V-Seventeen stayed inside the truck after Cain's channel closed, leaving Vell with a number he could neither reject nor explain. Yenna drove toward the belt while checking every freight mirror for Directorate vehicles.
"Do you know what he called you?" she asked, taking the eastern ramp without reducing speed.
"No," Vell replied, keeping pressure over the cut in his arm, "but the stolen archive had a Project V directory."
That answer gave her the useful part without inventing certainty about Cain's private label. She accepted it for the drive, then changed frequencies to warn Blackforge before Cain's bounty hunters reached the workshop.
"Shut the front room and move every patient record," Yenna ordered through the receiver, "nobody stays for furniture, tools, or Vell's crooked chair."
