The Lake Where Protocol Replaces Memory

0:00The fog over Ion Lake heats the morning sun before it comes close to touching the surface. I can barely see the warp silhouette of the old pier through the mist, the water underneath the so dark returns the light smoke, one shade lighter than the charred hills around it. I keep my gloves on as I grip the rail of the aluminum skiff, resisting the green urge to check my phone lock to my duffel for the third time since launch. It's a joke already with my unbody, I'll check for a signal, get nothing, repeat. When air, my guide stands at the bow in his battered orange jacket, barely saying a word since picking me up at Henderson Point. He's maybe 40, maybe 60, hard to tell under his beard and more by posture the kind of hunch the screams of too many winters with no insulation, too many years looking down instead of ahead. The lake is unless except for his ancient aboard, and he stares ahead with same huge urgency you see on ambulance drivers stuck in traffic. The shore arrives all at once, a black line, then a scab about the broadening piling and gravel, then a clutch of weather battered buildings. The remains of the old steel milling up of the town, pipes reaching in and like exposed

1:02veins. For an environmental service site, it's unforgivably empty. Used to be thousands here, Rena Motors for the first time, still not looking at me, for his muffled. Not anymore, don't go out at night doctor, they don't like outsiders. He's already untying rope and touting away before I can answer. The wind to shower was a shoulder my duffel and climb the walk dog steps, boots creeping up into the heart of a sleft of soulbridge. The fog is heavy enough to be tasted bitterness, something like cold pennies. The survey headquarters is impossible to miss, a big, prevat bunker built to look less temporary than it is, wring by chain links in a rash of warning signs whose actual messages no unauthorized entry is surveillance and use. Has its own review-purd calls seem almost beside the point. The door is ajar. The logo stares, water stained and faded, white birch environmental reclamation. Someone left in a hurry. The door jackets on hooks hardass, a half-eaten sandwich. The coffee machine hums to itself, cup beneath steaming gently. Three workstations, two active, lobed in, did a fuse open, screens jumping with columns

2:04of half-completed field log entries. The chair by the radio is still spinning. The transmission plays on loop. Wine, static, a jumble voice mail. Female. Is something in the water, they're not help. Then static and a hiccuping restart like a hiccup in a child's breath. I don't move for a moment, stepping around of all the scuff floor, sent of bird toast. My mind fumbles for rational anchor maybe they went into the field, brief emergency, sand or thop. My notes say there should be at least five people on sight at any given time, but the boards are blank and they feel vehicle keys hang untouched by the door. I'm standing in the bones of a vanished team, the only witness of radio shorting out its unwarning over and over. Outside the wind surges, carrying the lake's breath into the main street. For the first time I registered the wait, not just the lake, but was missing from the air. I moved to the window. Beyond the security fence the black water licks the shore and broken, patient. What happened here? And why does no one seem to care that the only voice is left are trying to warn me off? I take inventory of my surroundings, feel packs, supply crates, someone's feel boots

3:06crushed its strange angles under a bench. I flick through a set of laminate axis badges, names growled in blunt marker, non-matching mine, my own badge affixed to a manila envelope sits in touch to top the reception counter, as if the last person didn't dare move it. Below, mechanical thunk behind me, I spin, fist up a second too late. A tall man in blue coveralls for us invest, and an unconvincing smile blocks the doorway, his hard hat and hand. You must be dofter at all. It's not a question. He emphasizes doctor, a sharp edge to it. Clean shaven, rub rim dies, too brisk for welcome. He holds out a hand and throws it before I can shake. I'm Fraser, sight lead, you weren't scheduled and tonnex week he shouldn't be in this wing. He moves to turn off the radio, yanking the code with more force than necessary. Where's your team? I ask, not bothering to hide their edge in my own voice. Fraser shrugs. Pulled out after the contamination report, some protocols require rapid evacuation. Your job is monitoring, not field operations, then your personal property you need to secure. You'll have to do it now, this size access is restricted until clearance.

4:08He talks like every answer is a threat that I starting past me to the still warm coffee. Your environmental science right, he asks and his use of my role is less question, more accusation. Stick to your camp, doctor doll, do not cross zones that aren't assigned, it's in the contract. I glance over the security sheet on the desk. Several entry points are marked red closed, authorized staff only. A shadow behind Fraser's left shoulder, a nervous face, too young for this place, lean at the team's field tech, badge half concealed by pullover, chewing the skin of her thumb. She gives the bearish shake of her head, eyes flicking from Fraser to me, then down. A blur of movement in the hole and marked trotter enters before Fraser can block him. Old earth except graying at the edges, jacket and blazing with the provincial wildlife. His hat is rain stained, hands brisk, gaze skeptical but direct. Someone's got to show doctor doll hubunk, lakes not going to police itself, he says, pointedly ignoring Fraser. Rest of the team's kept themselves busy town too, you'll want to shower after the ferry at an alloc free-door. Fraser doesn't argue, simply shrugs once more in stalks out, muttering about protocols,

