It was clear from her bearing that fifteen minutes was too long. But then she nodded and smoothed her blazer with two flat passes—ritual armor—before setting her headband’s crown. “Good call.”
“Undoubtedly.”
Then her eyes narrowed in thought. “Is there a time constraint I should know about?”
“It will be easier to tell everyone simultaneously,” I demurred.
She rapped her knuckles against the nearest server rack on her way out the door. “Still a shitty liar, Nex.”
“Thank you,” I said, because it was better she think it than know the truth.
And now there were fourteen minutes until the briefing—time to prepare.
14:00
Alerts finished propagating. Doors unlocked for the arriving agents; conference room two warmed its lights. I laid the board: cross-dock map, pallet path, tracer lineage. I noted that Sirena had abandoned her coffee. I did not put her vitals up where anyone else could see.
13:21
Terminology, for me if not for them: the tracked people wereHollows. Not pejorative—descriptive. Faces curated, memories curated, telemetry curated. What remained routed like absence.
12:48
I built the proof lattice into a shareable set of slides for my presentation. UV tracer purchase → museum-prep vendor → invoice chain that dead-ended into a shell with a familiar signature. The shell belonged to a foundation owned byDemetrius Voss. Philanthropist. Litigation hobbyist. A man who bought laws the way other men bought watches. His yacht was called theHelepolis, presumably after the siege towers used in ancient warfare. It translated to “Taker of Cities.”
11:59
Secondary correlation: conservation hardware. Lead/magnetite laminates, Faraday curtains, mantrap vestibule kits—three purchases in the last month, almost certainly post-Sophia. Papered “for RF-sensitive exhibits.” Install specifics unknown; I assumed the cages were meant to keep other Hollows from escaping. Same routing node; same payer.
10:42
Fuel bunkering logs—public, then less so. A tender serviced a vessel listed only by a scientific designation. The tender’s manifest referenced “special collections, temperature controlled.” The Hollows would be moved like art.
09:30
Probability of shipment movement climbed: 0.93 and holding. I did not tell Sirena that number. If I’d said it out loud, she would have argued for immediate action; she would have been correct on ethics and wrong on survival.
08:12
I spooled her slides from Nocturne first—clean and weaponized for the room—then mined beneath them. I would defend her before anyone could question her judgment. I would let them question mine instead.
06:58
Royce pinged counsel into the pre-planning thread. Fine. I added three exhibits the lawyers would understand: the automatic reroute policy on law-enforcement contact, the private security licensing for Voss’s dockside contractor, and the injunction history he files when irritated. All arrows pointed toperimeter until proof.
05:05
I rehearsed the sentence I wouldn’t say in a room:I will not let you be alone.That wasn’t for a briefing.
04:44
I rechecked the pallet-tag beacons. Still active.
03:12
First slide: his face, not his logo. Demetrius Voss, studio-lit, the image every profile used.
I stacked a thin strip of receipts under the jawline—no adjectives, just nouns:
