Echoes in Brick
The next call came two days after the hotel.
Kieran was halfway through disassembling a pistol at his kitchen table when the secure line buzzed.
He wiped the oil from his fingers before he answered. Old Forge habit: never touch comms with anything that might leave a print.
"Holt," he said.
"Elena," she replied. "You busy?"
Pieces of the pistol lay in a neat spiral on the table. Barrel, slide, spring, frame. Order imposed on something built for chaos.
"No," he said.
"Liar," she said. "Good. We've got something."
"Short or long?" he asked.
"Short," she said. "But sharp. Headquarters wants you in person."
"Architect-level?" he said.
"Yes," she said. "And Internal. You've attracted a crowd."
"Again," he said.
"Stop being interesting," she said. "It's bad for my workload."
The line clicked dead.
He reassembled the pistol with unconscious efficiency. Each part slid into place without resistance. When it was whole again, he checked the chamber, set it aside, and stood.
The city outside his window was starting to warm into afternoon. Light softened, shadows stretched. On Holcomb, kids argued over a ball small enough to lose in a pothole.
He shrugged on his jacket and left.
---
The Order's city office pretended to be a mid-tier financial consultancy.
The building had a glass façade and a lobby with plants tall enough to be expensive. The directory listed a dozen perfectly harmless names. None of them were real.
He took the elevator to the fifteenth floor. The doors opened on carpet too thick for any company that had to justify its expenses publicly.
Elena met him in the hallway.
She wore a dark blazer over a shirt that had probably been ironed at some point this morning. Her hair was pulled back, but a few strands had escaped and curled around her temples. Her eyes had the faint grit of someone who had been reading for too many hours.
"You look tired," he said.
"You look like you slept," she said. "That's more worrying."
They started walking.
"Who's in the room?" he asked.
"Krell," she said. "Noor. One of Aegis's liaison officers. They brought a toy from upstairs for flavor."
"Toy?" he said.
"Legal," she said.
He didn't sigh, but something in his chest made the motion anyway.
"Situation?" he asked.
"Old brick," she said. "Something from your childhood, reframed as a modern problem."
"That's not reassuring," he said.
"It wasn't meant to be," she said.
She stopped outside a door with frosted glass and no nameplate.
"Ready?" she asked.
"No," he said.
"Good," she said. "Means you're awake."
She opened the door.
---
The conference room was smaller than the last one, but denser.
Sebastian Krell sat at the head of the table, his jacket off, shirtsleeves rolled to the forearms. The posture was relaxed, the eyes were not.
Noor Kasim occupied a chair halfway down, a tablet on the table in front of her, screen dimmed for the moment. Her two escorts from the bar weren't here; Internal didn't need muscle in a room built entirely of their own power.
Opposite her sat a man in an Aegis-cut suit. The company's style was identifiable if you knew what to look for: expensive without ostentation, fabrics that moved well, colors that didn't stick in the mind. His hair was cropped short, jaw shaved clean, smile politely empty.
At the other end, like a punctuation mark, perched a narrow woman in a severe black dress. Her briefcase sat beside her chair. Her nails were perfectly trimmed. Her expression suggested she lived in a world where the law had clear edges and she was deeply offended by everyone else's failure to respect that idea.
"Kieran," Krell said. "Come in. Sit. Meet the committee."
"Architect," Kieran said. He took the remaining chair near Elena.
"Aegis liaison: Mr. Darrow," Krell said, nodding at the man in the suit.
They had met before, at the datacenter, but Darrow's face didn't flicker to acknowledge it. In his line of work, all introductions were first introductions, every time.
"Mr. Holt," Darrow said. "Pleasure."
He lied with the ease of long practice.
"And this is Ms. Regan," Krell added, nodding at the woman in black. "She speaks fluent contract."
"Mr. Holt," Regan said. "We've read your file."
"Condolences," he said.
Noor's mouth twitched. It might have been the start of a smile. Or a muscle spasm.
Krell tapped the table.
"We have a leak in structural integrity," he said. "Not catastrophic yet, but if left unattended, it might become…distracting."
"Forge-adjacent?" Kieran asked.
"Yes," Krell said.
Darrow cleared his throat.
"Aegis recently conducted an internal review," he said. "In the wake of the North River incident. Standard procedure after any significant disruption."
"In this case," Regan cut in, "'significant disruption' includes a data room that didn't exist on official schematics and tags that do not correspond to any legal asset category."
"Legal," Kieran repeated. "Interesting qualifier."
She looked at him sharply, then back to Krell.
"Continue," Krell said.
Darrow steepled his fingers.
"One of our long-standing logistical coordinators, Victor Hallam, has…" he searched for the right phrase, "…developed concerns."
"About?" Kieran asked.
"About the use of certain facilities under the Forge program umbrella," Darrow said. "He was seconded to Grey Forge fifteen years ago to assist with supply chain and intake documentation. After his contract term there, he was reassigned to more ordinary posts."
"And now?" Elena prompted.
"And now," Darrow said, "he has reached out to a human-rights NGO with questions about statute of limitations and whistleblower protections, specifically around 'historic abuses of minors in unlicensed institutional settings.'"
He said the words precisely, as if reading them off paper inside his skull.
