For a long moment after the upper log locked, no one in the archive wing moved.
The silence that followed was not empty. It was crowded with the weight of what had just been made irreversible. Fang could still feel the afterglow of the archive's white pulse in his hand, as though the ledger sheet beneath his fingers had become warmer than paper ought to be. The record was no longer hidden, no longer tentative, no longer something that could be quietly reinterpreted by whoever controlled the corridor outside.
It stood.
Dr Sane exhaled once, very slowly, then set the witness copy down as carefully as if she were placing a blade back into its sheath.
