The municipal data exchange sits beneath a transit artery, all coolant vapor and dim civic branding. Aurora arrives with Vesper and Revenant; nobody remains behind at the clinic.
A sealed terminal accepts the preserved evidence package and mirrors its corporate chain into encrypted civic records. Vesper’s protected memory layer stays isolated, marked stable.
The correlation engine finds a redacted oversight archive buried beneath Kyoto biotech compliance filings. Its authorization history is incomplete, but the missing entries carry matching timestamps.
Vesper
That archive is where they documented who approved the alterations. If it opens, we may finally have the chain above the research division.
A countdown ignites across the terminal: external access purges in nine minutes. The exchange begins assembling a temporary read path through municipal mirrors.
Revenant
Then we correlate before the window closes. No administrator key, no active channel, just the record of who built the cage.
The archive remains encrypted behind three civic verification layers. Revenant watches the countdown, Vesper guards her stable diagnostic feed, and the next access decision waits on Aurora.