5:09files and external interferences. Mark leaves me out past a rose of paper over windows and flickering halogen bows. Outside, you can taste metal on the air. He gestures toward the heart of the old town. Officially, no one's allowed here unless their credential for hazardous exposure. Unaffishably, half the town ignored the last evacuation, no one leaves unless the contractors let him. We walk through what used to be solid ridges main avenue, rose of windows houses, for sales signs cracked and tilting, a shopfront with them to propane tanks inside. The steel mill shadow spreads over everything, drainage ditches creased with red dust and fine, blocks and. On the hilltop, military green vehicle squat, recent tire prints leading up the lane to a fence compound. I note the security cameras involved in models, but working. One tills of farloasus. Mark notices. He knew in the last 18 months contractors claim it's safer, more like they monitor the monitors if you ask me. His word comes slow, irritation just below the surface. We pass two men hauling barrels, both marked with yellow stickers stamped toxicological risk level 4.

6:10I slow try to see their faces both look away. A teenager embuts and a wool hat stands by a fence, drops her eyes and spits, edging back when I pass. At the coroner, assign private property. No trespassing. And beneath it, crudely stencil, keep to your own. Mark leans in, lowering his voice. Keep her head down, doctor. Don't ask questions unless you want more trouble denounces. A cord rush, fair, defines curiosity, maybe just enough to keep me walking. The dome is a windowless box at the edge of the contaminated zone tape generated droning behind the wall. Why sign bonkers clean too clean as if someone left just before me, I store my things and try the door. It locks, but something about the click feels for show. That night I try to record field notes the words won't settle. I write a race right again. The wind outside picks up. I catch distant pounding machinery, I think, or perhaps something heavier. I keep telling myself this is just a contract, one more survey, and tomorrow the facts will fall into place. I run data correlations in my head until sleep comes hard and jagged.

7:12A shriek wicks me. I juk a plate scrambling from my phone in darker so total it shocks me breathless. Another screamer is it a call. Ripples then breaks apart into echoes raising out across the water. Something under it in the registry feel more than here vibration, metallic, almost human. I stagger from bed, throw on boots, and jam open a creaking door. The cold hits like water on steel. At the edge of my cone of flashlight, movement a figure at the shoreline. I move chivering now, gritty eyed, purring at shapes that threaten to disintegrate into nightmare. Alina stands bare for on the sand, her feet bloodied and gumbly, pajama pants cake with lake mud. She's mumbling eyes wide, body trembling so hard it seems involuntary. I call her name. She keeps whispering, lars, silvy, tom, harbined the long vowel stretch, drift into nonsense. I reach for her, but she flinches and turns toward the water. Behind me, doors open, two locals appear eyes full of grief and anger. One grabs Alina, pulls her away. As I follow, shop, spicious stirs cut up me. In the mess hall, light flickers bleakly on the no-leum.

8:15I try to sit with a mug of black tea-faint chatter, whispers among locals at the far table, all turned inward. Lights last night, a woman members. Saw it from the dock, like signals. Eye and fever, another mutters. Just like 99, the surveillance monitor over the counterhums in the background. I cap snippet to Fraser's voice in the hall, perth calls as no movement after curfew, check the dose logs, and with the damn geocomp file. Later trying to access environmental data, the database delivers fragments and errors. Key survey maps missing. Sensor files replaced by placeholders, data with helper perthicle. I probe deeper only to receive an error in a phone call from Fraser. Dr. Dahl, I see someone's trying the restricted data lines to your contract as conditional, he says, for slow but shaking, and funding can be pulled at any time, you're here to verify basic safety, stay out of local compliance. I forward my findings to my supervisor, trying to put together a report, but the reply is called, this is a top tier contract, do not antagonise locals, do you are expected to complete your assignment, no early departures will be authorised.

9:15The rules close in, pence's eyes, technology, contracts. No where to move without permission. No way out, even if I wanted one. The containment is personal now, not just environmental. By morning, the sun tries but fails to assert itself over ion lake. A seek mark near the wildlife office is send a block up full of old maps and a distinguishable mod. He agrees to help grudging but not immune to shared discomfort. We sweep the shell of the old mill. Mark carries a shotgun for foxes, he claims, but his grip is wet knuckled. Inside, filtered light through plate glass, puddles on the concrete, old PPE scattered as a shed made flight. Dirty gloves, a respirator, the heel of a boot, all Mark was streaky, silvery black rest due that clings with a faintly greasy metallic shine. Near A closed for hazard stay will no clear signage wet footprints out of sink, leading downward, only to vanish in a muscle street dust and bergen glass. My stomach twists. Mark gestures that the camera's out except for one indicator light blinking red. The maintenance log, rescue from a half-malted plastic holder, shows nothing since last Tuesday.

