The file should have been locked forever.
Red banner.
Black tag.
Status: DECEASED.
Noah stared at it, jaw tight. "This is your master record."
Aria didn't need him to explain. She recognized the formatting instantly—the internal layout, the checksum style, the phrasing no civilian system ever used.
Her file.
---
He ran a comparison.
Archived version: frozen, untouched, clean.
Live mirror: active, quietly updated.
"Someone cloned it," Noah said. "Or never stopped maintaining it."
Aria scrolled.
Biometrics refreshed six months ago.
Psych profile recalibrated two weeks ago.
Risk model… current.
"They're tracking me as if I never left," Noah said.
"They're tracking me because I left," Aria replied.
---
One line stood out.
Operational Status: Unresolved
Not active.
Not terminated.
Unresolved.
"That's not a mistake," Noah said.
"No," Aria agreed. "That's a holding pattern."
---
She checked the access logs.
Read-only touches from different departments.
No write permissions.
No single owner.
"They've decentralized responsibility," Noah said. "So no one can be blamed."
"So no one can stop it," Aria said.
---
At the bottom of the file sat a note she didn't remember writing.
If subject reappears, escalate quietly.
Timestamped after her death.
Auth key: valid.
Her signature.
Her stomach tightened.
"I didn't authorize this," she said.
Noah's voice was low. "Then someone knew you well enough to write like you."
---
She closed the file.
"They didn't kill me," she said slowly.
"They preserved me."
Noah exhaled. "As what?"
Aria looked up, eyes steady.
"As a contingency," she said.