The handle turned.

Saffi pressed both hands flat to the front of her shirt. The thin folder was a cold rectangle against her skin. Raizen tried to make his heart slow down. The monitor tattled on him with each fast beep.

The door slid open.

Alteea.

She leaned on the frame for a second, looking between the two of them, then at the monitor, then at Saffi's very suspicious posture.

"Hm" she said. "Vital signs up, door locked, Saffi looking like she swallowed a bomb. Either you two finally confessed something, or my day got interesting."

Saffi made a sound that sounded like a squeak. "I did not confess anything"

"Good to know" Alteea said, letting the door close behind her. "Because I am about to ask a question that sounds like an accusation."

She walked to the foot of the bed and stopped. For once, she did not rush into a joke. Her eyes were sharper than her voice.

"Which one of you took a classified file from the archive?"

The room went quiet in a different way.

Raizen opened his mouth. "It was -"

"Ah ah" Alteea lifted a finger without looking at him. "Raizen, you are sweet, but you were stuck in this bed. You did not bypass three cameras and the door."

Her gaze moved to Saffi.

Saffi stood straighter, then smaller. "I... borrowed it"

"From the deepest shelf of the spiral" Alteea said. "And you did it right after you asked me about some reports."

She sighed, but there was no anger in it. Just tired relief.

"I was going to trigger a code red" she said. "I didn't, because I had a very short list of suspects. And my favorite one is standing in front of me trying not to faint."

"I can explain" Saffi said.

"I know you can" Alteea said. "That is why I am here."

She took a tablet from under her arm and tapped it on with her thumb. A sheet lit up with lines and boxes. She set it on Raizen's blanket where they could both see.

The heading was the same Saffi had shown him.

⍊𝙹∷ Field report 00.

"Years ago" Alteea said, "I found two things about this mission that the Council did not burn."

Her finger tapped two points on the screen.

"One" she said. "A medical report. A case study on a scientist whose right arm no longer matched any known tissue sample. Two, a report. That second one is what you stole."

Saffi swallowed. "I thought nobody cared."

"Nobody cared because almost nobody knew it existed" Alteea said. "The medical report was different. It didn't stay long. It wasn't even copied once, just pulled out of the Lighthouse entirely."

"Pulled where?" Raizen asked.

Alteea's mouth thinned. "Up. Somewhere above the Council."

"There's above the Council!?"

"They have their fingers in every big research facility on the planet. When something strange appears, they send a quiet little request. We send everything. The Council nods because they like being contacted by important tables."

She made a small face.

"They call themselves Echelon" she added. "Global elite of studies. Best minds, biggest egos.

"So they erased it?"

"They didn't erase the report. They simply took it for themselves."

"So you only saw it once" Saffi said.

Alteea nodded. For the first time, she looked tired.

"I had fifteen minutes with a corrupted scan" she said. "Enough to know the survivor's arm had stopped behaving like normal matter. No disease. No rot. Just a field signature inverted and frozen into him. Then the access vanished. Since then, I have been trying to find the other half of the story."

Her eyes moved to Saffi.

"The cause" she said. "The test. The why. And today, when I finally narrow the archive down to a shelf and go to pull it… it's gone."

Saffi's voice dropped to almost nothing. "Sorry"

Alteea shook her head. "I am not angry. I'm impressed. No one told you what to look for, yet you picked the exact page that has been driving me insane for eight years."

"It was more an accident-" Saffi started whispering

A small smile tugged at Alteea's mouth.

"If I wouldn't have liked you before" she added. "I'd have to start now."

Saffi blinked, stunned. "You aren't going to report?"

"Of course not! Who do you think I am!? A tyrant?"

Raizen made a squinted face at that.

Alteea sat on the chair by Raizen's bed and crossed her legs, tablet balanced on her knee. The joking edge softened. What was left felt heavier.

"I heard about Kenzo" she said.

Raizen met her eyes. "The market? You heard already?"

"Yes" Alteea said. "Never underestimate me. Disturbance in the Underworks. Hammer god almost strangling a professor at a food stall."