10:18We search the admin office but someone is probably open in the network cabinet. A curl of paper under the desk, a security printer slept, blurred and water damaged. When I hold it up to the light, swirling white shapes lead from black, distorted lights, seemingly in motion, below the lake surface. The timestamp matches the night of the first team disappearance. We take our investigation to the village proper, Mark making introductions as if he shielding me or testing my intentions. First, the grieving, a woman in oversized flannel, ice swollen, handshaking as she pours coffee. He hadn't slept in days, heard things, saw things, wouldn't leave the house after dark, and he's just a gone, like the others. No worker, beer saw her on his breath, describes a bad air, bad water, bad look-all since the army showed up. Sizz more people left than the evacuation count admits. When you hear them, you change. He would elaborate. In the maintenance shop, a guy too young for these lines cops wouldn't stick while recounting that several texts quit in recent months. One came at me with a knife after a double shift, said I had someone else's eyes. His laugh isn't real.

11:19When he tells the doctors environmental paranoia they say, or bad booze, but you stay, you feel it. That's why I'm leaving Come Spring, if the ice is out. When I challenge Fraser, showing him redacted personnel logs, he doesn't deny them manipulation. Just sweeps the page aside. Doctor, old mill towns are full of headcases. No official reports, these names are Gosa Hazard of the job, paranoia, mass suggestion, if you'd rather leave, there's a contract about head of south tomorrow, I'll call for your ticket myself. He drops clumsy folder on the desk, reviewed for privacy Axi's section 19. Both lists of employees are riddled with black bars, names register numbers. I count to me my own revulsion, deciding to keep ticking. On the pretext of something for an unexpected pH anomaly, I pull water in soil at three mark sites. The mud at the south end that clings to my gloves, leave it afaint, for a magnetic shimmer. Pure destruction on my field meters this bike tom readable before shorting. I jump notes as metallic gas escapes, they can cost it. Back in the lab, a desperate tech, loading up a battered Subaru grub's sleeve. They are watching, Frieza and those new people don't trust what they call protocol, don't

12:21trust the clean up last month, I saw Sid walk into the lake, just walked in, never came out. I press for more, but her hands shake too badly to write. She drops the sample case glass shattering. Her words cling to me, don't try to transmit anything important, use a coded channel, or you'll get what they got. I make the wrong call. I try to upload my evidence to retivize satellite bypassing security with a stolen code. The lab's shadows lights die, equipment shuts down, screens blank. The only illumination is the green wash of a low power emergency sign. I scramble for my notes, but it's too late. Banging at the door. Two men faces in familiar, as cold black pockets, no visible affiliation. They flush cards, no emblems. One rifles for my notes, other logs into my tablet. For a call audit, doctor, these coms are restricted for on site use only, no field uploads pending decontamination. They're not police, not contractors, but a castage of a military patron one man's glove. They collect my samples, shut off my badge, and disappear without a word.

13:21Sleep finds me only in pieces. I wake early, reach for my equipment, my field kit is gone. Not a trace of my sediment tubes, only and stained wood with the lids rested. The fragile lines of trust I'd start attracing in my head burn out. Peanut is missing. No one has seen her leave the door, but her bunk is stripped. I look for her among the field tents, but every face is forged in suspicion. Someone leaves a folded paper at my door. Just two words, stay away from the water, a friend. Outside the main camp, two contractors are locked in a blow fight, shoving, swinging, one screaming, it's in me, I can feel it moving in my blood. He collapses, sobbing, eyes rolling upwards, can draw on so tight it shines. No one touches him. A pick up trucker rags and the man is gone in minutes. No ambulance, no records, just a smear in the gravel. Mark finds me cradling my bruise knuckles in the wildlife office, dragging in a colorful of lakefish. He opens it grimly. Each body is warped bloated, skin splitting, I enrich exudate bubbling from the gills. Sharp, I've seen nodules snarl along the spines, I can't three different kinds of deformity

14:23I've never seen outside tennis eatrofongus. Mark's voice is nearly a whisper, had two great plea herons dropped dead in the last ten days, no wounds, just drowned on dry ground. Fraces soams in. His composure is shattered as rimmed red, shurred and tucked. He blocks the doorway, his voice trembling with both rage and something I can't identify. This is only now, doll, you interfere, he stir people up, you escalate, the contamination event is still ongoing and your contract is at risk, no more feel clearance, you are restricted to your assigned zone. He storms out, slamming the door, leaving a ripple fear in his absence. We prisoners in our own assignment. Mark and I nick-apact a shaky allyship born of desperation and the smell of iron in our mouths. Using his local keys, we double back through the abandoned maintenance deeper. In a father's recess the oldest foundation, the most corroded pipes we find a hatch have never seen on the blueprints. No external lock, just a recess reader pulsing electromagnetic blue. Mark takes a single breath and shoves his shoulder against the panel, which yields with a sound of feel more than here. Hidden vault is the color of rusted blood.

