The screen went blank.

  Not deleted. Not corrupted. Just... gone. As if the files had never existed.

  Jason stared at his terminal, his blood turning cold. Thomas Reeves ultimatum expired today and nothing changed so far.

  And now this. Every archive entry he'd flagged over the past three weeks. Every cross-reference to the Voss incident. Every breadcrumb trail Milo had helped him identify.

  Systematically erased.

  RAE?

  I see it. This was professional. Surgical. They removed specific entries while leaving surrounding records intact. To anyone not looking for them, it would appear normal.

  So someone had accessed the municipal archive system. With enough clearance to delete protected records and without leaving obvious traces. Can we recover them?

  Perhaps. If you had offline backups.

  Jason's stomach sank. He did have backups. On his encrypted drive at home.

  That was institutional authority. The kind that came from the very top.

  He logged out carefully. Stood. Walked to the break room as if nothing was wrong.

  In the hallway, he pulled out his phone. Texted Milo: "They hit the archive. Everything we flagged is gone. Need to meet."

  The response came immediately: "Checking my backups. Same thing happening here. Library. 30 minutes."

  The library felt safer. Public. Neutral.

  Milo had his laptop open, expression grim. "They hit me too. My cloud storage. The backups I thought were secure. All the Voss-related material. Gone."

  "How?" Lina asked.

  "Resonance signature tracking, maybe. Or they compromised my device. Or—" He shook his head. "Doesn't matter how. What matters is they're cleaning up. Removing evidence. Making sure nobody can prove what really happened eleven years ago."

  "Did they get everything?" Jason asked.

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  "Not everything." Milo pulled out a flash drive. "I'm paranoid. I keep offline backups of my offline backups. This has copies of the key documents. Not all of them, but enough."

  "We need to get those to Elyra," Lina said. "And we need to go dark. No more archive searches. No more digital breadcrumbs."

  "Agreed," Jason said. "Let's go."

  They left separately, each taking a different route home. Two hours later, they met at Elyra's building.

  It was dark already when Elyra finished listening to their report, her expression darkening with each detail.

  "Malvek's moving," she said finally. "Cleaning house. Making sure the official narrative stays intact."

  "Can he do that?" Milo asked. "Just erase records?"

  "He has institutional authority. And the classification system is designed to protect state interests. If he convinces the right people that these records threaten stability—" She shrugged. "Then yes. He can erase them. Legally."

  Elyra took the flash drive from Milo. "I'll secure this. Offline. Somewhere Malvek can't reach." She paused. "And you three need to stop looking for evidence in places he controls. Archives. Digital systems. Official records. Those are all compromised now."

  "So what do we do?" Jason asked.

  "You stop looking backward and start building forward. You focus on capability. On becoming good enough that evidence doesn't matter. Because when you're competent enough, truth becomes self-evident."

  Jason wanted to protest. Wanted to say that evidence mattered, that truth mattered.

  But Elyra was right. In a world where powerful people could rewrite history, capability was the only real currency.

  "Besides," Elyra continued, "they've shown their hand now. They're worried enough to act. That means you're getting close to something they want hidden. And when they realize erasure won't stop you, they'll escalate to containment."

  "Containment," Lina repeated. "You mean—"

  "I mean they'll come for you directly. Try to bring you in. Offer you deals or threaten you with charges." She looked at each of them. "Which is why we're expanding your training. Starting tomorrow, we work on defensive patterns. Real ones. The kind that might keep you alive when Malvek decides passive observation isn't enough."

  That night, Jason lay awake.

  It all pointed to the same conclusion: they were running out of time. The window for staying small and unnoticed was closing.

  Does it bother you? RAE asked. Losing the evidence?

  Yes. Truth should matter.

  It does. But power matters more, in the short term.

  That's depressing.

  It's reality. But reality can be changed. With enough capability. Enough persistence.

  How long?

  Unknown. But we're learning. Growing stronger. Someday, we'll be strong enough that Malvek can't simply erase us.

  And until then?

  We survive. We train. We become exceptional.

  Jason thought about Malvek erasing records with a keystroke. About someone powerful enough to rewrite history with institutional authority.

  And about Elyra, damaged but still brilliant, teaching them how to fight back with precision instead of power.

  You're learning wisdom, RAE observed. Fear can be productive if you channel it correctly.

  Is that what this is? Productive fear?

  You're not running. You're not giving up. You're planning. Preparing. That's the difference between panic and strategy.

  Jason smiled despite himself. "Tomorrow we train harder."

  Tomorrow we train smarter. There's a difference.

  Yeah. There is.

  "One precise, careful step at a time." he muttered.

  One precise, careful step at a time. RAE echoed