Saffi's head snapped toward him. "Professor?"

"Eiden" Raizen said.

Alteea nodded. "Eiden. What a busy little thread he is."

"Kenzo thinks he is responsible for what happened up there" Raizen said.

"Kenzo is not wrong to be angry" Alteea answered. "He lost his people. The Council never gave him answers. Just a stamp that says classified."

Raizen thought of Obi, clutching that old slate with a picture of parents. Of Eiden sitting against the wall, eyes hollow, telling them about a weapon that went wrong.

"Eiden says the device malfunctioned" Raizen said.

Alteea watched his face. "And you believe him"

He thought about it. About the calm in Eiden's voice, the way he had worn guilt like an old coat, the way his hand had looked when the glove came off. Not rotten. Not dead. Just different. Marked by something bigger than a simple failure.

"I don't know" he said. "He doesn't feel like a liar. But he is not telling everything."

"Good" Alteea said softly. "Keep that doubt."

She flicked to another page on the tablet. A graph, similar to the one Saffi had shown, appeared. Peaks and dips, but the line sat mostly below the middle.

"I did not have your file" she told Saffi. "But I managed to pull some fragments still stored in the Lighthouse cache. Between what I saw years ago and what you just stole, I can guess enough."

She looked at both of them.

"The test device did not malfunction" she said. "The field behaved exactly how it should. Everything alive inside that bubble lost its hold on... whatever keeps us standing."

Saffi's hands tightened at her sides.

"Fourteen people" she said quietly.

"Fourteen people" Alteea repeated. "No broken bones. No burns. No Nyx claws. Just death. Nyxes did not attack because they recognized something worse than them. That is what scares me."

The room felt colder. The hospital air hummed, but Raizen barely heard it.

"And the survivor" he said. "Eiden."

Alteea's gaze sharpened. "You have seen his arm."

He nodded.

"Gray" he said. "Like stone that still moves. With gold lines through it."

Alteea exhaled slowly. "The scan I saw years ago matches that. The tissue is not dead. It is just carrying a different pattern now."

"Is he dangerous?" Saffi asked.

"Everyone is dangerous" Alteea answered. "He is just more... interesting."

She uncrossed her legs and leaned her elbows on her knees, looking at Raizen and Saffi like they were students and conspirators at the same time.

"Listen carefully" she said. "The Council does not know what this other field really is. Echelon has the only complete medical record. I have cause data. Saffi has the missing piece. And you, Raizen, have talked to the man in the middle."

"Obi too" Raizen said. "He has the right to know."

"He will. Kenzo, as well. But if he charges in now, it will be with a hammer, not a plan. We need a plan first."

She let that sit for a moment.

"I should drag you both out of this" she said. "You are too young and too alive to carry these things. But you already picked your side when you went to Eiden instead of pretending you never heard about the expedition."

Raizen glanced at Saffi. She looked guilty, worried, and more stubborn than scared.

"It is not just Eiden" he said. "It is Obi. It is Kenzo. If we do nothing, they will go alone."

"Exactly" Alteea said. "So, we don't do nothing."

She stood, smoothing her coat.

"From this moment" she said, "anything you hear from Eiden, anything you learn about the mountain, you bring to me. No solo heroics, no secret revenge missions. We're already breaking enough rules."

"You are asking us to join you in illegal research?" Raizen said.

Alteea smiled, a small tired thing with teeth. "Consider it… An unpaid internship."

Saffi let out a breath that might have been half a laugh.

"And the file?" Saffi asked. "You want it back, right?"

"Keep it for now" Alteea said. "Study it. Hide it somewhere that's not under your bra, for the file's sake. We will put it back when we have copies and notes and a better idea of what we are facing."

Saffi nodded, shoulders easing a little.

Alteea stepped closer to the bed. Her usual playful air dimmed at the edges. For a second, she looked like the woman who had watched a containment ring explode and a girl fall.

She put one hand on the rail, leaned in so only Raizen could hear.

Her eyes were very clear.

"Raizen" she said quietly. "That weapon did not malfunction."

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