"From an encrypted personal channel," Noor added. "Bounced through three nations and a charity network. He is cautious, but not cautious enough. One of our listening posts tagged the traffic."
"He didn't name us directly," Regan said. "But his description of the facilities overlaps in uncomfortable ways with archival Forge locations."
"Uncomfortable for who?" Kieran asked.
"For everyone in this room," Regan said. "And several people who aren't."
"Hallam is currently on administrative leave," Darrow said. "Officially for 'stress-related difficulties.' Unofficially, he's in one of our quiet apartments under observation. My superiors would like to…resolve his situation before his curiosity becomes contagious."
"End his curiosity?" Kieran said.
"Not necessarily," Krell said. "Victor Hallam is a man with a conscience, late-blooming though it may be. Conscience can be modeled, sometimes redirected. Killing him creates a martyr in a limited context. Turning him creates a useful asset."
"Turning him how?" Elena asked.
"Reminding him that some truths cost more than others," Krell said. "That he cannot change the past, only shape the future. That his testimony, if given at the wrong time, will bury the only people who can actually modulate the ongoing damage."
"That's a generous definition of 'modulate,'" Noor murmured.
"What do you need from me?" Kieran asked.
"Go to Hallam," Krell said. "Talk to him. Determine which category he fits."
"The categories being?" Kieran said, though he already knew.
"Ruiz," Noor said. "Kovács. Or the usable middle. You've worked this framework once already. We'd like to see if it holds."
"And if he's a Ruiz?" Kieran said.
"He dies quietly," Regan said.
"And if he's a Kovács?" he asked.
"He dies more carefully," Darrow said.
"And if he's the middle?" he asked.
"Then you convince him to sign on the dotted line and live with it," Krell said.
"Elisabeth Marrow accepted that deal," Noor said. "For now."
"And this one is different how?" Kieran asked.
"He knows more," Elena said. "He was inside the building, not just reading logs. He saw faces, not tags."
The air shifted in the room on that word.
Faces.
Forges were built to erase faces. To blur them into units, ranks, categories, metrics.
Kieran's jaw clenched minutely.
"How old?" he asked.
"Hallam?" Krell said. "Late forties. Early fifties."
"The children," Kieran said.
"Then?" Darrow said. "The usual intake range. Six to fourteen."
"How many?" Kieran asked.
"Enough to justify separate line items," Regan said. "Not enough for any single number to trigger automated oversight."
"Some of them are still on the books," Noor said quietly. "Grey Forge produced long-term assets. Not all were upgraded to Black. Some were reassigned into partner programs. Soft skills, social infiltration, that kind of thing."
Kieran didn't move, but it felt like someone had put a hand flat against his back.
"How long have you known Hallam was doing this?" Elena asked.
"His first encrypted inquiry was three weeks ago," Noor said. "We flagged him then and set a watch. He hesitated. He sent drafts to himself. He searched for statutes in four different jurisdictions. He asked technical questions about sealed records."
"In other words," Krell said, "he's still persuading himself to be brave."
"And you'd like me to persuade him otherwise," Kieran said.
"Yes," Krell said. "Or confirm that persuasion is no longer an option."
"What does he think he's doing?" Kieran asked.
"Making amends," Regan said. "In his head."
Noor tapped her tablet.
"A message from the NGO he contacted came through this morning," she said. "They've agreed to a preliminary 'off-the-record' call. He hasn't responded yet."
"So we get to him before he does," Elena said.
"Exactly," Krell said. "You'll go in as an internal investigator from Aegis, assigned to 'review his concerns.' You'll listen, ask the right questions, and then decide whether his conscience can be repurposed or must be retired."
"And if he recognizes me?" Kieran asked Darrow.
"He never worked operational," Darrow said. "He saw the children. He saw handlers. Logistics staff. Trainers. Not blades. We kept the walls thick."
"Thick doesn't mean opaque," Kieran said.
"Then you'll find out how much got through," Krell said softly.
Elena shot Kieran a look that said: be careful with your face.
"What's the cover?" Kieran asked.
"Aegis sub-division: Internal Risk Calibration," Darrow said. "You're there to evaluate his allegations for potential exposure. We've seeded his file with just enough hints to make that plausible."
"Who else knows I'm going?" Kieran said.
"Need-to-know only," Krell said. "Darrow's team, your handler, Internal, myself. His NGO contact does not know he's under watch. The NGO itself may or may not be aware of Forge. We don't want to test that yet."
"Location?" he asked.
"Safe apartment in the old industrial belt," Noor said. "Top floor, two exits, one stairwell, one fire escape. We've mapped vantage points; Rhee will be nested."
"Always nice to be invited," Jonas's voice crackled into Kieran's ear a heartbeat later. "I was starting to feel neglected."
"You'll be his shadow, as usual," Elena said.
"Any children on-site?" Kieran asked.
"No," Darrow said. "This isn't a live facility. It's a holding pattern."
He nodded.
"When?" he asked.
"Tonight," Krell said. "While his nerve is still brittle."
Kieran looked at the blank space in the middle of the table.
"What happens if I decide he's neither Ruiz nor redeemable?" he asked.
"Be imaginative," Krell said. "But not sentimental."
"Sentiment clouds judgment," Regan said.
"Sometimes," Krell said. "Sometimes it clarifies it. That's what we're testing."
