The walk to Internal Operations felt shorter than it should've.
Not because the corridors changed.
Because my body had.
After Hale's chamber, everything inside the walls felt thinner — like the Accord had peeled back a layer of safety and I'd realized it was only paint.
Jalen stayed to my left. Not touching. Not crowding. Just close enough that if I stumbled, he'd catch me without anyone seeing.
Cael moved a half-step behind us, right flank, eyes scanning the junctions like he expected the wall to split open again. He didn't look at me often, but I felt him tracking me anyway — the way someone watches a storm they're trying not to fear.
Ahead, Kerris waited at the threshold of the briefing corridor.
Her posture was rigid. Scar along her jaw faintly raised under the harsh overhead light.
She didn't ask if I was okay.
She just looked at me and read whatever changed in my face.
"Inside," she said.
No warmth.
But no cruelty either.
Just that ruthless kind of care that kept you alive.
The doors sealed behind us with the same soft exhale as Hale's chamber.
Like the building was breathing.
The Briefing Room wasn't large.
It didn't need to be.
The walls were slate-black instead of white, as if someone decided honesty was better than pretending neutrality. A long metal table sat in the center. Around it, eight chairs — but only seven were occupied.
The empty one hit like a bruise.
Tomas's chair.
No one spoke about it.
Because saying his name in here would have made him real again, and the Accord didn't like reality unless it could be filed.
Elias sat stiff-backed at the far end, tablet already open, lenses catching faint reflections of data. Mateo sat beside him, jaw tight, hands folded like he was holding something inside his palms that might spill if he loosened them.
Anya leaned against the wall instead of sitting, rifle slung, gaze hard and glassy.
A door at the front of the room opened.
Administrator Hale entered.
Behind her: two Wardens.
Behind them: a screen panel slid down from the ceiling with a soft mechanical hum.
Hale didn't greet us.
She didn't need to.
She placed a slate on the table and tapped once.
The screen flared to life.
A map appeared.
Not the wasteland grid we'd followed before.
Not the pale marker arcs Elias used.
This was a deeper map.
Old.
Layered.
Marked with thick black bands and red zones like wounds.
At the center of one red zone: a symbol I'd never seen.
A circle split by a vertical line.
And beneath it, a single word in Accord script:
CHASM.
I didn't realize my fingers had curled until my nails bit into my palm.
Mateo's breathing changed.
Elias's shoulders rose by a fraction.
Jalen didn't move — but his jaw flexed once, hard.
Cael stared at the symbol like it had stared at him first.
Kerris's voice was low. "That's not our route."
"No," Hale agreed.
Her eyes — pale, glacial blue — slid over us as if counting.
"And it will not become your route."
She tapped the slate again.
The map zoomed in.
The red zone expanded.
A jagged cut in the earth appeared — long and irregular, like something had ripped the world open and walked away.
A black band surrounded it.
A border.
Not a wall.
A warning.
"This zone," Hale said, "has consumed nine units in the last twelve months."
Mateo's fingers tightened together.
Anya's expression didn't change, but her grip on her rifle shifted.
Elias spoke carefully. "Nine units… confirmed casualties?"
"Confirmed loss of signal," Hale corrected.
"Confirmed non-return."
She let that sit.
Because non-return sounded less like death and more like failure.
And failure was something the Accord could blame on you.
Kerris leaned forward. "Why deploy us?"
Hale's gaze flicked to her.
"Because you survive."
The words landed clean and cold.
I felt my stomach drop like a floor giving way.
Hale tapped again.
The screen changed.
A grainy image appeared.
Not a creature.
Not fog.
Not stone.
A footprint.
It was enormous — pressed into pale rock like clay. Deep enough to hold shadow.
The edges were wrong.
Not human.
Not animal.
Five long impressions, splayed wide.
Too symmetrical.
Too deliberate.
Like whatever made it wanted to be seen.
A quiet sound left Mateo — not a word, not a gasp, something closer to disbelief.
Elias's voice went thin. "Scale estimate?"
