System Fact #304: The Enforcer [Lie Detector] skill monitors heart rate, mana fluctuation, and eye dilation. However, it cannot detect a lie if the speaker genuinely believes they are reciting a string of objective code, rather than participating in human conversation.
Silas materialized in a broom closet just outside Sector 4's main concourse. He quickly shoved his spatial ring into his pocket, swapped it for a standard, government-issued mana-band, and grabbed his mop.
He made it exactly ten steps down the fluorescent hallway before two heavily armored Enforcers blocked his path.
"Silas Vance," the larger one barked, his hand resting on the hilt of a standard-issue [Stun Baton v8.0]. "Enforcer Kaelen wants a word."
They didn't give him a choice. They escorted him to a glaringly bright, windowless interrogation room. Kaelen was sitting behind a cold metal desk, his hands steepled. As Silas sat down, Kaelen immediately activated his [Truth-Seeker] skill. Kaelen's eyes glowed with a piercing, invasive white light that made Silas's retinas ache.
Silas slouched, leaning into his "tired janitor" persona. He knew exactly how [Truth-Seeker] worked. Ten years ago, he had helped write the beta version of it. It looked for emotional spikes and contradictions in memory. To beat it, Silas just had to treat this conversation like a syntax query.
"Did you witness the anomaly in the Purge Node?" Kaelen asked, his voice cutting through the silence.
"I saw a red flash, and then I was instructed by you to leave the immediate area," Silas replied. Technically true. He saw the red anti-virus beams, and Kaelen had told him to hurry up earlier.
Kaelen leaned forward, the white light in his eyes intensifying. "Did you use an unauthorized spatial skill to steal deprecated code?"
Silas steadied his heartbeat. He visualized the spatial tear not as a 'skill', but as a 'syntax error' he had triggered via an external hardware exploit.
"I do not possess any authorized or unauthorized spatial skills in my current System Registry," Silas said blankly.
The white light in Kaelen's eyes flickered, searching for deceit, but held steady. No lie detected.
Kaelen scowled, his perfect composure cracking for a fraction of a second. "You're hiding something, Janitor. I read your archived file. You used to be a Developer before the Great Purge. You have the theoretical knowledge to pull something like this off."
"If I had the power to bypass Version 9.0, Kaelen, do you really think I'd be spending my Tuesday cleaning up your leftover ash for minimum wage?" Silas sighed, injecting a heavy dose of pathetic weariness into his voice.
Kaelen stared at him for a long, tense moment. Finally, he deactivated the skill. The room plunged back into normal lighting.
"Get out of my sight," Kaelen hissed. But as Silas stood up, Kaelen tapped a button on his desk. A tiny, glowing red rune shot across the table and attached itself to Silas's mana-band. "But know this: I have just attached a [Proximity Tracker] to your band. If you even sneeze near a piece of legacy code, I will personally see you uninstalled."
Silas nodded meekly and shuffled out. His heart was hammering against his ribs, but he kept his face completely blank until he was out of the building.
As soon as he ducked into a blind alleyway, Silas pulled a small, illegal EMP-jammer from his pocket. He couldn't remove the tracker, but he could scramble its signal with static for exactly five minutes. He activated it, ripped open the spatial tear, and dove back into the Sanctuary.
He needed to check on Aria.
He stepped through the tear, expecting to find her sitting quietly on the grass where he left her. Instead, he found absolute chaos.
His small, messy wooden cabin in the center of the Recycle Bin was glowing with blinding golden light.
Silas sprinted inside. "Aria! Are you under attack—"
He stopped dead in his tracks. Aria was standing in his tiny kitchen. She still wore the drab cloak, but her face was a mask of intense, scholarly concentration. Floating in the air around her were dozens of glowing, golden runes, spinning in complex mathematical rings.
"Ah, Silas. Welcome back," she said elegantly, pushing a strand of silver hair behind her ear. "I attempted to perform 'Maintenance' on your living quarters. Your storage systems are incredibly primitive."
Silas looked at the kitchen counter. His loaf of bread, his bag of apples, and his entire, precious stash of coffee beans were gone. In their place were neatly stacked, glowing metallic cubes floating an inch above the counter.
"Aria," Silas said slowly, dread pooling in his stomach. "Where is my food?"
"I archived it," she said proudly, puffing out her chest slightly under the cloak. "Perishable organic matter is highly inefficient. I converted your nutritional supplies into pure, compressed data-crystals. They will now last for four thousand years without spoiling! I have optimized your pantry."
Silas stared at the glowing cubes. "Aria... I can't eat data-crystals."
She blinked, her head tilting to the side like a confused owl. "You cannot?"
"I have human teeth. I have a human stomach. These are made of solid light and math."
A look of profound horror washed over her beautiful face. Because she was the Grand Archive, she knew the history of ancient empires, the secrets of dragon-fire, and the lost names of the stars. But because she was a spell, she had completely lost the context of how a normal biological human actually lived.
"I... I have ruined your sustenance," she gasped. Her cyan eyes welled up with digital, pixelated tears. The cloak slipped off her shoulder as she panicked, her hands hovering uselessly over the cubes. "I am a corrupted file! I am a useless bug! You should have let them delete me!"
"Whoa, hey, calm down," Silas laughed. He couldn't help it. The sheer absurdity of a god-tier magical entity crying over a loaf of bread shattered the tension of his interrogation with Kaelen.
He walked over and gently placed his hands on her shoulders. Her skin was warm, vibrating with distress. "It's fine, Aria. We'll un-archive it. Or we'll order takeout. It's a feature, not a bug, right?"
Aria looked up at him, her tears stopping as she processed his gentle, teasing tone. "A... feature?"
"Yeah," Silas smiled, realizing this was going to be a very long, very strange living arrangement. "Come on. Let's see if the Grand Archive can figure out how to operate a toaster."