Born to devour

Chapter 8: They Know

 

"You did not sleep."

Reina does not look up from her tablet when I come in. She is at the table where I left her last night, different clothes, fresh notes open, coffee that has gone cold beside her hand. She says it the way she says most things: like a fact that has already been processed and filed.

I put my bag on the floor. I sit across from her.

She looks up.

Whatever she reads in my face makes her close the tablet.

She says: "What happened."

I am tired. That is the only explanation I have for what comes out next. I have been carrying the case in my bag since last night and the badge inside it since the storage unit and the specific weight of a lie I cannot yet measure since longer than that, and she looks at me with those sharp dark eyes and asks what happened and I am too tired to decide not to answer.

So I answer.

---

I put the case on the table. I open it. I slide the badge across to her.

She picks it up. She reads it the way she reads everything, fast and complete, front and back. She puts it down. She opens her tablet.

She says: "Spell the rank designation exactly as it appears."

I spell it.

She types. She pulls up the GRA public hunter registry, the full classification index, three separate archived databases that I did not know existed and apparently she has been accessing for months through her mother's old network credentials. She runs the designation through all of them.

Nothing.

She says: "Project Axiom."

I say: "Back of the badge. Stamped."

She types it. The search runs. She waits. I watch her face while she waits. She has a specific expression for results she expected and a different one for results that confirm something she was afraid of. The one she is wearing now is the second kind.

She says: "One reference. A decommissioned GRA budget archive. Project name, a classification code, and a lead researcher designation." She turns the tablet to face me. "D. Kane."

The apartment is very quiet.

She pulls the tablet back. She opens a new column in her notes. She labels it without asking me whether she should: What Daniel Kane Actually Was. She starts typing under it before I can say anything.

I watch her build the column. Employment records that were constructed rather than accumulated. A rank that does not exist in any public classification. A clearance level authorized at director level. A project name that appears in exactly one decommissioned record before vanishing entirely.

She says: "He was not retired."

"No."

"He built the cover. Twelve years of it."

"Yes."

She types. She says: "The system notification last night. Relevant data detected. It responded to the badge."

"Or to the project name."

She looks at me. She says: "Both." She adds something to the column. Then she says: "Noah. Division Seven does not exist in any public record. That is not a gap in the database. That is a deliberate removal."

I already knew this. Hearing her say it out loud makes it different. More real. More permanent.

I say: "Someone took it out."

She says: "Someone with director-level authorization." She closes the column. "Someone who is currently running the GRA."

We sit with that.

---

We spend the morning on it.

Reina pulls everything publicly available on GRA internal structure, historical division records, budget classifications from the years Project Axiom would have been active. She is methodical and fast and does not waste a single search query. I run the badge designation through every variation I can think of, abbreviations, alternate formatting, partial matches. We find nothing that should not exist and nothing that explains what Division Seven was or what it did.

By noon we have a column of confirmed facts and a much longer column of gaps where facts should be.

Reina makes more coffee. She brings mine without asking, the way she has started doing without either of us commenting on it. She sits back down and says: "The integration pending notification. It has not resolved."

I check. She is right. The notification from last night is still sitting in the queue, not closed, not processed. Just waiting.

I say: "It is waiting for something."

She says: "More data. Or the right context." She looks at her notes. "Your father built the system and hid it inside you. The system recognized the badge. It knows what Project Axiom is." She pauses. "It knows more than it has told you."

That thought has been sitting at the back of my mind since last night. I have been not-looking at it the same way I was not-looking at the memory fragment. There is only so much you can not-look at before the things you are avoiding start looking back.

I say: "It will show me when it decides I am ready."

She says: "Or when circumstances require it." She closes her tablet. "Which may not be on a schedule we control."

That is the most unsettling thing she has said since Fix it. Which is a high bar.

---

That afternoon I am running an integration pass on the speed absorption and Reina is three pages deep into a new section of notes when the interface activates.

No prompt. No combat context. No resonance spike from the bond. Nothing I did or said or moved toward.

Just two words appearing in the center of my vision, white on black, larger than any notification I have received before.

*[They know.]*

I go still.

Reina looks up. She reads whatever is on my face and crosses the room and looks at the interface over my shoulder without being invited to. She reads it. She straightens up.

She says: "What does that mean."

I say: "It means we have maybe two days before someone shows up."

She says: "The GRA."

"Someone in it. The scanner breaks triggered a flag. The badge has a tracking component, probably passive, probably activated when I opened the case." I close the notification. It does not disappear. It folds back to the edge of my vision and stays there. "Two days is generous. It depends on how fast they move."

Reina goes back to her side of the table. She does not sit down. She stands with her hands on the back of the chair and looks at her notes and I can see her running options the way she runs everything, fast, systematic, no wasted processing.

She says: "We need a structure. Something with enough legal standing that they have to go through channels rather than just collecting you."

I say: "A guild."

She says: "Yes."

I think about what that means. Walking into a registered guild with a system that breaks equipment, presenting it as something unremarkable, buying time behind an institution that has no idea what it is sheltering.

It is not a good plan. It is the only plan available.

I am about to say this when someone knocks on the door.

---

Three knocks. Unhurried. The knock of someone who is not worried about the answer.

I look at Reina. She shakes her head once. Not her network.

I open the door.

The man on the other side is eighteen, maybe nineteen, built like someone who takes up space as a matter of principle. Dark skin, easy smile, the specific warmth of someone who has never once walked into a room and felt unwelcome in it. He is holding a folded piece of paper and a takeout bag that smells like something I have not eaten in weeks.

He says: "You are the one from 4B. I live in 2C." He holds up the paper. "Heard something in the stairwell two nights ago. Thought you might want this." He slaps the flyer on the table beside the door without waiting to be invited in. "Irongate Guild. Junior intake is Friday. They are decent people." He looks at me with eyes that are doing more than they are showing. "Also the food here is bad. I can tell from the hallway."

He is already walking back toward the stairs.

I look at the flyer. Irongate Guild. Junior intake. Friday.

I look at the takeout bag he left on my doorstep.

I look at the back of his head disappearing around the corner.

He did not ask a single question. He did not press anything. He just arrived with a flyer and food and the particular ease of someone who has already decided something and is giving me the space to catch up.

I close the door.

Reina is reading the flyer from across the room.

She says: "He already knows you are hiding something."

I say: "Yeah."

She says: "And he left anyway."

I pick up the flyer.

I do not tell her I am going.

She is already putting her notes in her bag.