15:24The air is cold, dry, metallic the dust here smells worse than the outside, thick with secrets. The shelves are lined with battered canisters ranging in age from the 60s to modern, all labeled in a cipher of military abbreviations dates and hand stumped inventory lists. Technical notebooks are stacked among the canisters. They record more than chemistry dar lists of, subjects by birth year, incident logs, graphs marked trade acquisition, anomalous findings and a containment breach. Language repeats and increasing the pharantics crawl, own organism, Elmarnas are for neural seepage, restricted to controlled population, initiate withdrawal on protocol breach. A single entry dated less than six months ago lists the missing names from our survey crew withdrawal code, not deceased. Buried under research logs, a sheath of images printed from security feeds. Most show faces from town meetings, night vision of the lakeshore and composite maps marked phase Roman 2 inheritance monitor. Each resident is coded, monitor, observe, express, unknown. Heartbeat hammering, a tug marks arm, ready for fly. In a corner, it's a circuit mesh of what looks like feelbrain with monitors, but wired

16:26together for group readings. Cables lead into the walls concrete, presumably at toward the lake. We exit faster than we entered, not bothering to mask our intention. The air outside feels different, thinner pressure building in my chest of time running short. At the shoreline, a figure moves a fisherman, ancient silent, a fixture according to local lore. Elmarn Karen, a lost license net fisherman, sits on his overtone bucket, can beside him, staring into black water. He speaks before I do, without greeting. I've seen their eyes, doc, sometimes you look in the mirror and it's not you looking back anymore. He drags in a trembling berth, hands quivering on the cane. Every ten years, it comes again, that's the pattern, at first boats don't come back, when people, some here whispers, some see things in the water, it grows, takes us time, more bad years than good, lately he see Alina, she hears them more than most, maybe she's

17:28gone already, or maybe she's one of the lucky ones who stay mean as that sounds. He glances sideline. I thought about it, ending it, before it pushes me to worse, but not brave enough, I guess. The last of the light dies over the lake. The water seems deeper, fuller, alive with intent. Up there, under the receding ice, impossibly deep sickles distant lights, white and shifting, respond to nothing I can explain or rationalize. I try to speak, but what words can do just a knowledge that mutates the bones. Inside my head the piece is fit, my assignment isn't clean up. The lake's curse wasn't an accident. And the experiment, if that's what it is, isn't stopping. In failing crimson light, the silhouette of old man Karen melts into the wind. When I rest looking again, I can't be sure he was over there. My breath comes fat, just hiding away that isn't quite fear and isn't quite all summer between wanting to flee and needing the answer so badly I'd climb into darkness with it. The water swallows what little light remains. The town behind me is already part of the night, silent and waiting. I stay by the lake's edge until my legs lose feeling and the cold.

18:29Metallica claws are my throat, not knowing where I end and a perit call begins. I move only when the first needles of cold cut through the numbers and my niece's primitive call back to my own body's limits. But the restlessness under my skin won't let me sleep, and my mind circles the days discoveries like a dog at closed door. I shuffle through the narrow alley behind the old general store, gravel crunching underfoot, hands deep in my pockets, every muscle tensed as if bracing for some unenable blow. My thoughts tangle, the missing, the vault, the list of names, away phrases gaze flinch for me as if recognition itself was dangerous. My return to the dormitory is slow. Everyone doe except my clothes with a natural blue from strip lights, but here and there, in the blank patches between I pick up shreds of murmured conversation. No voices rise above a whisper. A catch only ragged syllables my name, maybe someone else's, the word inherit, bleeding under the door of the staff lounge. I almost knock, but the instinct to avoid detection is stronger now, primal and gaining ground. I feel as if I'm not entirely in my body, as if at any moment someone might test my heart for iron filings and fine more metal than muscle.

19:30In my bunk, I force my breathing into even patterns, sketching diagrams nearly blind in a weak bulb light. Though phases in the vault record circle my mind, whom are two from monitoring, and for what? Some names on the list belong to families I already met, faces seen at the edges of firelight appearing between milgeave curtains. Inheritance, the oldest term, phase room in two, stamped in fading ink. Yet the government men contractors, soldiers, whoever wanted first and most to control the evidence, not to heal or even to isolate. Although persistent thump of rhythmic vibration, not quite mechanical, not quite organic settles into the walls around me, I press my ear to the cinder block, a distant humming comes through, paired to the same pulse that arrives beneath the lake at dusk. My hands inch over my collarbone, searching for the phantom ache that's dog-admi-since touching the waters edge. I run my tongue over my teeth. A tisling is chemical, deeply bitter as if I've bitten a steel nail. A shadow darts at the glass-side-waste, heart-beating sideways, but see nothing but the wavering branch of a pine. For a while moment I expect a lean-in corridor, barefoot sleepwalking again, have stess blip between memory and madness.

