Mira looked at the amber numbers and saw Tovan's hands instead: narrow wrists powdered white from pipe sealant, fingers moving too quickly whenever he lied.
"I go," she said.
Gideon did not reach for her. That was the first thing she noticed. Three minutes and thirty-two seconds remained, and he stood with his arms at his sides as if restraint were a physical object he had set down between them.
"You go," he said. "I follow."
"That is not the choice you offered."
"It is the choice that keeps the three of us alive long enough to argue about it."
"Fane said all three must be present at the seal."
"Fane says many things when he wants a room to feel inevitable."
The return command pulsed on the wall. The letters rearranged themselves into a route: SECURITY FLOOR, MAINTENANCE DESCENT, ROOT WITNESS VAULT. Beneath it, the tower counted down in tenths of a second.
Mira crossed to the door. Gideon caught the back of her sleeve, not her wrist. He released it before she turned.
"Your reader burn," he said. "The descent rails use a dermal check."
"My reader burn is an abrasion."
"It is an abrasion on a hand the tower has decided is a master credential. Let me see it."
She held out her palm.
He took the bandage off with the care of a man dismantling a loaded instrument. The dressing had dried to the edge of the burn. Mira expected him to pull. He soaked the cloth at the sink first, waiting until the adhesive surrendered. Then he folded a clean strip from the emergency kit, wrapped it once, and tied the knot against the heel of her hand where it would not catch on a rail.
He had done this before. Not to her. To evidence, to damaged locks, to injured officers whose names he had probably forgotten.
His thumb pressed the knot flat.
"There," he said.
She could still feel the pressure after he stepped away.
"You have a talent for making confiscation look like care."
"And you have a talent for making care sound like an accusation."
The door gave a soft internal click. Somewhere below, a lock accepted their joined identity and began to disengage.
Mira saw the weapon at Gideon's hip. He unfastened it, removed the magazine, and set both on the bunk. Then he placed his authorization pin beside them.
"What is that for?"
"If Armit tries to recall us, she can recall an investigator. Not a weapon."
"You are going to disobey a direct order."
"I am going to obey the older one. Protect the living witness."
"That order was written for people who had not been fused to their witness."
"Then it is overdue for an amendment."
The door opened.
Filtered air moved through the gap, dry and cold. Beyond lay the security floor's service corridor, all pale panels and recessed cameras. A red indicator blinked above the lift cage.
Armit's voice entered the cell from the ceiling speaker. "Mira. Investigator Holt. Remain in Witness Room Nine. The Root Vault's acquisition sequence is not negotiable."
Gideon looked at the speaker.
"Director," he said, "you have forty-seven seconds before the door opens on Tovan Saye."
"I am aware of the time."
"Then you are aware that leaving him uninformed constitutes a procedural failure."
"I am aware that taking both of you into an active reference chamber constitutes a mass-casualty risk."
Mira stepped into the corridor. "You can file the distinction after we are dead."
There was a pause. Armit's pauses were never empty. They had edges, like sealed envelopes.
"If you leave," she said, "the Directorate will classify your action as flight from custody."
Gideon joined Mira and pulled the door shut behind them. The seal engaged with a heavy mechanical finality.
"That sounded almost personal," Mira said.
"It sounded prepared for a tribunal."
The lift was thirty paces away. They ran.
Mira disliked running in narrow corridors. There was no room to choose a line, no way to see around a corner before committing her body to it. Gideon moved in front of her anyway, not fast enough to lose her, not slow enough to insult her. At the lift, he slapped the descent plate.
Nothing happened.
The joined marker in Mira's hand began to heat. Gideon's hand closed over it, palm to palm, completing the circuit. The plate turned from red to white.
The cage arrived without a bell.
Inside, the air smelled of metal and old disinfectant. Gideon entered first. Mira followed. The doors shut on the empty corridor.
"You should have let me go alone," she said.
"No."
"You have no evidence that following me improves the outcome."
"I have evidence that you will lie to Tovan if given enough time to make the lie sound protective."
She faced him. The lift dropped through the tower, smooth enough that her stomach noticed only when the numbers began to fall.
"You are very confident for a man who just abandoned his sidearm."
"I abandoned a sidearm. Not my judgment."
"Those are often the same thing in your profession."
His gaze lowered to her bandaged hand. "You tied that yourself the first time. Too tight. Your fingers went gray."
She had not known he remembered.
The lift passed the clinical floors. Light strips slid over his face, making him appear in fragments: cheekbone, mouth, the pale scar beside his ear. He had noticed the knot. He had remembered the color of her fingers. He had corrected the problem without announcing that he had been watching.
Mira turned toward the doors before he could see that she had stored the information.
At level seventy-two, the lift shuddered.
A second voice came through the emergency grille. Tovan's, flattened by distance and pipe resonance.
"There you are. I was starting to think the Directorate had finally developed a sense of timing."
Mira pressed the intercom. "Where are you?"
"At the pretty door. You know the one. The one that keeps asking for your hand."
"Step away from it."
A laugh crackled through the grille. It was too bright. "That is a terrible greeting after three years."
"Tovan. Step away."
"I have already done the difficult part."
"No. You have done the stupid part."
"Good. We are both back in familiar territory."
The lift continued down.
Mira closed her eyes. She could picture the Root Vault from Fane's feed: black stone, the seal sunk into the floor, amber lines climbing the walls like roots searching for water. Tovan would be standing too close. Tovan always stood too close to machinery. He believed proximity counted as understanding.
"Listen to me," she said. "The separation does not happen remotely."
"I know."
"All three of us have to be at the seal."
"I know that too."
"The source witness is not merely read."
The reply came after a small silence. "Fane said it would be unpleasant."
"He said it would be absorption."
