Chapter 801: Who Approve?

Alex read the bank copies while Mingyue sat with Luna.

They had changed places after Mingyue returned from the receiving rooms. Their daughter knew where he was going, and he had left the little house standing in the garden rather than clearing it away to make room for another display.

Beatrice’s father had lost money through a research fraud. The approvals had tied useful people together through something none of them wanted examined.

Varyn’s security-office references continued beyond that group.

"Find the office copies for these references," he said. "We need to see what was ordered, not just who was paid."

Vesa contacted the surviving staff through the bank clerk. By the time Alex reached Proxima, a records officer was waiting in a security annex outside the worst of the destruction.

Varyn was there too.

He had answered Rovan’s family message and agreed to meet after learning that the bank was preserving its files. He stood beside a table with the remains of a torn sleeve tucked into his coat.

His gaze moved from Alex to Rovan.

"You should have contacted me earlier."

Rovan stayed beside the door.

"I was helping people get out."

"So I’ve heard."

Varyn looked toward Beatrice, who had taken a chair to keep weight off her injured leg.

"Your father survived?"

"Yes," she said.

"Then perhaps we can settle his affairs without making the city’s recovery more difficult."

Alex placed the copied payment list on the table.

"We started with the parts your office made difficult before the city fell."

Varyn glanced at the references without touching the page.

"Security work creates records. You won’t understand every payment by looking at a name."

"Then explain this one."

Alex indicated a transfer approved before the outbreak. The bank’s record named the security office as the recipient and referred to an assignment in one of the new immigrant districts.

The records officer opened the matching order.

A patrol had been moved away from a registration center during a scheduled public access period. Another unit had been sent to the same streets under a different entry, paid through a contractor with a House Varn guarantee.

Varyn looked toward the officer.

"Those files are restricted."

The man kept his hand on the display.

"You told us to preserve the office archive when the communications failed." The officer glanced at the payment list. "My approval mark is on the entries I filed. I want the orders that came with them kept too."

"I didn’t tell you to distribute it."

Alex stepped closer to the table.

"Look at me when you answer."

Varyn’s jaw tightened.

For a moment, Alex wanted to press his power into the room until the man stopped choosing each word. He remembered how quickly fear had produced an offer to repay Beatrice’s father before.

It had not made Varyn tell the whole truth then.

He left the order visible and waited.

"The center required an inspection," Varyn said. "There were questions about false registrations."

The records officer brought up the closure report.

The request for an inspection had been filed after the replacement unit arrived. It cited a disturbance that appeared nowhere in the original patrol log.

Alex laid the bank payment beside it.

The contractor had been paid before either report existed.

"Who decided where that unit went?"

"My office."

"Who in your office?"

Varyn stared at the times. "I approved it."

Beatrice asked the records officer what happened to the people waiting at the center.

He opened the unfinished applications attached to the closure.

"They were told to return after the review. Some appealed. The office held the appeals. We still hadn’t reopened them when the city went down."

He opened the first appeal. Its residency check was complete, but a security hold prevented the result from reaching the applicant’s citizen bracelet. Beneath it lay a completed trade certification waiting for the same clearance.

Alex knew those fields. He had studied them while planning Kael’s campaign: residency time, contribution, tax bracket, service points, security rating. Proxima did not count every citizen’s vote equally. A record left unresolved could keep a person off the register or prevent work and qualifications from carrying the weight they had earned.

"Was the certification rejected?" he asked.

"No. It never reached the assessment. The security hold stopped the update."

"Which office?" Alex asked.

The officer pointed to the approval on the hold.

Varyn’s name appeared again.

"New immigrants with unresolved records are a security concern," Varyn said.

Alex looked at the list.

The same concern had not been applied to another group whose entries went through on the following day. That group used an address service linked to a family contractor.

He asked for the supporting residence checks.

Several had been completed by the very unit that was supposedly too busy inspecting the first center to let anyone return there. One favored application carried a cleared security rating from a day when the patrol log showed no visit to that address.

"Open the report behind that clearance," Alex said.

There was none. The officer found an instruction to accept the contractor’s assurance in its place.

Alex put the stalled certification beside the clearance. One applicant had produced the work and was still waiting. The other had the contractor’s assurance and a cleared bracelet.

"You delayed one group and moved another through," Alex said. "Why?"

"The election was close."

Varyn said it quietly enough that Rovan looked up from the doorway.

Alex kept his voice even.

"Finish."

"Your General Kael was bringing in people who would support him. Every faction understood what he was doing."

"So you chose whose records counted, and whose improvements reached their bracelets."

"We kept him from building a majority through those people."

The records officer shifted in his chair.

Beatrice looked at the list of held appeals. She found a name she knew and touched it without speaking.

Alex had meant to raise those immigrants’ vote weights through training, certification and positions inside the city’s institutions. Kael would gain votes; Alex would gain people in places he needed. He had hardly come to Proxima without an interest in its election.

Varyn had not needed to beat that plan. His office could leave a trained worker waiting until the useful date had passed.

He asked the officer to show the final instruction attached to the contractor’s work.

It required reports on the groups attending meetings, the people arranging transport, and those refusing the offered residence service. The payment came through a House Varn account already visible in the bank copies.

This time, the record named the work plainly enough that Varyn could not call it a loan-recovery fee.

"Who from the family approved this?" Alex asked.