Scientia Sector — Lower Access Route
Night had settled fully over Scientia by the time Levi and Lily reached the lower district.
The further down they went, the less polished the sector became. The bright clean lights of the upper levels gave way to older corridors, maintenance tunnels, and sealed access points built into the bones of the city. The air felt colder here.
Levi stopped in front of an old reinforced door set into the wall of a narrow service passage.
A faded R&D insignia was barely visible beneath years of grime.
"This is it," Lily said.
Levi pulled the key Seraphine had given him from inside his coat and studied the lock.
"Old enough to be forgotten," he muttered.
"Or old enough that people assume no one would be stupid enough to come down here."
Levi slid the key into place.
The mechanism resisted at first, then gave with a heavy click.
The door unlocked.
He pushed it open slowly.
A stale rush of air met them from the darkness beyond.
—
Old R&D Maintenance Corridor — Sublevel Annex Access
The corridor beyond was narrow and lined with old support piping and dead wall panels. Their footsteps echoed more than either of them liked.
Lily formed a small sphere of cold light over her palm, just enough to brighten the path without announcing them to the whole lower sector.
Levi glanced at it.
"Useful."
She gave him a brief look. "Try not to sound surprised."
"I'm not."
He stepped ahead of her and moved deeper into the passage.
Dust had settled everywhere, but not evenly.
That was the first thing he noticed.
Some areas were untouched.
Others had been disturbed.
Someone had come through here before.
He crouched near the floor and ran his fingers lightly over the concrete.
"Boot marks," he said.
Lily stepped beside him. "Recent?"
"Not recent enough to still matter. But not old either."
That was enough to put them both on edge.
The corridor bent sharply to the right and ended at a second sealed door, this one thicker than the first.
A small shattered panel hung beside it.
Levi examined it.
"Looks like someone forced their way in once."
"Can you open it?"
Levi placed one hand against the center seam and drove a charge of lightning through the dead locking mechanism. Sparks spat from the broken panel, and the door shuddered.
Then it slid open halfway with a low grinding sound.
"Good enough," he said.
—
Old Facility Sublevel Annex — Archive Room
The room beyond had survived better than the rest of the site.
Rows of old storage shelves stood in place, some collapsed, others intact. Cabinets lined the far wall. Broken monitors and rusted equipment sat where they had been abandoned years ago. One side of the room had clearly suffered water damage. The other looked like someone had searched through it and left in a hurry.
Lily looked around carefully.
"So Seraphine was right."
Levi stepped farther in.
"That's starting to happen too often tonight."
They spread out.
Lily moved toward the cabinets.
Levi checked the nearest workstations.
Most of the terminals were dead, but paper records still remained in parts of the room — burned at the edges, incomplete, scattered between shelves and drawers.
He found a stack of damaged folders and began sorting through them.
Failed integrations.
Containment instability.
Neurological collapse.
Subject rejection.
Every page confirmed the same thing.
This place had not been shut down because it was unfinished.
It had been shut down because it had gone too far.
Across the room, Lily opened a warped drawer and frowned.
"Levi."
He looked up.
She held up a photograph.
He crossed the room and took it from her hand.
The image was old, slightly warped by age and heat, but still clear enough.
A younger Dr. Kestrel stood in the center, thinner and less severe than the name suggested. Beside him was a boy — maybe early teens — dark-haired, sharp-eyed, standing stiffly like he wasn't used to being photographed.
Levi studied the boy's face.
There was something familiar in it.
He turned the photo over.
Dr. Kestral and son codename icarus
"Father and son."
He slipped it into his coat.
"If Kestrel's son is still alive," Lily said, "and someone continued the research…"
"You think it's him."
"It would make sense."
Maybe.
But Levi wasn't ready to settle on that yet.
"Or someone wants it to make sense," he said.
Lily looked at him.
"That sounds like Seraphine talking."
"No," Levi replied. "Think about it, it makes too much sense and in my experiece the easiest lies to tell are the ones we want to believe."
—
Old Facility Sublevel Annex — Secondary Storage
They moved deeper into the annex.
The farther back they went, the more disturbed the area looked.
Open drawers.
Missing files.
Empty cases.
A transport cart left overturned against the wall.
Then Levi stopped.
Along the far side of the room sat four black storage cases marked with an older insignia.
Sealed.
Untouched.
He and Lily exchanged a look.
"So that's what she meant," Lily said.
Levi approached slowly.
The cases were heavy and reinforced, their locks still intact despite the age.
"Do we open them?"
Lily frowned. "She specifically told us not to do it alone."
Levi rested a hand lightly against the nearest lid.
No heat.
No hum.
No obvious trap.
Still, something about the cases felt wrong.
Not active.
Just dense.
Important.
He pulled his hand away.
"Not yet."
That answer surprised Lily, though she hid it well.
Instead, she stepped toward a nearby shelf and started digging through the remaining records. Most were useless fragments, but one page caught her eye.
A partial inventory transfer.
Names missing.
Destinations redacted.
But several items had been marked as relocated after the fire.
One line near the bottom remained legible:
Prototype Frameworks — recovered by authorized branch captain oversight
Lily's eyes narrowed.
"Levi."
He came over and took the sheet from her.
"Authorized branch captain oversight," he read aloud.
"Soren," Lily said.
"Maybe."
She gave him a look. "You really enjoy leaving room for people not to be guilty."
"No," Levi said. "I enjoy being right."
That was fair.
He folded the page and kept it with the photograph.
That was proof.
Not enough to expose the whole network.
But enough to know this wasn't just old history buried underground.
Someone in the present had been benefiting from it.
—
Old Facility Sublevel Annex — Main Lab Threshold
At the far end of the room, a blast door hung partially open.
The metal around it was blackened.
Levi stepped closer and looked through the opening.
The chamber beyond was larger.
And darker.
Old framework rigs still hung from the ceiling.
Containment columns stood cracked along the walls.
A central operating platform sat in the middle of the room, surrounded by scorched metal flooring.
Even dead, the place felt wrong.
Lily stopped beside him.
"This had to be the core lab."
Levi's eyes moved slowly over the room.
"Yeah."
Then he saw it.
A crest etched into the side of one broken console.
Not R&D.
Not Medical.
Apprehension Core.
Lily saw it a second later.
"What would Apprehension be doing down here?"
Levi's expression hardened.
"Backing it."
That possibility sat heavily between them.
Before either could say more, a faint metallic sound echoed from somewhere deeper inside the annex.
Not from settling debris.
A footstep.
Both of them went still.
Lily extinguished the light over her palm at once.
Levi's hand dropped to his blade.
Another sound.
Closer this time.
Someone else was down here.
—
Captain Soren's Office — Internal Security Feed
Soren stood in silence, watching the dead camera feeds tied to the old sublevel route.
No visuals.
No audio.
Nothing but static from the old annex grid.
His expression darkened.
That alone told him enough.
They had gotten in.
His hand tightened slightly at his side.
If Levi and Lily found the wrong things too early, years of careful separation would start collapsing at once.
And Seraphine—
He already knew she had helped them.
He didn't have proof yet.
But he knew.
Which meant the problem in Scientia was no longer just two curious Combat Core officers.
It was internal.
And internal problems had to be dealt with carefully.