Hale's eyes didn't move. "We don't estimate."
She tapped again.
A second image.
A third.
Footprints, spaced far apart.
A trail leading straight toward the black slit of the CHASM zone.
Then a fourth image.
A shape at the edge of the frame — blurred, half-hidden by dust.
But the silhouette…
Too tall.
Too narrow.
A ridge line of shoulders that didn't sit like bone.
Something like antlers — or branches — or broken metal — rising from its head.
My mouth went dry.
Jalen muttered, "That's not a rock creature."
"No," Hale said, as if pleased we'd noticed.
"This is new."
Kerris's voice stayed steady, but I saw the tension in her neck. "What's the objective."
Hale turned slightly, and the light caught the silver threading at her temples.
"Extraction."
The room went still.
Mateo frowned. "Extraction of what."
Hale's gaze shifted.
And landed on me.
Not long.
Just enough.
My skin prickled.
Then she looked away like I was a number again.
"Signal beacons," she said. "Placed by prior units. We need them recovered."
Elias blinked. "That's—"
"Not the full objective," Hale interrupted.
She tapped the slate again.
A new file opened.
A single word appeared on the screen:
ANCHOR.
My lungs stopped for half a second.
Then—
Below it:
PHASE II DEPLOYMENT.
My pulse hammered so loud I could hear it in my ears.
Kerris's eyes flicked to me, quick and sharp.
Jalen's head turned like a weapon tracking a target.
Cael's gaze locked on Hale, ice-cold.
Hale didn't react to any of it.
She didn't need to.
She let the words do what Wardens never could.
"Unit Seventeen," Hale said, voice calm, "will enter the CHASM zone at first light."
Jalen spoke before Kerris could.
"Why?"
Hale's eyes met his.
Not with anger.
With interest.
"Because," she said, "we need to know whether the anomaly travels with the unit… or originates from the terrain."
My throat tightened.
Anomaly.
Me.
Jalen's voice dropped, dangerous. "Say her name."
The air in the room sharpened.
Even the Wardens shifted, almost imperceptibly.
Hale smiled faintly.
A controlled expression, practiced and thin.
"Imara Vale," she said, like she was labeling a specimen.
My stomach turned.
Kerris's voice cut through. "If this is about Imara, then she stays inside. You send a different unit."
Hale's gaze didn't change.
"No," she said. "She goes."
Silence.
Heavy.
Pressing.
Then Hale added, almost casually:
"Your unit's survival rate is currently… problematic."
Elias frowned. "Problematic to who?"
Hale's glacial eyes slid to him.
"To stability," she said.
"And stability," she added softly, "is the Accord's only purpose."
The words sounded like doctrine.
But I heard the truth underneath.
Stability wasn't protection.
It was control.
When Hale finished, she turned and left as cleanly as she'd entered.
No farewell.
No reassurance.
Just a door closing.
A verdict delivered.
For a moment none of us moved.
Then Mateo spoke first, voice strained.
"Chasm."
He said it like it tasted like blood.
Anya finally pushed off the wall, eyes dark.
"Nine units don't vanish. Not even out there."
Elias stared at the map, face pale. "They didn't vanish."
His fingers trembled over the tablet.
"They were erased."
Jalen's laugh was short and humorless.
"We're being sent to die."
Kerris's voice was low. "No."
Jalen looked at her. "Then what."
Kerris's gaze flicked to me.
Then back to the table.
"We're being sent," she said slowly, "to prove something."
Cael spoke quietly for the first time.
"And if we prove it," he said, "they'll send more."
The room went colder.
Not temperature.
Understanding.
My hands were still clenched.
I forced them open.
My palms stung where my nails had bitten.
I swallowed.
"What happens," I asked, voice steady even when my chest wasn't, "if I refuse?"
Everyone looked at me.
Even Elias.
Even Anya.
Jalen's expression tightened, like he already knew the answer and hated it.
Kerris didn't lie.
She held my gaze.
"They'll deploy you anyway," she said quietly.
