Chapter 804: Left Behind

Alex read the timestamps beside the surviving confirmations. Andrew’s route had received acknowledgments while ordinary emergency channels recorded unanswered calls. Alex checked one time against a recovery report from the same street. People had been trying to reach the city’s guards while its private equipment was still sending observations upward.

Above him, another set of footsteps crossed the hall toward the recovered bodies. Alex looked from the unanswered emergency calls to the private channel’s last acknowledgment. Andrew’s people were still watching.

"Can they erase this archive through the relay?" Alex asked.

The attendant looked at the active address, then at the damaged status of the central network.

"I don’t know what access they still have."

Alex drew a short line of runes across the room’s outgoing connection and separated it from the active network.

The local archive stayed lit. The relay status stopped refreshing.

"We don’t test that with the only copy," he said.

Vesa had already preserved the files they had opened. He asked her to send one set to Edonia and another to the security annex where the office and bank records were being held.

The staff member watched the transfer marks appear.

"They’ll call it stolen information."

"They can compare it with their own receipts."

"What if they refuse?"

"Then the people who lived here can still see what was ordered."

Alex asked her to include the original references and the gaps in the damaged records. He wanted the survivors to know what they had found, and he wanted Andrew to have to answer for something more substantial than a rumor carried by the people he had attacked.

The staff member made a further copy onto an office storage device. She kept it with the recovered administrative seal, separate from the terminal that had received the original messages.

The attendant stopped at an earlier message before removing the storage device.

"This one names you," she said.

Alex read the passage. Kael had described the representative called Edward and the resources he expected that connection to bring him. Another attachment contained the purchase of Beatrice’s family business.

"He wanted us to keep those accounts ready for the campaign," the woman said. "Should I leave this out of the copies going to the civic office?"

"No."

Her hand stayed above the control.

"You were working with him."

"I came here to help him win."

Alex disliked seeing his own part reduced to the calculation in Kael’s message. He had thought he was using the General’s access to reach the people behind the city’s troubles. Kael had been making his own calculation about what the pair would bring him.

"Keep the payment with it," he said. "People can see what he arranged and what I paid for."

The attendant withdrew her hand from the removal control and copied the message with the others.

Alex knew Varyn would use it if he had the chance. Hiding it would give the man a better weapon than the truth already did.

Outside the records room, the officer told a waiting guard that the General’s archive was being preserved. The guard looked toward the covered body above them, then asked whether his last orders still applied.

"Bring the military orders to Dorian," Alex said. "If one closes a road or takes supplies, Selene needs to see it too. We aren’t sending people back into danger because no one canceled an old instruction."

When they went back upstairs, a guard was carrying another covered body out of the hall.

Alex stepped aside.

The man beneath the cloth had worn a clan elder’s robe. Had he come to that meeting expecting a bargain, a promotion or a chance to stop what was happening outside? Alex would not learn it from the body being carried past him.

At the entrance, the records officer received confirmation from the annex. Beatrice had kept the loan copies there and was asking which of the newly recovered names belonged to the same people in her father’s case.

"Let her compare them," Alex said. "Don’t replace her case with this one."

The officer nodded and sent her the references. Behind them, Kael’s staff were still carrying out their dead.

Alex looked toward the road leading away from the hall.

"Have Dorian put people around the relay approaches without going inside. One of us will go after we know who else is there."

Vesa sent the request.

A reply from the annex arrived before he left the steps. The new copies had reached another intact civic office, where surviving staff were showing the orders to the people trying to find their missing relatives.

The record no longer existed only in a dead General’s protected room.

***

Andrew saw the stopped archive connection first.

He was far from the ruined hall now, in a private staging room beyond the place he had abandoned after the battle. The Asura crystal remained inside his storage ring. He had checked it before taking the next route.

He turned his attention back toward Proxima.

The infinity marks appeared in his eyes.

Through his All-Seeing Eyes, he watched a records officer carry a storage device across the security annex. On a display behind the man was Andrew’s own face.

He followed the people looking at it rather than wasting time staring at the room where the first copy had been found.

The bank clerk had another set. A different group of staff were opening the file in a second office. One of the vampire successors stood outside the city hall, speaking with the creature that carried their messages.

Andrew’s expression tightened.

Kael had kept more than he needed.

The General had always wanted something to bargain with. Andrew had found that ambition useful while it made the man obey. Now the dead fool’s caution was costing him an operation.

He could destroy the observation post, along with its records, its equipment and the people who knew which orders had reached them.

The copies already outside it would remain.

For a moment, his gaze moved toward the bank clerk.

There were too many places to clear before the successors reached the relay. Leaving through the route prepared for him was more important than chasing every person who had learned his name.

Andrew opened the post’s private channel.

An operator answered at once.

"Your Highness."

"Destroy the observation records. Burn the site."

The operator stared at him.

"We still have staff in the lower workroom."

"Then you should have moved faster."

Andrew closed the channel before another question reached him.

He looked once more at the distributed image of his face.

They could keep their evidence. It would do them little good if they couldn’t catch him.

He turned toward the prepared departure room, already deciding which of the post’s remaining connections he would leave behind.