Episode 02. Order of Pursuit

# Episode 02. Order of Pursuit The Empire's Approval Bureau Reading Room Seven was always excessively quiet. In the outer corridor, a single footstep echoed long — but step inside, and sound died even faster. Record panels, sealing devices, and approval terminals lined up along the walls were uniformly clean, and therefore felt colder. Sern Barek was the kind of person who noticed micro-changes first, even in a room like this. He was doing it now. One entry in the temporary retrieval line list scrolling across the reading desk had flickered — very briefly. Too short to call an error. Too repeated to dismiss as coincidence: it happened twice. Sern held the screen still and shifted his gaze sideways. Ater Valkar stood across from him. Ordered uniform, ordered posture, ordered silence. He was always like this. Rather than grabbing for something hastily, he would first see how far it had spread. "One of the outer retrieval lines was cut abnormally." Ater did not answer immediately, even at Sern's words. Instead, his fingertips scrolled part of the screen. Two blank spots in the retrieval route, a temporary seal number reassigned, a faint conflict in access permission traces. The grain of a record that someone had hastily erased, hastily covered, and hastily touched again. "Which direction." "The neutral port city line." Ater's hand stopped then. Sern did not miss that moment. Very brief. But clearly — sir had paused his thought at that point. "This is not a routine disposal case." Sern added. "The access line went through first, and the seal line covered it afterward. The sequence is wrong." Ater closed the screen quietly. The Approval Bureau had always been a place that trusted sequence. What to open, what to close, what to erase, what to leave. That order began with sequence. So a record where the sequence was wrong was worse than a simple error. "Prepare a field access line." Sern bowed his head briefly. "Official reading, or unofficial verification." Before answering, Ater let his gaze rest on the closed record panel's surface. Beneath the smooth surface, the faint smear of something hastily erased was barely visible. "For now, verification." Sern stored that *for now* separately in his mind. Sir always used precise language, and precise language usually came slightly after the actual judgment had already been made. "Understood." Even after Sern withdrew, Ater remained still for a time. Neutral port city. An abnormally cut retrieval line. Access traces reopened after the seal line had already covered them. This was a matter that did not yet have a name. But the kinds of things that must be cut before they receive a name usually left far larger names later. Ater finally turned. "Sern." "Yes, sir." "First determine who reached the scene before us." Sern paused briefly. "The Alliance Outer Route Administration." Ater neither confirmed nor denied. He only said, very low: "It seems an unordered hand has entered." Sern asked nothing further. Instead he turned back toward the terminal. Sir rarely used the word *unordered*. And when that expression appeared, things usually flowed in a direction more troublesome than sealing. He pulled up the outer access list kept separately beyond the approval line. There was more than one way into the neutral port city. Official envoy vessels, Empire logistics-authorized lines, civilian-contracted transfer ships, and gray routes that left no record. The question was which of those had moved first. Sern scanned the list, then narrowed his brow — barely. No authorization trace from the Alliance Outer Route Administration. Absence meant two things. Either they had not moved yet — or they had already slipped outside the official record. Sern leaned toward the latter. "Sir." "Go ahead." "The Alliance Outer Route Administration side will not have used an official line." Ater turned to him. "Basis." "Absence." Sern's answer was short, and therefore more precise. "The paperwork is that disturbed, yet there is no official travel authorization trace. If they moved, it is most likely someone who pretended to wait and left first." Ater's gaze settled for a moment. An expression where displeasure and interest overlapped, very thinly. "That is not good." "No." "But if their side touched the scene first, they will have left traces." Sern nodded briefly. A scene entered by unordered hands before ordered ones always left the same thing: unexpected traces. And sometimes — a door about to close. Ater straightened the edge of his coat. "We go to the neutral port city." "Which class of escort vessel." "The fastest that does not draw attention." Sern asked nothing more. Move under the Valkar name, but minimize the Valkar shadow. That alone was enough to read that this case was different from usual. --- The interior of the collection vessel was more cramped than expected. The fact that this structure was never meant to carry people was immediately felt the moment the door closed. Low ceiling, roughly patched reinforcement plates, air thick with old fuel smell and metal dust. One side of the cargo bay held metal containers stamped with disposal marks, tied down; the opposite corner held a few unidentifiable shadows crouched in silence. Sion didn't trust that kind of silence. The quieter a place, the more likely everyone inside was already carrying too many secrets of their own. Seorin spoke low as the door sealed shut. "Nice. A ship where cargo gets more respect than people." "Then we're in the right cabin." "You always put yourself down like that." "I'm not putting myself down. I'm matching the classification." "That's worse." Sion scanned the inside of the cargo bay without smiling. This vessel was listed as a waste collection ship on the outside, but the air inside was more complicated than that. A ship carrying only real waste wouldn't be this quiet. Everyone avoiding eye contact — too practiced at it. Workers, brokers, stowaways, or something in between. What mattered was one thing: **This was a cabin where no one asked each other's names.