The intercom clicked. For once, Tovan did not fill the gap with a joke.
Gideon watched her, not the speaker.
"It will take your signature into the scaffold," Mira said. "It will consume the reference pattern until the fused marker can be divided. You will not walk out with us."
"You could have mentioned that before you sent me away."
The words were mild. That made them worse.
"I did not send you to the vault."
"No. You only spent two years making sure I could be used by it."
The lift reached the maintenance levels. The doors opened on a service platform suspended above a vertical shaft. Warm vapor breathed up through the grating. Far below, pumps moved water through the tower's foundation systems.
Tovan's voice returned through the intercom, thinner now. "I am already marked, Mira. That part is done."
"You kept the signature warm. You did not preserve it."
The platform lights flickered.
Fane's voice cut in from another channel. "Mira, do not approach the seal until I confirm the reference's integrity."
"You knew?" she demanded.
"I suspected. The dilution schedule was not designed by an authorized laboratory."
Gideon's head turned toward the ceiling speaker. "How long have you suspected?"
"Long enough to advise caution. Not long enough to prevent Mr. Saye from making his decision."
Mira shoved the intercom switch off.
Gideon looked at her. "What did you alter?"
"Nothing."
"That was not my question."
"The precursor was diluted. Repeatedly. He was maintaining the marker, not storing a clean reference."
"Can it still work?"
"It can still take him."
He absorbed that without moving. Then he stepped onto the descent rail and tested the clamp with his weight.
"You stay behind me," he said.
"You do not get to assign my position."
"Then choose the position that keeps you out of the shaft."
He went down.
Mira followed because the rail had one grip and because falling would make a poor argument. The tower's maintenance artery narrowed around them. Pipes crowded the walls, sweating condensation. Their joined marker kept the access lamps green as they passed. Once, Gideon's boot slipped on a wet rung. Mira caught the back of his harness. He did not look up to thank her. He only shifted his weight so she could climb past him at the next junction.
At the bottom, the root corridor stood open.
Tovan waited at its end with one hand against the vault door.
He looked older than he had in the feed. Eight months of diluted exposure had left a fine gray web beneath the skin of his palm. It climbed his wrist and disappeared beneath his sleeve. His other hand held a maintenance wrench, though there was nothing in the corridor it could repair.
"You brought your jailer," he said.
"He came without the weapon."
Tovan glanced at Gideon's empty hip. "That is either noble or administrative. I dislike both possibilities."
Mira stopped six paces away. The door behind Tovan was counting down in amber. Twenty-one seconds.
"I lied to you," she said.
His mouth tightened. "Yes. I have been enjoying the suspense."
"I knew your skin carried the reference. I knew before I left you. I knew when I asked you to keep the sample vials in the cold room. I knew when I told you the exposure was harmless."
The wrench lowered a fraction.
"How long?"
"Nearly three years."
The vault made a soft acknowledging tone.
Tovan looked at her hand, at the dressing Gideon had tied, then back at Mira. "You put it in me."
"A diluted precursor. The original work needed a living surface. I believed I could remove it afterward."
"You believed."
"I calculated."
"That is not better."
"No. It is more accurate."
He smiled once, without humor. The gray web under his skin brightened.
"You should have told me."
"You would have come."
"I came anyway."
"To die for a procedure that cannot free us."
"I came to give you a life that was not inside a box with a man who used to hunt you."
Gideon said, "Tovan. Move away from the seal."
"You are not part of this conversation."
"I am one of the three people being processed."
The door began to open. A seam of white light appeared around Tovan's hand.
Fane's voice entered the corridor. "The reference is unstable. Do not allow the seal to complete contact."
Tovan looked over his shoulder. "Unstable in what way?"
No one answered quickly enough.
The light climbed his arm.
Fane said, "The diluted precursor has produced a rolling signature. It is warm, as Mr. Saye intended, but the original pattern is no longer intact. The vault may consume the witness without generating a clean division."
Tovan's fingers locked against the door.
Mira moved.
Gideon caught her around the waist before she reached him. He did not wrench her back. He braced, one arm across her ribs, leaving her room to breathe and the choice to fight him. She felt the strength in his hold and the care in its limits.
"Let go," she said.
"Not until we know what the seal is doing."
"It is doing exactly what we taught it to do."
Tovan cried out.
The gray web flashed from his palm to his throat. The vault door opened another inch. Amber text appeared across the white: REFERENCE INTEGRITY: 41 PERCENT.
Mira stopped fighting Gideon.
Tovan looked at the number and laughed, breathless. "Forty-one. That is insulting."
"Step back," Mira said.
"Can you fix it?"
"No."
The answer reached him before she could soften it. His face emptied.
Gideon's arm tightened once, then eased. "Mira."
"If he pulls away now, the acquisition may stop."
"May?"
"The seal has already crossed the dermal threshold."
Tovan turned his head toward them. "You said all three had to be present."
"They do."
"Then come here. Both of you."
"Tovan—"
"You do not get to decide what I spend. Not after deciding what I was carrying."
He tore his hand from the door.
The white seam snapped shut around his wrist.
Gideon shoved Mira behind him and reached for Tovan. The joined marker in both their hands flared through the corridor, and every lock between them and the vault opened at once. The floor beneath Tovan split into three concentric rings.
Fane shouted something. Armit's voice followed, clipped and distant. Mira heard neither clearly.
The seal spoke in a voice without a speaker.
"SOURCE WITNESS INSUFFICIENT. SUBSTITUTE CREDENTIAL REQUIRED."
Gideon's empty hand struck the first ring.
The amber web leapt from Tovan's wrist to Gideon's palm.
Mira saw the number change.
REFERENCE INTEGRITY: 40 PERCENT.
Then the vault doors closed, and the tower began counting down from three again.