“Yeah.” No hesitation, no moral hand-wringing—just a professional acknowledgement that violence might be necessary. “Let's get this done.”
The Black Archivewas housed in a building that looked like every other bureaucratic structure in London. Grey. Utilitarian.Designed to be forgotten. Perfect cover for storing the secrets nobody wanted remembered.
Troy disabled the perimeter alarm with tools that looked simple but required expert timing. Twelve seconds. He did it in ten.
We entered through the service entrance and moved through corridors that smelled of old paper and institutional cleaning products. My memory guided us past cameras, through blind spots, around patrol routes.
“Left here,” I whispered. “Stairs down, two flights, then a corridor extending fifty metres to the archive room.”
We moved like ghosts. Dom's size should have made stealth impossible, but he'd spent years learning to be quiet when it mattered, and Troy was professional, trained to silence. I was just paranoid enough to make it instinct.
The archive room door was steel, fitted with an electronic lock and a backup mechanical system. Troy worked on it while Dom and I watched the approaches.
“How long?” Dom asked quietly.
“Three minutes. Maybe less.” Troy's hands moved with methodical patience.
The lock clicked. Troy pulled the door open carefully—no alarms, no additional security triggered.
Inside was exactly what I'd expected: rows of shelving, boxes organised by an alphanumeric system that had been obsolete for twenty years, and fluorescent lights that flickered and hummed overhead.
“The Rourke case would be here,” I said, moving down the aisle and following the system my memory had reconstructed from Webb's reference codes. “Section R. Subsection for sealed materials from three years ago.”
I found it. A cardboard box with Lily's name written on the label in permanent marker—the mundane bureaucracy of a destroyed life.
Dom's hands shook as he lifted it down. He set it on the table and opened it with a reverence that hurt to witness.
Inside were evidence bags, photographs, and reports. Everything that should have been in the official file, everything that had been removed.
Dom pulled out the first photograph. A crime scene image. Lily's body positioned in a way that immediately contradicted the official narrative—the angles were wrong, the staging obvious once you knew to look for it.
“This proves she was moved,” Dom said, his voice rough.
I photographed everything with my phone before moving to another section of the archive.
Then I found it.
Crawford, James. Detective Inspector.
My partner's case.
I opened it with hands that weren't quite steady anymore.
Inside were a ballistics report showing the bullet that killed James didn't match his service weapon, a witness statement describing a black sedan leaving the scene, and crime scene photographs proving the angle was wrong for a suicide.
And one more thing. A note, in James's handwriting, written the day before he died.
If you're reading this, I'm dead. Harrow ordered a hit on a legal aid attorney. Name: Lily Rourke. Evidence attached. She saw too much—documented judicial corruption involving Judge Carolyn Reeves.Harrow is protecting someone. Unknown who. But high level. Powerful enough to order murders.
If I don't survive, find them. Expose this.
—J
James had known. He'd been investigating Lily's case, trying to protect the evidence, and they'd killed him for it—made it look like guilt, like corruption, like he'd been the problem instead of the solution.
“Cal.” Dom's voice cut through the rage building in my chest. “We need to move. Someone's coming.”
I looked up. Footsteps in the corridor, multiple people moving with purpose.
