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Ghar turns his head sharply while driving another attacker back with his blade. “Anita!”

“I see the collar!”

“That was not about the collar.”

“No, it was about the giant pile of secret First Architect files the truth-suppression cult has been hoarding like a dragon with a dissertation problem.”

Brakk’s voice echoes from somewhere in the smoke. “I’m starting to think this rescue mission has too many subplots!”

I jam a stabilizer spike from my scanner kit into the edge of the containment field. The field snaps angrily around it, sending a jolt through my fingers. Pain runs up my arm, bright and nasty. I hiss through my teeth and adjust the scanner frequency until the spike stops glowing red.

Sira watches me carefully.

“I’m fine,” I tell her before she can try to ask.

The collar’s interface opens in layers, each one uglier than the last. The Choir has tied Sira’s restraint to three triggers: proximity breach, remote command, and archive resonance overload. The last one makes my stomach drop. If Rolaev decides the archive is being taken beyond her control, she can use the very signal we carry to hurt Sira.

I look toward the command slab again.

The files are still visible.

I should ignore them.

I absolutely do not.

With one hand working the collar and the other hand stretched toward the console, I patch my scanner into the Choir slab through the containment field’s maintenance channel. The system recognizes the archive core signature and opens a partial file tree.

The headings unfold in neat, sterile columns.

SEL ARIS INCIDENT.

MARRIT’S WELL DISCLOSURE FAILURE.

PI’RELL DEVOTIONAL HABITAT RESPONSE.

FIRST ARCHITECT FRAGMENT INDEX.

PRECURSOR SUPPRESSION CYCLE COMPARISON.

PLAYFUL CREATION CYCLE TRANSLATIONS.

My breath catches.

Rolaev was not bluffing.

The Choir has been collecting hidden archive fragments for decades. They have cross-referenced incidents, modeled public psychological response, categorized religious collapses, tracked violence following partial disclosure, and built suppression doctrine around the results. This is not a power grab disguised as piety. That would be easier to hate cleanly. Rolaev ’s movement has built an entire machinery of secrecy around the belief that certain truths function like weapons once released.

I hate that the evidence looks organized.

I hate that it looks careful.

I hate that none of that makes Sira’s collar less monstrous.

Ghar crashes into the platform edge beside me, breathing hard, blood streaking his chest where his wound has reopened. He puts himself between me and two advancing soldiers, sidearm firing twice through the thinning smoke.

“Status,” he demands.

“Sira’s collar is tied to the archive signal.”