blend of synthetics; taken in a high enough dose, they could temporarily scramble the low-frequency resonance of a healer's imprint. It would look like exposure to a toxic agent. It would explain any irregularity the scanner found. It would make me a victim of the very contamination I'd reported.
It was a gamble. The dosage had to be high enough to cause a visible effect, but not high enough to induce actual toxicity. I'd have to time it precisely. A few hours before the scan. Enough time for the chemicals to saturate my system, not enough for my body to metabolize them cleanly.
It would hurt. That was fine. Pain was a tool.
I pushed off the wall and continued down the stairs. I had research to do. Pharmacological profiles. Metabolic rates. I needed a library terminal.
---
The Guild's public library was on the first floor. A wide, quiet room with rows of data-terminals and a few physical shelves holding reference codices. I found an open terminal in the back, slid into the seat, and activated the screen.
I started with the generic profile for Guild-issue pain suppressants. The formula was listed: carisodin, valerix, trace stabilizers. Carisodin was the key. It bonded with imprint resonance at the cellular level. In therapeutic doses, it was inert. In overdose, it created a temporary "fog" effect—a dampening field that could mask finer details.
I calculated. My body mass. My baseline metabolic rate. The half-life of the compound. I needed a dose that would push my system into the high therapeutic range, bordering on toxic. One and a half pills. Taken approximately three hours before the scan.
I noted the numbers on a scrap of synth-paper. Then I cleared the terminal's search history.
As I stood, a shadow fell across the terminal. I turned.
Kiran Vale leaned against the end of the bookshelf, arms crossed. He wore a dark grey tunic, no Guild insignia. His expression was unreadable.
"Researching?" he asked.
"Yes."
"For your upcoming scan?"
The air left my lungs. I didn't let it show. "How do you know about that?"
"Lucian Voss just filed the requisition. Inter-guild medical clearance. Flagged as priority. It's not a secret if you know where to look." He pushed off the shelf, took a step closer. His voice dropped. "You shouldn't do it."
"Do what?"
"Take the scan. Whatever game you're playing, this is where the board flips over." He held my gaze. "He's not testing for potion exposure. He's testing for you."
I kept my face still. "I don't know what you mean."
"Yes, you do." He glanced toward the library entrance, then back at me. "There's a reason the Ash Valley records were sealed. It wasn't just a mission gone wrong. There was a secondary objective. A retrieval. Something came out of that Rift before it collapsed. Dark Flame was involved. So was Silver Peak. Lucian was there."
The words landed like stones. "He was there?"
"As an observer. Silver Peak liaison. He filed the initial incident report. Then the report was rewritten. The seals were applied." Kiran's eyes were dark, intent. "He knows more about Ana Reed's death than he's telling you. And he knows you're not just a friend asking questions. You're looking for accountability. He's offering you a file he already knows is incomplete. It's a pacifier. A way to control your search."
"Why are you telling me this?"
"Because I don't like watching people walk into cages." He reached into his own pocket, pulled out a small, flat data-chip. He held it out. "This is a bypass protocol. For the scanner. It'll feed a pre-recorded, clean imprint signature to the reader. It won't hold up to a deep diagnostic, but for a standard priority scan, it'll pass. It's a one-time use. After that, the chip fries itself."
I looked at the chip. A way out. A different kind of gamble. "What's the price?"
"No price. A gift." He pressed it into my hand. His fingers were warm. "Use it or don't. But if you walk into that scan with your own imprint exposed, you're finished. He'll see the double frequency. He'll see what you are."
He stepped back. "The chip activates on contact with the scanner's induction plate. Just hold it in your palm. The rest is automatic."
*The ranking decides who sees this. Power Stones decide the ranking. Math.*