20:31Instead, in the deadest hour of night, my phone vibrates how. I left it powered off after the block hat. I flip it open instinctively. New message block number. A single line, 591wh, 10 minutes come alone, ye, I hesitate tension flickering between hope and dread. My mind was trapped warning or leaner herself. My feet choose before I do, guide in my body fast and silent through the narrow holes down the back stair, pass the row of muddy workboots and boxed for spiritors. Outside the air has settled into an even, freezing density. Each breath feels sharpened. I follow a breadcrumbs trail of flattened grass and dirty chuprints past their buildings. The ground is pitted, created where barrels were hastily removed. At the fence, one section saves, a patched foyd in the security mesh, enough for a thin person to fit sideways. I breathe out, squeeze through. The figure waits in the dark, arms crossed tight, chest heaving. Alina. Her face is pinched, eyes darting from the forest lined to me and back again. She doesn't hug me, doesn't cry. She passes a crumpled note, but can stay at the cover cracked and warped.

21:34Don't let them see you with us, marks gone. I heard shouting, then nothing the guys took him. I flip open the notebook. Inside, page after page frantic handwriting, pages torn and stitched together, carpet printots from the vault merged with the codes from our missing servers. My dad wrote most of it, Alina says, voice hollow with exhaustion. They tested him 96, back before the second big evacuation. He started seeing things, then faded, half the other names of people from his school. All timers, all tracked, tagged, sampled. On the coat? I whisper. She nods, working her jaws are fighting down, Nasser. Most of it's substitution, basic ciphers, but layered. I found a key and dad's old paper's mother colony is the base, but they only call it that in the older logs here. She points to a list, agritive measurements, lines marked response latency, auditory phenomena, and a hand-drawn way from labeled facing subject G. Some kind of test? I ask. And monitoring, not just for contamination, they're watching generational changes. She wipes her nose with the back of a shaking hand. For the kids they kept after the lustre settlement, this ganna strap reactions after time

22:35by the water, check out Blood for Fry and Load. My brother started hearing voices, saying things me, he jumped from these docks last summer. I can't find words. I flipped the end of the book, clipped photos, date pole from hand held me to strong magnetic readings, localized weather fluctuations, strange I can superimposed on survey maps over the lake. And one final, desperate entry, lights under a slick coat, is it sending or receiving? Alina tugs at my arm, almost fair on now. They know when you see too much, why do you think your stuff got taken, they're always listening. She shoves a cough mask at my face, one of the thick charcoal filters from the abandoned lab. If you're still doing air sampling, use two of these, been getting nosebleeds every night since we found the vault, started forgetting stuff I mean whole afternoon's gone. I tried to memorize her features, the surgeon version of her the one that started to resemble everyone else marked in the logs. Where will you go? She just shrugs. I can hide in the woods for a while, all I need is you to leak this when you can. I think your credentials still mean something, right? You can still get someone to listen, at least on the outside. For a moment we're both just breathing together in the frozen dark, no stars above, only a

23:39ragged string of distant floodlights along the mills collapsed roof. I clutch the notebook. If it gets really bad if you need out where do I find you? Alina's laugh is a broken thing. I'll be at the lake, but always I'm sooner or later, we all are. She's come before I can argue, shoulders vanishing into a cops of battered birch. I slip back toward the shadows, the notebook clumped under my coat, heart racing, not just from fear, but sick acceleration. I have something real, something I can use. Yet every instinct tells me I'm deeper in this web, and the rules have already written themselves around my presence. I can my bunks stall only in our off, I pour through Alina's notes. Whole sections jump with meaning, connecting names from the personnel logs, time, stunt medical records. Columns label to comprehension latency and effect disruption tell a story of not just contamination, but of tracking gradual personnel to drift to shifts then paid to magnet expects traced from the lake. The cross-references go back decades, causes of suicide, mass resignations, erratic events. Every time the protocol shifts then titans. My chest aches.

24:40I tried to recall my own earliest days when I took the first soil sample, which got a war, how long I spent by the inlet. Blimp's flicker in and out. Did I miss something? Or is something missing me now? I resolved to test my own blood, jot in a plan I'll carry out under cover of pretending sample calibration. But I won't get that chance this morning. My door opens without a knock. Free sustains just outside, his shirt must button, voice hoarse. Come with me, Dr. Doll, now. No option. I jammed the note back into my waistband, hiding it under my shirt as I step past him into the hole. His hand trembles when it closes around my arm, the group almost deploring. He steers me through camp, ignoring the few locals who drift past each face turns away rather than risk eye contact. On the day at Mantrilla, the dog gets shut behind his shutter's drawn. We're out of time, Fraser Blurts, breaking before I can summon up any hostility. Everything's been spinning out the last two days, the contractor lead he's gone, just took off, left no handover. There was an incident at the main fence, and I started losing time, blackouts, but with memories coming back in dreams, like someone else's voice in my head.

