Mara knew something was wrong when the elevator skipped her floor.
It didn’t stop. Didn’t even slow. Just slid past Level 4 as if it had never been programmed to care. Her badge reader chimed once, polite and final, and the display blinked ACCESS REVOKED in a color that pretended to be neutral.
The doors stayed closed.
“System error,” she said, to no one in particular. Saying it out loud felt like superstition. As if naming it might force the universe to correct itself.
The elevator descended.
Basement levels were never labeled properly. Not on public schematics. B1, B2, B3 were placeholders, the way “miscellaneous” is a placeholder in accounting. You only ended up here if someone else had decided you should.
When the doors opened, the air changed. Cooler. Drier. Concrete and ozone. The kind of space where conversations were not recorded because recording implied accountability.
Two security officers waited. No names on their uniforms. No visible weapons. That was the point.
“Mara Ellison,” one said, already holding her badge between two fingers like something found at a crime scene. “We need to have a conversation.”
She almost laughed. Conversations were for equals. This was an extraction.
They led her down a corridor that looked unfinished by design. Exposed conduit. Camera domes placed just slightly too close together, overlapping fields of view. Not surveillance for safety. Surveillance for certainty.
They sat her at a metal table bolted to the floor.
No mirror. No glass. Just a wall-mounted screen that flickered to life without introduction.
Her own face appeared. Earlier that morning. Entering the building. Timestamped. Then another clip. Her workstation. Her hands moving across the desk, lifting a thin folder she had not realized was visible from that angle.
The Traveler’s file.
“You understand the concern,” the other officer said. His voice was almost kind. “Your access pattern changed.”
Mara leaned back. Forced her breathing to slow. “Because my work changed.”
“No,” he replied. “Because your questions did.”
The screen shifted. A new feed. Not archival. Live.
The Traveler sat alone in a white room. No markings. No clock. The camera angle was high, clinical, the way you film something you don’t intend to humanize. He was tapping his fingers against his knee, counting silently. She knew that rhythm. He did it when he was trying to remember where he was.
Her jaw tightened.
“You’re monitoring him without consent,” she said.
The first officer smiled. “Consent is contextual.”
“This is a threat,” Mara said.
“This,” he corrected, “is containment.”
They slid a document across the table. Not paper. Polymer. Embedded seal. The kind that disintegrated if photographed.
NOTICE OF REASSIGNMENT
CLEARANCE STATUS: TERMINATED
Her badge was placed on top of it. No ceremony.
“You’re done here,” the officer said. “Effective immediately.”
Mara didn’t look down. She was watching the screen. The Traveler shifted in his chair, confused now. A technician entered the frame, too quickly. Adjusted something on the wall. The Traveler flinched.
“Why show me this?” she asked quietly.
“Because you care,” the officer said. “And because caring is leverage.”
The screen went dark.
Silence expanded. Heavy. Intentional.
She stood. No one stopped her.
As they escorted her back toward the elevator, her wrist vibrated once. Then again.
A text message. Unknown number.
Don’t react.
Badge loss was inevitable.
Check the seam.
Halston.
Her pulse jumped, but she kept her face blank. Cameras loved reactions. She reached the elevator and leaned casually against the wall as it began its ascent.
The seam.
Her badge. She picked it up from the table where they had left it, running her thumb along the edge. There it was. A hairline split that hadn’t been there that morning. Inside, something thin and flexible, fused between layers.
A message. Old-fashioned. Analog. Untraceable.
The elevator chimed. Level 1.
Her phone vibrated again.
You have 48 hours.
LAC 3 is not a place. It is a lock.
She stepped out into the lobby. Sunlight. Normal people. Coffee cups. Laughter that sounded obscene after concrete and cameras.
Behind her, somewhere below, the system settled back into its routines. Files reordered. Flags raised. Risk reduced.
They thought they had contained the problem.
Mara walked through the revolving doors and into the street, the city loud and indifferent around her.
Forty-eight hours.
And now she knew.
Case Record
File: 002
Title: Containment Level
What Happened
Mara attempted to access CID_PROTOCOL. Her permissions shifted in real time. Security intervened and her clearance was revoked. The Traveler was used as leverage. Deliberately.
What It Proves
Access is being actively controlled by people, not policy.
Worlds in Play
TD bureaucracy
Custodian fingerprints
Education Payload
Protocol is not just safety. It is power.
Status
LAC-3 is not a place. It is a lock.
Next file forthcoming. The system does not like being watched.