Vale leans into the isolated console without touching Reina’s bridge. Half-closed security shutters seal the relay station, trapping Razor and the team inside while rain-muted transit noise fades beyond.
Tomas Vale
Venn built a false emergency protocol into Saint Marrow’s archive. Trigger it, and the system reports a containment breach while silently rewriting the originals.
Gwen Armitage
Then give me the preservation path. I want the original files intact, with a chain of custody that survives whatever story Venn tells afterward.
Vale brings up a maintenance lattice on the isolated display. Three dead channels illuminate beneath the archive route, each marked for emergency recovery and automatic evidence destruction.
Reina Sato
His claim matches the shard’s copied exchange. The false protocol sits above the access token, but I can isolate its reporting layer before we open anything.
Tomas Vale
Use the recovery channel, not the intake command. It copies the originals to a sealed buffer before the emergency protocol knows the archive was entered.
Milo shifts against his restraints near the entrance. Gwen keeps him covered while Vesper watches the locked shutters, and Reina waits over the dormant shard for Razor’s next move.