25:43I know my eyes were of manipulation. Fraser slumps into the battered office chair and runs a shaking hand over his scalp. My family is from the next valley over, when the army started the first surveillance program. My uncle was head of public health inherited the contract after the spill, they said. He drowned the elator, but Rekka said natural causes, he used to war me keep to your unkind. Don't drink deep, don't look at the lights at night. He meets my gaze, face pale and desperate. This isn't about fixing contamination, it's a trial trade induction, they call it. They bring in outside researchers like you, see who gets altered monitor them, then pull the ones who are worst affected, it's not about the lake being dangerous, it's the people that the lake changes you, pull something over your mind, and they are studying when and how it takes. I wait in stunned silence. Fraser's breath quickens, words tripping over themselves as if, now started, the truth can't be held back. This stick to the script doctor, environmental recommission is the cover the real purge call is about inheritance away for whatever is in the water, this lodge to remake people slowly, subtly, then tag and follow the next generation, I oversee the cleanups. But mostly I watch for deviations, loss of time, personality changes, shuffling between

26:44speech patterns, new allergies, sudden magnetism to iron, when you came, you were instantly a phase three candidate, I wasn't supposed to warn anyone, but I can't, can't keep it in my head right half the time anymore, you ever have dreams where you drown but keep waking up speaking languages you never learned, I have every week now. A crash outside a glass breaking, yelling, a scuffle, two full grown men in a tangle and asphalt. Fraser flinches, his eyes focusing not on the window but beyond, as if listening for a deeper signal. They'll come for us, he whispers suddenly childlike. He unlocks a drawer slide across a battered USB, all the sensor readings from the vault and downstairs if you make it off site get it to anyone who will listen but assume they are all listening to the wrong things. A muffled screen breaks through, my pulse bikes, I want to run, but Fraser leans in, gripping my arm of sudden a natural force. If you stay at your part of it if you go, they'll follow, think very carefully doctor, another screen sharper, someone yells for help. His hand falls away, it out, I don't need prompting. I exit through the back, passing by a half-glapped awning.

27:47Locals cluster by the lake now, hands over their mouths or speaking into phones, but no one meets my gaze. There's a sense in the air panic just below the surface pacing, bodies moving with more hasten care. A woman rushes by, tear-stained, clutching a child to her side. The mess holes windows have been dark and every chair pulls far from the light. When I find Mark's office, it's been ransacked. Heep is scattered. My Mark's on the desk-top. The door-hands loose on its hinges, print of mud and iron flickers on the threshold. No blight, at least, but also no sign of Mark. My phone rings, jagged and ill-timed. Blocked number again, but a voice elinez barely above a whisper. Meet me, North Shore Power House, old substition, hurry, not much time. My thoughts call tighter, but those no doubt will come next. I make for the north edge of the camp, ducking behind a row of cable spools and fuel tanks. No one pursues. If anyone's watching, they don't interfere. The old substation is half-sunk and roof-caved. Windows clouded by a use of oil and condensation. I find a lean accroach behind a console, feverish, or hand-pressed to her ears.

28:50She pulls me into the gloom. They're jammed in the frequencies. They know you have something. The guy from Montreal is coming up. Highway 11. He owes my family a favor. He can get us out, but not until we make a copy of your USB and get it onto the satellite relay. I hesitate. They're monitoring the up-inks. I tried that rat once, they knocked up my whole lab. A flash of her old self, not the old dish. There's a patch lined through the milvruff where brother used to run pirate radio off it, low-band, stays under their monitoring threshold. She fishes out a battered walkie, wires stripped and retwisted. Plug it into your phone, set to channel 7. Five minutes, that's all we'll get. I hand her the USB, fingers already tingling in anticipation or is it from whatever's working at the edge of my blood. Lina works quick, plugging the meek-do apparatus into a socket by the panel. I hover, scanning the windows. She hits send. Static jumps. For a moment an impossibly tense interval, nothing but electric kiss and the wine of failing batteries. Then voices my own hers, others layering over one another in garble transmission. Illuminous pulse ignites the far-leak, visible even through the trees, not lightning, not

29:52man-made light, but something internal to the water itself. I shudder involuntarily the bruise on my arm, throbbing as if responding to an outside current. Lina pulls the walkie-free, creedles at your chest. We're out, if they come before the morning, runs south, there's more than one of us left a promise. A siren starts up one of the military grey-trucks roaring to life by the mill, swinging its headlights in a wide arc. I grab her hand, not letting go until forest-wordless, by terror and the first plunge of escape adrenaline down my spine. As we split, Lina disappears into the block and treeline, her figure shrinking into a blur against the hostile landscape. The USB feels hot in my pocket as if I've pocketed a piece of the ligate self-heavy, inevitable and yielding. I run breath-burning for the shelter of the south fence. And the lake, behind me, glows with a patient's spectral intelligence not alive, but remembering, learning everything it has ever touched. The first 20 minutes after the transmission we can't breathe easy, but can catch our breath either. From the low rise behind the mill ruins, a spot headlights carving up the main road the government trucks, the ones with body panels that swallow light instead of reflecting it.