He met Kieran's gaze.
"You're our best instrument for this sort of calibration," Krell said. "Don't pretend you don't know it."
"I know you think that," Kieran said.
Krell smiled, thin and precise.
"That's enough," he said.
---
The safe apartment was in a building that had been built for factories and then gutted for tax write-offs.
Red brick, soot-stained. Windows taller than they needed to be. Old metal fire escapes clinging to the outside like ribs.
The district around it had gone through the usual urban phases: industry, decline, neglect, brief flirtation with artistic rebirth, then a grudging stabilization into cheap offices and cheaper flats.
Kieran approached from the south, the wind carrying the faint smell of old oil and new coffee.
"Overwatch in position," Jonas said in his ear. "Line of sight on the front windows. Fire escape's covered. No movement beyond target. One set of footsteps pacing moderately. That's him. Or a ghost. Hard to tell from up here."
"Any other watchers?" Kieran murmured.
"None that I can see," Jonas said. "No glint, no scope shadow, nobody trying to be a gargoyle on the opposite roof. Either we're the only spiders in this web or the others are damn good."
"In this city?" Kieran said. "We're not the only spiders."
"Then pray we're the hungriest," Jonas said.
Kieran reached the main entrance and keyed in the code Darrow had provided.
The hallway smelled of detergent, mold, and old smoke. The kind of scent buildings acquired when no one truly owned them.
He climbed the stairs, hand trailing the rail lightly, counting steps.
Two flights. Three. Fourth. Fifth.
Hallam's door was at the end, opposite a window that looked onto the fire escape.
He knocked.
There was a pause, longer than most people left a knock hanging.
"Who is it?" a man's voice asked. Rough. Tired.
"Internal risk calibration," Kieran said, using Darrow's provided phrase. "Here to follow up your inquiry."
Another pause.
He heard the soft scrape of a chain being slid back.
The door opened a crack.
The man on the other side had once been heavy. Now he was just slack.
Victor Hallam's hair had gone mostly gray, pressed flat in an attempt at control that humidity had refused to honor. He wore a shirt that had seen an iron days ago and trousers that had been expensive before the scuffs.
His eyes were the most alive part of him.
They flicked to Kieran's face, to his hands, to the hallway behind him. Fear lived there, but so did something else.
Hope, Kieran thought. Unwise.
"Aegis?" Hallam asked.
"Yes," Kieran said.
"ID," Hallam said.
Kieran produced the forged badge Darrow had supplied: Aegis logo, obscure sub-division, his name tucked under a photo that matched his face in bureaucratic lighting.
Hallam scrutinized it, then stepped back.
"You're alone?" Hallam asked.
"Yes," Kieran lied.
"Come in," Hallam said.
He closed the door behind them and slid the chain back into place, as if that would matter.
The apartment was modest, almost aggressively so.
A couch with a sagging center. A coffee table covered in printouts with handwritten notes scrawled in the margins. A small kitchen where a half-finished mug of something dark sat abandoned. One wall carried the faint outline of where framed pictures had once hung, their absence ghosting in cleaner rectangles.
He hadn't brought his history with him. Or he'd taken it down.
Kieran stood in the center of the living room.
"Victor Hallam," he said.
"Yes," Hallam said. "And you're…?"
"Mr. Holt will do," Kieran said. "Aegis internal risk."
Hallam gave a brusque nod.
"I didn't expect a visit," he said. "I thought they'd just send me another document. Or a lawyer."
"They might," Kieran said. "If I file the wrong report."
Hallam's mouth twisted.
"So you're the filter," he said. "You decide whether I get a legal conversation or a security problem."
"In simplified terms," Kieran said, "yes."
Hallam motioned to the couch.
"Sit," he said.
Kieran sat. Hallam remained standing, pacing a short track between the window and the kitchen.
"You read it?" Hallam asked. "What I sent?"
"I read the abstract," Kieran said. "Institutional abuses, minors, lack of oversight, protected framing."
"I called them children," Hallam said. "Not 'minors.' Not 'units.' Children."
His voice caught on the word.
"That's not how the paper labeled them," he said. "But that's what they were."
Kieran's eyes tracked the man's movement.
"How long did you work there?" he asked.
"Grey Forge?" Hallam said. "Four years. Then they moved me somewhere cleaner. By then, the damage was on autopilot."
"Describe your role," Kieran said.
"I was logistics and intake," Hallam said. "I oversaw supply chains, food deliveries, medical procurements. I created and signed off on transfer logs from intake points. I didn't give the orders. I implemented them."
"An important distinction," Kieran said.
Hallam barked a short laugh.
"I thought so, at the time," he said. "It helped me sleep, thinking I was just…moving numbers."
"You didn't know those numbers were children?" Kieran asked.
"I saw them," Hallam said. "From a distance. Through glass. On paper. In line. Headcounts. Transfer lists. They made sure we didn't get too close."
"They?" Kieran said.
"Trainers," Hallam said. "Handlers. The ones who…worked with them. We had strict boundaries. 'To maintain operational discipline.' There was a script for every question."
"And now?" Kieran asked.
"Now the script doesn't cover the echoes," Hallam said.
He stopped pacing, turned to face Kieran directly.
