Chapter 296: Kordula’s Realizations

Kordula’s recovery cycle ended the next morning.

She did not wait for the cradle to finish raising her. The moment the restraints folded away, she sat up on her own, and the frame adjusted around her as if it had expected nothing else.

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[ Integrated Personnel Profile ]

[ Name ]

Kordula Weissenberg

[ Personnel Type ]

Integrated Non-System Personnel

[ Combat Class ]

None

[ Tier ]

Tier 0 (90% Synchronization Rate)

[ Axis ]

Somatic

Cognitive

[ Professional Specialization ]

Automated Weaponry Program

Autonomous Security Systems

Mechanical Engineering

[ Research Status ]

Scientific Specialist: Recognized

Research Director Qualification: Accredited

Research Director Appointment: Eligible

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She read it through once before closing it, and the rest took her less than an hour.

She spent years at AWP control consoles and heavy-platform operator stations, where every layer assumed the user already knew what they were doing. Getting lost somewhere in the process was never pleasant.

The Commander’s System ran on the same idea, only far smoother.

She found the menus where she expected them, learned which doors belonged to her and which didn’t, and stopped being impressed somewhere around the fourth panel.

"So that man became a Research Director, and I’d have to become one before I can run my own research?"

When she tried to open the Research archives, the System stopped her and told her she had no authority to access them.

"I guess I’ll have to wait for the Commander, then."

Her eyes went back to the top of her authority list.

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[ Highest Commander — Hans Flemmens ]

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Hans Flemmens.

Since the plant, she had only ever known him as Golden Eagle, or simply the Commander. Nobody around her had used anything else, and she had never thought to ask.

She tried the name against every briefing, roster and file she could still remember, but nothing came back.

The thought lasted only a moment before she went back to the panel.

She checked the recovery log next. Registration itself had taken two hours. The rest was observation and recovery; a little over two days passed from the moment the pod closed to the moment the cradle let her go.

She wondered how long it had taken Tyrus—not because it mattered, but she just wanted to know.

Everything else felt the same. Her hands, her balance, the old stiffness in her back from years of standing at consoles.

She had half expected to wake up as someone slightly different, the way anyone would after agreeing to something like this. Instead she woke up as herself, with a new set of menus and Hans Flemmens where DAEDALUS used to be.

For years, her authority came from people she had never met, passed down through offices she was never allowed to visit.

She wasn’t sure which of the two she preferred.

The door opened.

"Overseer Weissenberg." Reechard stepped inside. "You’re awake earlier than we expected."

"Earlier than you expected? Am I supposed to lie down for more?"

Reechard didn’t answer her question, so she asked another instead.

"How long did Tyrus take?"

"A few days or so."

Kordula didn’t say anything.

"I can have one of the assistants show you around the facility, if you’d like."

"I’ve already seen the floor plan."

"Very well then." Reechard inclined his head. "The Commander also asked me to tell you that your access includes the Intake area. He said you would know why."

"Isn’t he worried I’ll see something I shouldn’t?"

"Surely you’re joking, Overseer," Reechard chuckled. "The Commander said you’d be more worried about the secrets you don’t get to see."

Kordula rolled her eyes. Whatever Hans was thinking, he hadn’t forgotten the drives, and he had even invited her to look at them.

Reechard didn’t seem to know why, but Kordula had an idea. Hans was teasing her with everything the Tech Center could pull out of a recovered drive.

On her way out of the recovery section, she passed the Integration Pods. Two of them were closed, their readings running. She didn’t recognize either name on the displays.

She took the long way around to the intake section, the route that didn’t pass the observation glass above the Research Core. It was only a few minutes longer.

Secure Intake was nothing like the rest of the building.

There were no display walls here. The section was built around long screening lanes, sealed inspection cells and racks of labeled containers, with personnel moving everything through in a fixed order.

Every item was scanned, tagged, logged and routed somewhere else before anyone was allowed to open it properly.

Three sets of labels ran along the racks.

One was hers. VULCAN media from beneath the power plant, sealed in transfer cases she had watched Hans’s Engineers carry out.

Another carried Directorate markings and SAS evidence tags. Drives, receivers, storage modules, some of them so badly damaged she was surprised anyone had bothered bringing them.

The third said Silverpeak.

Marcus Lenhert was standing beside the Directorate rack with a tablet, checking tags against a list. He looked up when she stopped beside him.

"Overseer."

Kordula took a moment before a small tag appeared beside him in her vision.

"Agent... Lenhert."

She didn’t look back toward the Integration section. Whoever was in those pods was not her business.

"How did the integration go for you?"

"Smooth as butter, Overseer. You look like you could use more rest."

"You’re way ahead of me, but rest isn’t one of my options right now. Do yours tell you what half of these functions actually do, or only where they are?"

"Only where they are. The rest of it, I have to work it out myself."

She looked down the racks.

"The Commander told me locked drives don’t matter here. What does this place actually do?"

Marcus set the tablet down and picked up a drive from the tray beside him, its housing cracked along one side and part of the casing scorched black.

"Revealing secrets the likes of us wouldn’t easily get to." He turned the scorched drive over in his hand.

"This one belonged to Cell Eleven. Half of it was burned. I spent weeks on it and got almost nothing. This place read it overnight, and it marked which parts it recovered and which parts it had to rebuild."

He nodded at the screening lanes. "I’ve been cracking drives for years in the name of intelligence gathering. This is the real intelligence gathering machine."

Kordula looked at the drive longer than she meant to. DAEDALUS could recover drives like that too, but whether it could do it this fast was another matter.

"And what kind of information have you seen?"

"Dirty secrets. Lots of them. You can take a look when you have time, Overseer. Those terminals over there are spares. They’ll show you whatever your access allows."

"Is the Commander really that careless, leaving terminals out in the open?"

"You’d be surprised how secure they are. They only look open to you because you’re... part of the System now."

"Don’t tell me you’ve been cracking the secret of this... System too?"

Marcus’s brows drew together slightly, and he didn’t answer.

He had tried once, on the night he woke up. He had gone digging past the menus he was given, into the parts of the interface that weren’t meant for him.

The System pulled him out before he got anywhere, and a warning filled his vision until he stopped.

What the System had given him was worth too much to risk over curiosity.

Kordula could tell Marcus wasn’t going to say more about it, so she sat down at one of the spare terminals instead.

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[ Detecting System User ID ]

[ User found — Kordula Weissenberg ]

[ Verifying Access Level ]

[ ... ]

[ Access Level Verified ]

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