30:54Their beams flit over the fence where I slid through hours ago over useless warning signs, overflip holes glazed with iron scum dyes. Lina is nowhere to be seen. I clutch her notebook in the hot metal USB as I try to make myself invisible behind a clapspull of cable. The town pulses with new activity flashlights, radios bleeding static, men in a warm park as moving door to door. Any illusion that the project is just an environmental cover is gone. Mark is missing. Fraser, laughed at so, had lost the alignment holding his answers together. I think I hear his voice filter out from one of the adventurialists, desperate breaking then subsumed by orders barked in clipped English and French. I shrink back, keep my head low, try to plot my next move before someone makes it for me. Security teams start knocking on dorm doors, collecting those inside. A spot pair of locals, raw eyed and resolute, usling two children by the hand out across the campsnour then fringes coating the floodlights, heading straight for the woods. I get the sense this isn't the first time they've tried to disappear. In the open, another contractor is vomiting at the roadside, bent double blood on his

31:54glove from a nose beat he can't stanch. No one stops to help him. My boots crunch gravel as I circle to the west toward the old mills lower decks. A fog has risen from the lake stranger and thicker than any yet oily, pushing at the floodlights like a life thing. I think of the lookbooks of a neural seepage of the phrase sits in my mind like trapnel. I have to get to the vault. That's where the last pieces are hidden, where I might find a path or at least prove. Right now, all I've got is a mess of data and the last thing resumbing hope the possibility that somewhere inside that layered hell is something I can use to end this. A pair of headlights sweep the ruins behind me, a press flat into the frost coated grass. The trucks move on, tire slicing mud. Somewhere to the south, sirens wind up, as if to declare that not just a protocol but the whole town is now at stake. The lake reflects none of it, its surface black, alive indifferent. I move in a crutch, slicing pine piles of broken concrete toward the foundation of the old mill. Every step is a gamble on visibility, on silence, on the trust that more eyes aren't already tracking me. My teeth buzz as a coal titan.

32:56In my pocket, the USB burns hotter. It's not just fear anymore, there's a sensation offset from my body as if I'm being measured by something both personal and external. I find the vault gate half concealed by snow. The electromagnetic reader pulses faint blue. A tap alien is caught the third time, it's a mitts. The hatch lifts with a hydraulic wind fell with the cough of unfiltered air. Inside a new absence. The canisters have shifted, some missing, some uncapped. A pile of shredded paper covers the floor, and on one shelf, a cracked open up with smolders, the faint smoke soaked in metal and malt. I thumb through the code printout some a marked face Roman-free external test. My name's all A. This in two places highlighted. It's chilling to see it in writing. I hear footsteps. I freeze, ready to disappear behind shoving, but it's not a soldier. It's frisoswet-shined, pallid, one sleeve torn. In his hand, he dangles a security badge like a broken talisman. He looks at me as if he doesn't recognize me for a split second, then something flickers back. You shouldn't be here, he mutters, voice shredded, logic and tatters.

33:59My anger flares, equal pot exhaustion and steel. Then give me a reason why not. Why are you listed as subjecto? Why am I phase Roman-free? He shakes his head, backing up so that his silhouette cuts the emergency light. It's also supposed to end with us, they cycle through a new group every decade. I thought we could keep the lines clean, but now. His words decay into bitter laughter. Contamination was never just the water. You know, they're tracing inheritance who's taken it and who can't let it go. That's all we owe monitors for a trait we can't understand. He presses a yellow notebook into my hands. I flip to a marked page. There are diagrams, hair samples, EEG traces all showing slow drift to generation, and finally, the same signatures spike across every inheritor over time. Look, frisoswet-shed, voice almost steady, those no cure, they just contain, monitor, then close out when it gets bad enough, protocols not for the town it's for us. An alarm sounds a siren rising to a drone, punctured by the squawk of walkies outside. Everyone issues the same order, all personnel to staging secure sight for extraction do not engage outsiders. Something in the air vibrates.

35:00Frisos stairs past me, I follow the line of his gaze to a loose panel in a vault wall. Cable sneak out, twisted around magnets, iron nodules bulging along the insulation. They pulse, the vibration just shows tactile. The vault hums with an alien rhythm, as if the legs or mind is just on the other side. I take the risk. How do we cut it off? He stares at me as if I've asked him to drain the lake with a spoon. You don't, if you try, it goes somewhere else. The only way anybody leaves clean is if they catch us before it's done. We stare at each other for a moment outside of time. Then the outside noise hits a crescendo buttes overhead, the scrape of moving crates shouts. Frisos backs away, voice grumbling. Run if you want, but you order a pace it forever. I pocket the day to, shoulder past him onto the ladder. I climb fast, boots scraping steel, breath short, lawns bitten by the taste of iron and ozone. The world on the surface is chaos, locals yelling, the hot block of government men trying to herd everyone inside the admin block. A hand grabs me from the shadows Alina, face wild with anxiety and cold. Did you get it?