"You know what they did there?" he asked.
"Yes," Kieran said.
Hallam blinked.
"Overlap with another project," Kieran added. "Recently. Your description matches it."
Hallam studied him.
"You don't look surprised," he said.
"I don't surprise easily," Kieran said.
"They said we were saving them," Hallam said. "That these were children with 'no meaningful future in their original environments.' That the Forges gave them purpose. Training. A place to belong. 'Structure in exchange for gratitude.'"
"And you believed them," Kieran said.
"For a while," Hallam said. "Long enough to sign things I shouldn't have. Long enough to watch them bring in a girl with a broken wrist and label her 'non-compliant' instead of 'injured.'"
His hand moved unconsciously to his own wrist, fingers pressing into old, invisible bruises.
Kieran watched him.
"Why now?" Kieran asked. "You left Grey Forge years ago. You worked other posts, other contracts. Why reach out at all? Why not retire quietly and never think about it again?"
Hallam's gaze dropped to the coffee table.
On it lay a single sheet of paper, weighted at the corner by a mug.
Even from where he sat, Kieran could make out the print at the top.
An obituary. A small one, likely local. Black-and-white photo of a woman in her forties, smile faded by poor printing.
"My sister," Hallam said, following his eyes. "She died last month. Cancer. Fast. She had…two weeks to put her affairs in order."
He picked up the paper, smoothed it with trembling fingers.
"She asked me, at the end," he said, "if there was anything I was ashamed of. Something I didn't want to carry across. She believed in that kind of thing. Confession. Letting go."
"You told her?" Kieran asked.
"No," Hallam said. "I lied. I told her I'd been…comfortable. Ordinary. I thought I was protecting her."
He set the obituary down.
"She died anyway," he said. "Turns out my silence wasn't a magic shield after all."
His laugh was a brief, bitter thing.
"After the funeral," he went on, "I found some of my old files. Archives I'd kept offsite for…cover-your-ass reasons. Digital copies of transfer logs. Intake forms. Non-standard incident reports."
"And you read them," Kieran said.
"I read their names," Hallam said.
The word landed like weight.
"For the first time," Hallam said. "Because back then, they were just line items. Codes. FORGE/GRY-CH-117. That's not a person. That's a product ID. But in some of the attachments… there were names. Ages. Places of origin."
He rubbed his face with both hands.
"I realized I could find some of them," he said. "See what happened to them. If any of them…got out."
"Did you?" Kieran asked.
"Some," Hallam said. "Some died young. Accidents. Overdoses. 'Unknown circumstances.' Some disappeared into government records. Sealed. Special projects. A few…just vanished. No clear trail. No normal civilian footprint."
"And that's when you decided to send anonymous feelers to an NGO," Kieran said.
"Yes," Hallam said. "I thought…if I tell someone, maybe it balances the ledger a little. Maybe if I shine a light, the people who built this thing will finally be dragged into it."
"Dragged where?" Kieran asked. "Into what?"
"Into court," Hallam said. "Into hearings. Into prison. I don't know. I'm not naive enough to think I'd topple the whole machine. But maybe I could jam it. Force it to pause."
"And what do you think happens to the children still inside while it 'pauses'?" Kieran asked.
Hallam flinched.
"What?" he said.
"If you expose Grey Forge carelessly," Kieran said, "the people behind it will pull the plug. Destroy records. Move assets. Burn sites. They will wipe as much as they can. The children they can't easily repurpose? They disappear. Permanent solutions. You know this."
Hallam shook his head once, sharply, as if denying the thought could make it less likely.
"That's not certain," he said. "They might be forced into transparency. Forced to open the doors under supervision. Forced to rehouse—"
"By who?" Kieran cut in. "The NGO? Governments that already use Forge outputs in their black budgets? Corporations like Aegis that depend on them for tasks they cannot put in contracts?"
Hallam's voice broke on frustration.
"You sound like them," he said. "Like the trainers. Like the ones who wrote the script."
"I'm giving you the current map," Kieran said. "Not the one they sold you back then."
He leaned forward slightly.
"You came close," he said. "You felt the pressure. You wrote up your concerns and pointed them outward. That took something. Nerve. Fear. Both. But you stopped. You hesitated. You asked questions 'off the record.' You didn't dump the files. You didn't send them raw to the first journalist you could find."
"Because I know what happens to whistleblowers," Hallam said. "They become stories and then graves. I wanted to know what protections exist before I stepped out on the wire."
"And did you like the answers you found?" Kieran asked.
Hallam gave a hollow laugh.
"They're thin," he said. "Paper over a chasm. Maybe the chasm looks smaller if you've never seen it from the bottom."
He rubbed his eyes.
"Aegis told me you were coming," he said. "Internal review. Risk calibration."
Kieran said nothing.
"I thought about running," Hallam added. "Before you got here. Packing a bag, heading for a country where extradition takes a decade just to spell. But I'm old, Mr. Holt. And slow. I don't have the skills your side has."
"You have skills they don't," Kieran said.
"How so?" Hallam asked.
"You feel bad," Kieran said.
Hallam stared at him, then huffed another bitter half-laugh.
"That's not a skill," he said. "That's a liability."
"Depends on who's using it," Kieran said.
They let that sit a moment.