"And they'll punish the unit for your hesitation."
The words landed like a collar snapping shut.
Inside my ribs, something rose — not fear.
Pressure.
The same pressure I felt in the wasteland.
Except now it wasn't the land pressing back.
It was the Accord.
And suddenly I understood the design.
The wasteland was the blade.
The Accord was the hand holding it.
And I was the thing between them.
We filed out of the briefing corridor into the living levels.
The air here smelled faintly of cooked grain and disinfectant.
Normal.
Almost gentle.
That was the sickest part.
That people could eat, laugh, sleep, fall in love, while the system quietly chose who went out to disappear.
At the junction, Jalen caught my arm.
Not hard.
Just enough to stop me.
His hand was warm.
I felt it through my sleeve like a brand.
His voice dropped low.
"Don't let Hale get inside your head."
I looked at him.
In this light, his eyes were darker than they'd seemed in the corridor — hazel deepening toward brown, flecks of gold catching the overhead strips. The bruise along his angular jaw had bloomed faint green-yellow now against his warm skin tone, and it made him look more human than he probably wanted.
"What if she's already there," I whispered.
Jalen's mouth tightened.
He didn't say something pretty.
He said something true.
"Then we cut her out."
My breath hitched.
He released my arm like he hadn't meant to touch me at all.
Like the touch had been an accident his body made before his mind approved.
Cael stepped closer.
His presence filled space differently — quiet, heavy, controlled. Dark hair fell into his eyes again, almost-black strands softening the hard planes of his face. He pushed it back with two fingers, exposing the faint scar at his collarbone where his jacket gaped.
He looked at me.
Not like Hale had.
Not like a file.
Like a person.
"You're not alone," he said.
It wasn't a comfort.
It was a promise.
I swallowed.
"Neither are you," I said.
For a second, something flickered in his expression — surprise, then something like relief.
And behind us, Jalen's laughter broke out suddenly from someone else down the hall — sharp, easy, a little forced.
He was trying to make the walls feel normal again.
Trying to give us something to hold on to.
It made me love him.
And it made me afraid.
That night, sleep came in fragments.
Not dreams.
Pieces.
Stone.
Fog.
A footprint the size of a room.
A black slit in the earth.
And Hale's voice, calm and clinical:
Phase II.
I woke before dawn, breath shallow.
The corridor outside my unit was dim.
Silent.
Too silent.
I stepped out anyway.
And froze.
A Warden stood at the end of the hall.
Not patrolling.
Waiting.
He didn't approach.
He didn't speak.
He simply raised a hand and pointed — not at me.
At the floor.
At something placed there, centered, deliberate.
A metal tag.
Scratched.
Worn.
Stamped with the Accord's symbol.
And a name beneath it.
A name I hadn't been able to remember.
My throat went tight.
I stepped closer.
My fingers trembled as I picked it up.
The metal was cold.
Too cold.
As if it had been kept somewhere without warmth for a long time.
The name on it was clear.
TOMAS ROURKE.
I stared.
Because I knew — with sick, immediate certainty — that the Accord had not given this to honor him.
It had given it to mark me.
To see what grief did to an Anchor.
To see whether memory made me weaker…
…or made me dangerous.
Behind me, a voice said softly:
"Imara."
I turned.
Cael stood in the corridor shadow, eyes fixed on the tag in my hand.
Jalen stood beside him.
Both of them watching my face like they were bracing for impact.
And over our heads, the wall speakers crackled again.
Not the calm announcement voice.
A different tone.
A warning tone.
"Deployment accelerated. Unit Seventeen — proceed immediately to Gate East."
The lights in the corridor shifted.
Red.
Not emergency red.
Directive red.
Like the building itself had decided:
No more delays.
I held Tomas's tag tighter.
Metal biting into my palm.
And the pressure in my ribs rose again.
Not from the wasteland.
From what waited beyond it.
Because this time…
We weren't being deployed to survive.
We were being deployed to be used.
And somewhere deep inside the walls…
something else was waking up too.
Something that knew my name.