A Line Not Meant to Be Crossed
Harry waited until the doors sealed.
Only when the last survivor stepped into the Gate Three corridor and the Station of Records disengaged its primary archive rings did he allow himself to move.
The Supervisor Deck felt different now.
Not hostile. Not malfunctioning.
Just… narrower.
Displays that once showed layered diagnostics now presented flattened summaries. Where there had been depth, there was abstraction. Where there had been cause-and-effect chains, there were outcomes without explanation.
Harry hated outcomes without context.
He activated a private console, one not officially assigned to Sector Nine oversight. It was old, its interface bare-bones, its access keys inherited rather than issued.
Legacy access.
The CNC didn't like legacy anything.
"Begin parallel capture," Harry murmured.
The console hesitated.
Then complied.
Data began flowing—not from active systems, but from residual buffers. Echoes of what had already happened. Shadows of processes the Station believed complete.
Harry wasn't trying to override the Station of Records.
He was doing something far more dangerous.
He was listening after it had finished speaking.
The first anomaly appeared almost immediately.
SUBJECT: RAGHU
FLAG TYPE: CONTINUITY INTERFERENCE
SOURCE: UNRESOLVED
Harry exhaled slowly.
There it was again.
Not an error. Not corruption.
Interference.
He cross-referenced the tag with older datasets. Pocket logs. Corridor trials. Descent metrics. The Crucible.
Every instance aligned around one detail.
The system adjusted before Raghu acted.
That was backward.
Harry leaned closer, eyes scanning the timestamps. In multiple cases, environmental parameters had shifted milliseconds ahead of Raghu's movement. Not prediction. Not reaction.
Accommodation.
"That's not influence," Harry whispered. "That's anticipation."
A soft chime sounded behind him.
Harry didn't turn.
"I know you're not supposed to be in that layer," came a calm voice.
Harry closed the capture window without looking up. "Then pretend you didn't see me."
Silence stretched.
Then: "You know I can't."
Harry finally turned.
Nathan Varr stood near the entrance, hands clasped behind his back, posture relaxed in a way that suggested complete confidence in the rules protecting him.
"You crossed an internal boundary," Nathan said mildly. "The system logged it."
Harry nodded once. "I expected it would."
Nathan tilted his head. "Then why do it?"
Harry gestured toward the dormant displays. "Because if I didn't, the next thing the Station removes won't be a candidate."
Nathan frowned. "You're speculating."
"No," Harry replied quietly. "I'm pattern matching."
He re-opened the console just long enough to project a single still image between them.
Jorik Den's final record.
Not the failure classification.
The absence beneath it.
Nathan's gaze sharpened. "That's not a deletion marker."
"No," Harry said. "It's a relocation marker."
Nathan said nothing.
"You know what the Station does when it doesn't want something lost," Harry continued. "It doesn't erase. It stores."
Nathan exhaled slowly. "You're implying the Station is collecting failures."
"I'm implying it's collecting incompatibilities."
A beat.
"And Raghu?" Nathan asked.
Harry hesitated. Just long enough to be honest.
"He's neither," he said. "That's what scares me."
Nathan studied the image, then the darkened feeds beyond it. "You can't act on this."
"I'm not," Harry replied. "I'm recording."
"That's the same thing," Nathan said flatly.
Harry met his eyes. "No. Acting changes outcomes. Recording preserves leverage."
Nathan's expression hardened. "The CNC won't protect you if this escalates."
Harry gave a thin smile. "I'm not trying to be protected."
He reached back to the console and input a final command.
LEGACY TRACE ENABLED
SCOPE: PASSIVE
DURATION: UNTIL TERMINATION
The system accepted it.
Quietly.
Nathan watched, jaw tight. "You've just tied your fate to a variable the train itself hasn't classified."
Harry shrugged. "Better than tying it to silence."
Nathan stepped back. "If this goes wrong—"
"It will," Harry said.
Nathan stopped at the door. "Then why—"
"Because someone needs to remember what the Station decides to forget."
The door slid shut.
Harry turned back to the console.
One feed remained active.
Raghu.
The candidate stood at the threshold of Gate Three, posture calm, pulse steady. The corridor ahead warped subtly, its parameters shifting before Raghu even took a step.
Harry watched the system bend around him.
And for the first time since becoming a Supervisor, Harry made a decision that had nothing to do with protocol.
He whispered, to no one and nothing:
"Don't let them turn you into an answer."
The train hummed softly in reply.
Whether in agreement or warning, Harry couldn't tell.
But the trace remained active.
And once something was recorded, it could not be completely erased.