On the roof, Jonas shifted on his stomach, eyes on the windows.
"He's pacing less," Jonas said quietly. "Hands still shaking. Holt's posture is neutral. No clear tells. Internal, enjoying the show?"
"Taking notes," Noor said. "He's pushing guilt. Not brute force."
"Not yet," Jonas said.
---
Inside, Kieran asked, "What exactly do you want?"
Hallam looked confused.
"I told you," he said. "I want to make this right."
"You can't," Kieran said. "The ledger doesn't balance. That's not how it works."
"Then what's the point of anything?" Hallam snapped. "Why did they build you if not to fix what men like me broke?"
"They built me to break what they pointed at," Kieran said. "And sometimes to bend it. Not to fix the foundation."
"Then I'm wasting my time," Hallam said.
"Maybe," Kieran said. "But you're also in my time now. Which means we need something more specific."
Hallam slumped onto the couch opposite.
"The NGO asked for a preliminary call," he said. "Anonymous, they said. Off the record. They'd tell me what they can and can't do. They might have other cases like this. Patterns. Maybe Forges aren't as invisible as they think. Maybe there are cracks already."
"And you haven't answered," Kieran said.
"No," Hallam said. "Because even making that call feels like stepping over a line I can't go back from. And because I know the minute I do, someone like you will be on the other end of some other line, deciding if I'm worth a bullet."
"You're already over the line," Kieran said. "You wrote them. You kept files. You pulled old logs. You started reading names. That's the step. Everything after is just direction."
Hallam's gaze sharpened.
"You enjoy this?" he asked. "Pulling wings off men like me?"
"No," Kieran said. "But I'm very practiced at it."
Hallam's hands tightened on his knees.
"So what happens now?" he asked. "You go back and tell them I'm a liability? They send someone less polite?"
"What do you expect?" Kieran asked.
"I expect you to tell me there's no way out," Hallam said. "That I'm trapped between silence and a shallow grave. That everything I do from here on only changes whether it hurts for two minutes or two years."
"You're not wrong," Kieran said.
Hallam made a strangled sound.
"I hate you," he said. "I don't even know who you are, and I hate you."
"Good," Kieran said. "Hate is still movement. Some of them stop moving altogether."
He watched the older man struggle to fit rage around fear.
"What did you see?" Kieran asked quietly. "In Grey Forge. Not on paper. Through the glass."
Hallam's shoulders sagged.
"Children," he said. "In groups. In lines. In cells. Some of them…angry. Some of them…blank. I saw a boy once… maybe ten… stand so still for so long I thought he'd stopped breathing. Until one of the trainers snapped his fingers and the boy moved like he'd been shocked."
"You saw trainers," Kieran said. "What did they do?"
"Everything quietly," Hallam said. "Punishments were…efficient. Bruises where clothes covered them. Isolation for those who asked too many questions. Rewards for those who adapted quickly. They spoke about loyalty like it was oxygen. They told the children that outside there was only hunger and violence and chaos. That any attempt to leave was betrayal of the only people who had ever 'invested' in them."
His disgust at the word was palpable.
"Did you believe them?" Kieran asked.
"At first," Hallam said. "Then less. Then not at all. But by then I was in too deep. Contracts. NDAs. Threats. And…comfort. I got used to the salary. The security. The illusion that I wasn't the one holding the whip."
"You weren't," Kieran said.
"That doesn't matter," Hallam said. "I was in the room."
Kieran let the silence sit.
He could feel the eyes on him from elsewhere. Krell. Noor. Elena. Darrow. They wanted to hear a script and see whether he stuck to it.
He thought of children standing in rows for headcounts. Of the way the walls echoed when a door slammed. Of little hands holding trays, knuckles white.
"What if," he said slowly, "you don't try to make this right?"
Hallam stared.
"What?" he said.
"What if," Kieran repeated, "you accept that you can't fix what happened. That you will never balance that ledger. That there is no amends that fits. And you focus instead on making sure it doesn't get worse than it has to."
"That sounds like surrender," Hallam said.
"It's math," Kieran said.
"Explain your math," Hallam said.
"Option one," Kieran said. "You dump your files to the NGO. Best case, they publish something redacted and outraged. Governments do hearings. Corporations issue statements. The network shifts shape. Children in transit vanish. Forges in operation burn their evidence. Operators like me get pointed at loose ends."
He held Hallam's gaze.
"Most of the children you think you're saving die," he said. "Not because you spoke, but because you spoke badly. At the wrong time. In the wrong direction. You trade a splash of justice for a wave of quiet killings."
Hallam swallowed.
"Option two," Kieran said. "You do nothing. You delete everything. You convince yourself it was all in your head. You die slowly with your guilt. No one hears anything. The machine keeps running as it has. That ledger grows. You have no part in reducing it."
"And option three?" Hallam asked hoarsely.
"You push selectively," Kieran said. "You give the right people enough to carve away pieces without triggering self-immolation. You become a slow leak instead of a bomb."
"And who are the 'right people'?" Hallam asked. "The ones inside the network?"
"Maybe," Kieran said. "Maybe not. But whoever they are, they won't be an NGO with a mailing list."
Hallam shook his head.
"This is insane," he said. "You're asking me to trust the same people who built Grey Forge to dismantle it."