** When the vessel began its slow vibration, Seorin asked, leaning one shoulder against the wall: "So, do you actually have a plan?" "Once we're inside the neutral city, we start from the retrieval line's origin point." "That's not a plan, that's just obvious." "Where the record was cut, the transfer belt, the dock number where the goods changed hands — and from there, find the person." Seorin frowned. "Person?" Sion considered his answer for a moment, then shrugged. "If they went this far — burning it, cutting it out in a hurry — there's a good chance they weren't just hiding objects." He glanced at the end of the corridor and added: "When something could have been handed off all at once and finished, but people remain and fragments remain — it looks like someone broke it up on purpose." "Record handler?" "Whether it's the handler, the courier, or the middleman. Someone who saw it firsthand must still be around." Seorin straightened from the wall. "Nice. So we need to find a person." "Things always get bigger because of people." "No. They get bigger because of you." This time, Sion smiled — just barely. The collection vessel lurched once heavily, then settled onto the long route out of Administration territory. Once the vibrations steadied, the silence inside the cargo bay shifted slightly too. Everyone slowly released their tension — like people accepting that they were all heading the same direction. Not that anyone fully relaxed. Someone kept their hood pressed down; someone else pretended to sleep with their hands hidden inside their sleeves. Sion leaned against a reinforcement plate and took the burned record fragment out of his retrieval pocket again. Fire-blackened edges, a cross-section too clean to be flame damage, a surface that still dropped black powder when scratched. Seorin watched and asked. "Looking at it again?" "Things like this are better examined in transit." "Why." "After we arrive, it'll get complicated." "It's already complicated enough." Sion angled the fragment under the light. The ship's ceiling illumination was weak enough that he expected the surface grain to be unreadable — but in fact, that faint light revealed traces visible only under dim conditions. Between the burn patterns, one very thin, incomplete line remained. Too broken to call a letter. Too deliberately placed to dismiss as an accidental scratch. He rubbed the spot with his fingertip. "Look at this." Seorin leaned closer. "What." "Here, the inner surface of the panel. Whoever cut it out — they didn't only cut the text." Seorin narrowed her eyes. "Signature line?" Sion didn't answer immediately. Too little to be sure. But the position of the cut was strange. Not in the middle of the body text — at the very bottom of the document. The place where a name, an approval line, or a sequence number usually went. "Possibly." "For a 'possibly,' your face doesn't look great." Sion put the fragment back in his pocket. "That spot is usually the last thing people touch." "But?" "Someone cut it out first." Seorin chewed on that for a moment, then murmured: "So there's something they cut before the name." Her words were speculation — but already closer to the instinct of someone tracking a scene. Sion heard it and looked at her briefly. He didn't answer — but the silence was enough. --- The collection vessel slowed as it passed through another outer transfer belt. Not a proper stop, not a full transfer — the kind of pause unique to gray routes, loading and unloading only the cargo and people too ambiguous to put on record. In the gap, the cargo bay door opened once and closed. No one new entered. Instead, outside noise pushed briefly inward. The distant sound of an argument. The scrape of heavy crates being shoved. And — just for a moment, but unmistakable — a single word. "Archivist." The door closed and the sound cut off. But Sion and Seorin raised their heads at the same time. Their gazes collided in midair. Seorin spoke first. "I didn't just imagine that." "No." Sion's voice was much lower than before. "Someone just said *archivist*." "So this is about a person after all." Instead of answering, Sion rose from his seat. The collection vessel was beginning to move again, slowly. Seorin stood right after. "Where are you going." "The front cabin." "Now?" "Before we enter the neutral city, I need to see who said that." Seorin swallowed a sigh. "Fine. But this time, don't charge in first." "When have I ever." "Your face was about to charge just now." Sion said nothing and moved toward the narrow corridor at the front of the cargo bay. Rough vibrations traveled up through the floor, and old metallic resonance trembled faintly from the ceiling pipes. Between the collection vessel's oil-heavy air, new scents began to layer in as the port drew closer. Salt, fuel, old wiring, wet steel plating — and the particular air that only comes from a place where too many people pass through, each hiding a different name. The neutral port city was getting close. Sound leaked through the gap in the front cabin door again. Clearer this time. Two low, rough voices arguing over something. "…The whole line got flipped because of one archivist." "…Shut up. If a name gets out, we're all done." Sion stopped at the door. Seorin stood right behind. Neither spoke. Now it was certain. This retrieval case didn't end at a single erased object. Someone had run first. Someone had chased. And the ripples of that nameless pursuit had spread all the way inside this collection vessel. Seorin asked, very low. "Opening it?" Sion placed his hand on the door panel. Cold metal against his palm. "We have to." "Why." Sion listened to the voices beyond the door and answered briefly. "Because we need to confirm whether what we're chasing is an object — or a person." At that moment, the entire collection vessel shook once, hard. From somewhere far, a long docking signal sounded low. The neutral port city. And for the first time, Sion had the trace of the person someone had called *archivist* — within reaching distance.