The compliance alert was still echoing in Caro's mind as she was escorted out of the archive room under strict silence, the senior officer walking half a step behind her as if she were already a confirmed violation rather than a suspect. Her clearance badge was rescanned twice without explanation, each beep louder than it should have been, and the final green light felt less like permission and more like surveillance approval. No one spoke during the walk back through the corridor, but Caro could feel the building itself shifting around her, as though Blackridge had already updated its memory of her into something dangerous. Behind them, the locked archive door remained sealed, holding her near-correction attempt like evidence frozen in time.
And then, suddenly, she was released.