"I'm telling you they're the only ones who know where all the bricks are," Kieran said. "You hand a sledgehammer to someone who's never seen the supports, you get a collapse."
"You want me complicit," Hallam said. "On a different level."
"You already are," Kieran said. "The question isn't whether you're complicit. It's what you do with that fact now."
Hallam slumped back.
"If I cooperate," he said slowly, "if I…hand you my files, my logs, my notes… What happens to me?"
"You live longer," Kieran said.
"That's not an answer," Hallam said.
"It's the only honest one I have," Kieran said.
"Do I walk free?" Hallam pressed. "Do I get prosecuted quietly? Do I go under a new name? Or do I just get to live out my days in one more safe house, waiting for someone like you to knock again when I become inconvenient?"
"Yes," Kieran said.
Hallam laughed, a broken sound.
"You're unbelievable," he said.
"You asked for honesty," Kieran said.
Hallam leaned forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped.
"What would you do?" he asked. "If you were me?"
"I'm not," Kieran said.
"Indulge me," Hallam insisted.
Kieran considered it.
"I would hand over everything I had," he said. "But not to Aegis directly. To the one person inside this mess whose job is to navigate both sides of the equation and who hasn't yet thrown me off a roof."
"Your handler," Hallam said.
"Yes," Kieran said.
"And then?" Hallam asked.
"And then I would accept that I'd forfeited the right to feel clean about any of it," Kieran said. "But I might sleep a little better knowing my guilt was at least being…spent…in a direction that occasionally produces less blood instead of more."
"You don't know that," Hallam said.
"No," Kieran said. "But I've seen worse bets."
Hallam stared at the coffee table again.
Slowly, he reached for a folder beneath the scattered sheets.
He placed it on the table between them.
It was thick. Worn at the edges. Labeled nothing.
"These are copies of the logs I salvaged," he said. "Names. Dates. Transfer points. Notes where something didn't fit the standard pattern. I've cross-referenced what I could find in public records. Some of them… just vanish after Forge."
He slid the folder closer to Kieran.
"You take them," Hallam said. "You tell your handler. You do whatever your math tells you is the 'least bad' option. If you screw it up, that's on you. I've already screwed up my share."
"And the NGO?" Kieran asked.
Hallam looked at his phone on the table.
"I delete the draft," he said. "I don't make the call."
"Will you?" Kieran asked.
Hallam gave him a tired, deeply bitter look.
"If I say yes, will you believe me?" he asked.
"No," Kieran said. "But I'll tell them you might."
Hallam huffed a breath.
"You're very bad at comfort," he said.
"I'm not here to comfort you," Kieran said.
Hallam hesitated, then added, "There's…one other thing."
Kieran waited.
"In those logs," Hallam said, "there's a cluster of entries around the time I left Grey Forge. A group of children transferred to an 'advanced program' I was never fully briefed on. Most of their trails stop there. One doesn't. Not quite."
"What do you mean?" Kieran asked.
"There's a note," Hallam said. "A fragment. Looks like it was meant to be deleted and wasn't. It mentions a reassignment to a civilian cover. A city not far from here. An orphanage on paper. A bar in practice."
The air in the room changed.
Kieran's fingers tightened on the folder without meaning to.
"A bar," he repeated.
"Holcomb district," Hallam said. "Address matches a building with a commercial ground floor and apartments above. The log doesn't name the bar, but it's unique enough. I double-checked."
Kieran's mind slid immediately to a bell over a door, a woman cursing at a blown bulb, the smell of beer and grease.
"You're sure?" he asked.
"As sure as I can be," Hallam said. "The entry's in there. Marked with a red tab."
"You didn't lead with this," Kieran said.
"I wasn't sure if telling you would get her killed," Hallam said. "Or saved."
"Her," Kieran said.
"Yes," Hallam said. "Girl. Twelve at intake. Faked name. Real one appears later in a medical report. Vos. First name: Lena."
The room shrank.
For a moment, Kieran heard nothing but the echo of that name in his own head.
"Lena Vos is my landlord," he said.
Hallam closed his eyes briefly.
"Then this just became much more complicated," he said.
On the roof, Jonas swore under his breath.
"What?" Noor demanded.
"Can't tell from here," Jonas said. "But Holt's posture just changed. Like someone kicked his skeleton."
Inside, Kieran asked, "What happened to her?"
"I don't know," Hallam said. "The trail goes cold after the bar reassignment. She's either fully embedded in a civilian role or dead. There are no further transfers, no disciplinary notes."
"She doesn't remember," Kieran said, half to himself. "Or she's very good at pretending."
"You know her?" Hallam asked.
"Yes," Kieran said.
"Then you should leave," Hallam said.
"Why?" Kieran asked.
"Because if they find out you've been drinking in the same bar as one of their old ghosts without reporting it," Hallam said, "they'll start wondering whether you've gone from 'interesting' to 'uncontrollable.' And I've seen what they do to children who stop fitting their frameworks. I can only imagine what they do to grown men."
Kieran looked at the folder.
Then at Hallam.
"You've given me something they'll want," he said. "And something I can't give them."
"What will you do?" Hallam asked.
"Spend it," Kieran said.
He stood.
Hallam stayed seated.
"You're leaving?" Hallam asked.
