The System Hunter

Chapter 29: Contestant One Hundred Seventeen

The permit board counted 117 applicants, but Mara had seen a hundred and eighteen names.

She checked the list from the holding-lane terminal while Dr. Orin watched the clinical chair. The machine's restraint arms had folded back into their housing after judicial review was required. Mara was no longer scheduled for immediate disposal, but the escort band still prevented her from leaving Gate Seven.

"There's an extra record," she told Elias over the maintenance speaker. "Same fingerprint template as mine. Different contestant number."

Elias had just escaped the archive when her call reached him. Rafi and June had lifted the manual shutter using a service crank, with a clerk observing to document that nobody had damaged the evidence vault. He arrived at the control-room balcony carrying the paper custody chain.

"Who is it?" he asked.

"Contestant Zero. The entry has no person attached, only an identity match. Its registered location is the medical holding floor."

Tessa opened the public qualification rules. A contestant number could be reserved for a protected witness whose identity was under challenge. The exception was intended to keep witnesses from losing their rights while records were corrected. Here it had been reversed: the reserved account appeared to own Mara's identity, and Mara herself had been classified as a dependent subject.

"If we delete Zero," Tessa said, "we might delete the original authentication evidence."

"And if we leave it," Elias replied, "the System will keep recognizing someone else as my sister."

They needed to see the person registered to the reserved number. That required a witness interview order, available to Level Three hunters with a verified custody complaint. Elias filed one. The application bounced back, demanding two independent observers and a deposit of twenty minutes. June and Rafi volunteered without being asked. Elias accepted the debit.

A service lift opened beside the qualification board. Two guards brought up a woman wearing a gray vest and a medical collar. She looked about Mara's age. The exhaustion on her face was genuine, even if the credentials attached to her were not.

"Name?" Elias asked.

"They call me Zero."

"What did they call you before?"

Her eyes moved toward the guards. "Anika Sol. Registration technician. My work account was cancelled after I reported duplicate biometric templates. They made me wear somebody else's credentials so the hospital computers would let me into restricted wards."

Tessa leaned forward. "Were you the impersonator detained at the hospital?"

Anika nodded. "I thought the job was to move documents. When they told me to read a statement accusing Mara, I refused. They transferred me here."

Elias remembered the frightened woman in the hospital chair. He had called her an impostor and moved on. Now she was standing before him with a countdown of eleven minutes.

The System presented a tempting offer.

CONTRACT: RESOLVE DUPLICATE IDENTITY.

OPTION A: DETAIN FALSE REGISTRANT.

REWARD: +02:00:00.

OPTION B: VERIFY ORIGINAL RECORDS.

REWARD: +00:15:00, 100 XP.

REQUIRED EVIDENCE: SOURCE BIOMETRIC CAPTURE.

"Option A pays more," one guard observed.

"It doesn't resolve anything," Elias said. "It just makes a living witness disappear."

He selected B. Anika showed them the small scar where her original identity implant had been removed and replaced. Mara, listening below, identified the medical procedure from the wound description. Its design was standard, but its serial number could be checked against the hospital's issuance log.

Elias asked Anika if she would testify. She looked at her clock and said, "Only if I get long enough to finish."

The deposit had reduced Elias's balance. His contract reward would not arrive until they obtained the source record. He could not legally transfer time to Anika without consent from both parties and a working transfer station.

June stepped forward. "I earned fifty minutes restoring the pump. I can spare twenty." She took Anika's hand, requested a voluntary transfer, and read every term aloud before both women approved it.

Anika's countdown climbed. She began describing the technician who replaced her implant, including a detail no identity file could manufacture: a red stain on the woman's gloves from marking defective receiver ports.

Then the System recorded her next sentence as a restricted disclosure and issued a detention warrant against June for financing testimony.