Three days passed without the representative returning.Ethan kept the harmonic running the way he had said he would. Leo and Zara split their mornings between the disruption training and the harmonic itself, alternating so neither one dropped completely, though both suffered slightly for it. The Authority reading crept upward slowly, steady rather than dramatic, the way it had been climbing for weeks now.Miller ran the building the way he always ran it — supply checks, watch rotations, the small maintenance of sixty-odd people living together in a building that had never been designed to hold that many. He came to Ethan every evening with the same update, delivered in the same flat tone."No contact," he said on the third night."I know," Ethan said."Cassandra's still monitoring for the signature. Nothing.""I know," Ethan said again, and Miller left him with that, because there was nothing else useful either of them could say about it.On the fourth morning, Felix found something

They walked back from the plaza faster than they had walked to it.Ethan did not run, but the pace was close to it, and Mara and Vale kept step without comment. The Water Authority building came into view and Miller was already at the door before they reached it, reading the change in their posture from a distance the way he read everything."Well?" Miller said."Accepted," Ethan said. "Confirmed. It's supposed to be immediate."Miller looked past him toward the building. "Then let's find out."Voss was the closest active gear carrier they had left in the building — everyone else had already been through removal, but Voss's had been the last one completed, weeks ago now. That meant no one currently in the building had gear left to check.Except Felix.Ethan found him upstairs with Ren, still going through the archive, unaware that anything had changed in the last hour. He looked up when Ethan came in and read something in his face immediately."It happened," Felix said. Not a question

Mara's full report came through the copper line two days later, relayed by David since the connection quality made a written message more reliable than a live conversation.Ethan read it standing in the Water Authority building with Ren beside him, the same room where Vale had once made his first direct contact months ago.The two Apostle-equivalent hosts in Verton had names — Darius and Anh — and Mara's assessment was more detailed than Ethan expected. Darius had lost his ability entirely, the removal too aggressive, the gear ripped rather than deleted, leaving behind scar tissue in the architecture that Mara described as similar to what she had seen in early attempts before Ethan developed the Delete command's precision. Anh had fared better, complications present but manageable, the ability intact though unstable, prone to flaring without warning.Mara had told them what she saw without teaching them how to fix it. She confirmed Darius's loss was permanent given the damage already

Zara left a week later with David and one of Lena's people, the same truck making a different journey this time, north instead of east, toward a city none of them had seen with their own eyes.Ethan stayed behind, the way he had with Mara's trip, though the waiting felt different this time. Mara's assignment had been technical — assess, confirm, report. Zara's was something else, harder to measure, and Ethan found himself checking Miller's communication log more often than the situation strictly required."No news is normal at this stage," Miller told him on the third day, without being asked. "David checked in yesterday. They arrived safely. That's all there is to report yet.""I know," Ethan said."You keep asking anyway.""I know that too," Ethan said, and Miller let it go, the way he let go of most things that did not require action.The full report came back nine days after Zara left, longer than Mara's trip, and Ethan read it standing in the same spot in the Water Authority buil

Naomi arrived on a Tuesday, three weeks after her first message to Mara, traveling with a small escort David had arranged along the route between Verton and Sea City.Ethan met her at the tower entrance, the same spot where so many arrivals had happened before her — Ranks 5 and 7 with their thirty-five followers, Zara stepping out of a borrowed pickup truck, Vale walking in alone with a single bag. Naomi came in quietly, a woman in her thirties with tired eyes and the careful posture of someone who had spent a long time being useful to people who did not fully understand what she was giving them."You're smaller than I expected," she said to Ethan, which was not what most people said when they first met him."I get that sometimes," Ethan said.She almost smiled. "Mara talked about you like you were something out of a story," she said. "Cold, precise, always three steps ahead. I expected someone taller.""I get that too," Ethan said, and this time she did smile.Leo found her within th