"For now," Kieran said. "I'll tell them you cooperated. That you're controllable. That killing you would waste a resource."
"Is that true?" Hallam asked.
"Yes," Kieran said.
"And you?" Hallam asked. "Do you believe that?"
"For the moment," Kieran said.
He moved toward the door.
"In your math," Hallam said quietly, "where does that girl fall?"
Kieran didn't turn.
"Off the chart," he said.
He stepped into the hallway, closed the door behind him, and walked toward the stairs.
---
"Elena," he said softly, hand to his ear.
"I'm here," she said. "We heard enough to know this just got ugly."
"Hallam handed over logs," he said. "Names. Transfer points. There's a cluster tied to an address on Holcomb."
"Your building," she said.
"Yes," he said. "And Lena."
Silence.
"Say that again," she said.
"Lena Vos appears in the logs," he said. "Intake twelve, reassignment mid-teens. Bar as civilian cover. No follow-up. She either slipped their net or she's still in it."
"Internal is still on this channel," Noor cut in. "You're aware."
"I assumed," Kieran said.
"Why didn't you report this connection before?" Noor asked. Her tone was sharper now.
"Because I didn't know it existed," he said. "I don't read minds. Only rooms."
"We will need those logs immediately," Regan's voice snapped. "For legal containment."
"You'll get them," he said.
"And Hallam?" Krell's voice asked, finally.
"He's middle," Kieran said. "Cooperative out of guilt. Scared enough to follow instructions. Useful enough to keep breathing. For now."
"For now," Krell echoed. "And Ms. Vos?"
Kieran reached the street.
Holcomb wasn't far, geographically. It had never felt further.
"She is my landlord," he said. "And if she's one of yours too, you've been very quiet about it."
"Compartmentalization works best when it cuts both ways," Krell said. "We'll have to reassess."
"No," Kieran said.
The word came out sharper than he intended.
"Repeat that," Noor said.
"You will not reassess her," Kieran said. "Not yet."
"On what authority?" Regan demanded.
"On mine," he said. "You brought me into this because you needed a vector that could see angles you couldn't. I'm telling you: if you pull on Lena Vos now, everything unravels. She has no conscious connection to Forge. She thinks she's a bartender with a dead father and a bad landlord. Ripping that open creates noise you can't control."
"And leaving her?" Krell asked.
"Gives me leverage," he said. "And you. A hidden variable only I'm tracking. That's what you enjoy, isn't it?"
"You're asking us to let a former Forge asset operate unsupervised in a district you live in," Noor said. "That's not a small request."
"I'm telling you you've already been doing that for years," he said. "Nothing burned. Until now."
"Now that we know, we're responsible," Regan said. "Legally and structurally."
"The moment you stick your fingers into her life, she becomes a live wire," he said. "People notice. Cops. Neighbors. Journalists. You want Kovács sniffing around Holcomb? Because that's how you get her."
Silence.
On the line, he could almost hear Krell thinking.
Finally, the architect said, "What do you propose, Silent/402?"
"You let me handle it," Kieran said. "You flag Vos as a passive legacy asset. No moves without handler-level sign-off. No Internal interviews. No 'routine checks.' No sudden interest from Aegis. She stays what she is to everyone else: a woman running a bar."
"And to you?" Noor asked.
"A problem that hasn't decided what kind it wants to be yet," he said.
"Elena?" Krell asked.
"She's his anchor," Elena said. "Pulling her out, flipping her, or liquidating her will push Holt one way or another, and I don't think you're ready to bet on which. Let him use the information. Quietly."
Regan made a frustrated noise.
"This is not how we manage liability," she said.
"It is now," Krell said.
He sounded almost amused.
"Very well," he said. "Lena Vos is flagged passive. Observation only. No contact beyond existing cover roles. Ms. Kasim, adjust your files. Ms. Regan, update your nightmares."
Noor exhaled.
"Updated," she said.
Regan muttered something too low to transmit cleanly. The word "insane" was in there somewhere.
"And Hallam?" Jonas prompted.
"He lives," Krell said. "For now. Mr. Holt, deliver the logs to Elena. She will coordinate with Aegis on structural mitigations. And then…"
"And then?" Kieran asked.
"And then," Krell said, "we see what you do with your landlord, now that you know she was once a number on a page in a place you remember all too well."
The line went dead.
Kieran stood on the sidewalk, the folder under his arm feeling heavier than it had any right to.
Holcomb was three stops on the tram or twenty minutes on foot. He took neither.
He walked.
---
The bar's sign flickered when he turned onto the street.
Inside, the regulars were in their usual configurations. The TV grumbled about sports. Music hummed low.
Lena stood on her usual patch of floor behind the bar, arguing with a beer tap.
"Don't you start," she said to it. "I haven't got time to—"
She looked up as he came in.
"You again," she said. "You moved in or something?"
"Upstairs," he said.
"Funny," she said. "What are you drinking?"
"Information," he almost said.
"Beer," he said instead.
She tilted her head, studying him a beat longer than usual.
"You look…worse," she said. "Did they dock your pay or your soul?"
"Neither," he said.
"So this is just your natural charm," she said.
He watched her move as she poured. Hands sure, eyes always checking the room's angles in a way that was too practiced to be entirely learned behind a bar.
Forges didn't teach empathy. But they did teach vigilance.
He set the folder on the bar, fingers still on it.
Lena glanced at it.
"That paperwork or emotional baggage?" she asked.
"Both," he said.
She snorted.
"Join the club," she said.
He took the beer.
As the foam settled, he said, "Lena."
"Hmm?" she said.
"How long have you had this place?" he asked.
She frowned, caught off guard by the question.
"Eight years," she said. "Give or take. Before that I was pouring drinks in other people's ideas of bars. Before that, I was… around."
"Around where?" he asked.
She gave him a look.
"You writing a biography?" she asked. "Because I want input on the casting."
"You ever live anywhere…structured?" he asked.
Her brow creased further.
"What does that mean?" she said.
"Orphanage," he said. "Group home. State program."
"How did we get from 'beer' to 'trauma questionnaire'?" she asked.
"Humor me," he said.
She watched him for a second, then shrugged one shoulder.
"Yeah," she said. "There was a place. Not far. Old building. Charitable sign over the door, strict rules inside. Why?"
"How old were you?" he asked.
"You buying the answer a drink?" she said.
"Yes," he said.
She sighed.
"Twelve when I went in," she said. "Fourteen when I left. Give or take. I don't celebrate the anniversary."
"What do you remember?" he asked.
She set the bar towel down more slowly than necessary.
"Why are you asking me this?" she said.
"Because I need to know if they broke you," he said.
Her eyes narrowed.
"Who?" she asked. "The state? The church? The rich lady on the board who liked to pat our heads and tell us how lucky we were?"
"All of them," he said. "Anyone who held the keys."
Her jaw worked once.
"I remember rules," she said. "And locks. And people in nice clothes coming by to look at us like we were…stock. Some of the kids got taken out for 'special opportunities.' Most came back quieter. A few didn't come back at all."
"You left voluntarily?" he asked.
"If you call climbing out a window and not stopping running voluntary," she said. "They called it 'absconding from placement.' I called it 'not waiting to find out what the next special opportunity was.'"
He felt something in his chest ease a fraction.
She ran.
Some wires had burned out, but not all.
"Why the obsession?" she asked. "Did the Internal Compliance Club say something juicy about my past?"
He looked at her.
She held his gaze, chin lifted, daring him to turn her into a problem.
"I got a look at one of their old maps," he said. "The kind they drew with other people's lives. Your name was on it."
Her fingers stilled on the towel.
"What?" she said.
"You were in one of their programs," he said. "Not by your choice. You already know that part. What you don't know is that you weren't just unlucky. You were…selected."
"Selected for what?" she asked. The words came out thin.
"Forge intake," he said. "The Grey variety. Soft conditioning. Social grooming. They were deciding what kind of weapon you might be."
She laughed. It was loud enough that one of the regulars glanced over.
"Look at me," she said. "Big dangerous asset, tending bar, yelling at kegs. Some weapon."
"You ran," he said. "Very few did. Fewer stayed gone."
She paled slightly.
"You're serious," she said.
"Yes," he said.
"And you?" she asked. "You were one of these…weapons?"
"Yes," he said.
"And you still work for them?" she asked.
"Yes," he said.
She picked up a glass and set it down again without wiping it.
"You telling me this to scare me?" she asked. "Because it's working and I hate it."
"I'm telling you this because they know now that I know," he said. "And that puts you in a different part of the board."
"What does that mean?" she asked.
"It means they'll be tempted to pull you back into their orbit," he said. "To test whether any of the old wiring still responds to their signals. Or remove you if they decide you're a risk."
"And you?" she asked. "What are you tempted to do?"
"Stop them," he said.
She blinked.
"Why?" she asked.
"Because you're not theirs anymore," he said. "And you're not equipped for another round."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence," she said dryly.
"It's not about your toughness," he said. "It's about their patience. They don't have any left."
She braced her hands on the bar.
"What do you want from me?" she asked. "Confession? Gratitude? A key to the back door in case they come early?"
"I want you to know," he said. "So when something feels wrong—if they start sniffing around again—you don't think you're paranoid. You think you're targeted. And you call me, not them."
"And if the wrong person hears that?" she asked.
"They already did," he said.
Her expression flickered between anger and fear.
"You brought this into my bar," she said. "Into my building. My home."
"It was already here," he said. "Long before I moved in. I'm just the only one who can see it clearly."
"You expect me to trust you?" she asked.
"No," he said. "But I expect you to keep your eyes open."
She stared at him.
"Get out from behind my bar," she said quietly. "Sit down. Drink your beer. Don't say anything else that makes my nice, simple, miserable life sound like a chapter in one of your classified reports."
He nodded.
He moved to a stool, the folder still under his arm, set it gently on his lap.
The beer tasted like nothing.
On the other end of a line no one in the bar could hear, people who had never set foot on Holcomb Street readjusted their models.
Above them, out of sight, numbers shifted.
Below, in brick and wood and tired neon, Lena Vos moved through her evening, now with a new piece of knowledge lodged like a shard of glass under the skin of her past.
And Kieran Holt, who had been built in one Forge and now lived above another's ghost, drank his beer and tried to calculate, again, which pile of bodies would be smaller if he kept walking this line.