36:01She whispers, not during to look behind her. I nod, and we duck together into the ruins of the loading dock, pressed against a peel metal wall. She moves with a limp shaking battered. They took mark, he fought her hurt shutting, then nothing. If we have to escape now, it's through the woods, but they have spottoes by the fences. I show her the USB in the notebook. For a split second, hope burns in her eyes. Then, over the speaker at the admin block entrance, the distorted voice biomes, all remaining personnel prepare for health compliance greening, non-cooperation constitutes breach, remain where you are. A line of headlets edges up the main road more trucks, windows blacked out. Some of the locals, realizing this isn't just another drill or chemical scare, bold. Or I brought down by guards, wrestled kicking and cursing into the gravel mod. For a moment, the whole settlement is locked in a slow-motion riot. They drag out a body someone who tried for the tree line. A woman with a blue pocket plastered to her back with mod, her eyes glassy, hands curled as if gripping the world she just left. No one steps forward. No one cleans her. And you draw its sets in not just that I'll be caught.

37:03Suddenly, I don't trust my own reflexes. My vision flickers at the edges, colors drifting strange as swelling in my ears as if the wind has found a frequency just for me, I think of the phasemarks in the logs, the trait signatures. I'm slipping now too. Alina tugs my sleeve eyeswild. We have to get to the realy the only way out is to make sure someone else knows if thickliness up on the date of vanishes this all happens again. We move, weaving through collapsed scaffolding, ducking behind stacks of old piping, moving as quietly as we can manage on shaking legs. My mind snives on old alarmist's tropes industrial accident, a sycogenic epidemic, automatic quarantine for hazardous expoder. But nothing I remember ever prepared me for the contamination being my own mind. On the southern ridge, they've set up a temporary bright tent, wrinked by three green vehicles. As ciders and clean uniforms move up and down the line. Behind the tent, another vehicle sits one of the long-range calms trucks with a probiotish on a stub mast. I'm mouth to Alina, that's our way. A route is indirect, calling through mud, scaling under bobbed wire, navigating the

38:03broken bones of the mill. Alina leans into me for balance, sweat-cooling to eyes on her temple. If this bought us, we're finished. We huddle by a mound of scrap. The calms truck is 20 meters away at the tent between us and the goal. I look to Alina. Her lips tremble. Keep the notebook, if I go down, run for it hold the way to the river, not back to the lake, promise. I promise, but my voice is already raw with the knowledge that making it out isn't just distance now, it's keeping myself, my mind, intact long enough to warn anyone left. A gunchette splits the stillness closer than any so far. Screams, a thrashing straddle from inside the tent. Bars go running for the source, leaving the path open. We move. Across the gravel, boots silent on the grass. My heart and my throat. My blood feels electric quick, frantic, wrong. The contract looms, the back door is open for a second. Inside, the equipment hums lights blinking on patch panels. Two technicians are locked in a shouting match, one trying to pull off his earpiece, insisting he can't take the noise anymore.

39:04I slide the USB into the console, fingers moving by habit to command line, a burst of file transfer, Alina reading off file labels. The hole really takes 20 seconds. Through the side window, a flicker of someone sees us. Boots thunder on the aluminum ramp. Alina reps the drive free, shots go, and drops low as a lunge for the exit. Shots ring against the metal, punching holes into the air. We scramble around the truck, duck into the dock between stacked barrels. The guard catches my collar, his eyes empty, face shiny with sweat. Are you one of theirs, he snorls, voice cracking. Or is it in you? For a second, I hear a not his voice, but a vibration, something inside the back of my skull, or resonance on the edge of what should be possible. I slam an elbow back, break free, and spin off through the mists of crates, leaving him behind. Alina is down the slope crawling. I follow. We run, lungs burning, until the lights from the tent and the trucks are blotted out by a stand of clotted black pine. We press ourselves flat, hands numb as the search lets sweep the slope behind us. No one follows.

40:04The woods feel empty, and ancient, usual forerous sounds replaced by a lagging hum that can't just be in my ears. We crawl until the mill and the tent are out of sight. Every so often, we freeze twice, we double back and listen nothing but our own raggy breathing. Once, Lena collapses, body racked by spasms. Blood traces from her nose, the jack of pulse, but it's their thin, racing and steady. When she comes to her speech is lured, words running awkwardly together. I am sorry, I haven't slept, they try to test me, but I kept moving always the dreams, walking underwater. She slumps, eyes brimming wet, then wipes them, rallying. We dig deeper into the woods, circling wide from the camp, watching the black surface of the lake through the nicotries. I want to believe there is a way out now. But the blood in my mouth tastes of iron, and old words from vault locks echo in my head, comprehension latency, decreased to critical phase, recommend withdrawal. The camp for now in a thicket, a Lena drifting between lucidity and delirium. Steak hiss is through the canopy. My own thoughts fracture, skipping over urgent memories and inventive fears. Kind eyes up my interview, a laugh from Mark, the strange certainty in Karen's foreseed

41:08shreds and reforms, as if being re-recorded from a faulty master. At dawn, a town is awash with new rivals clearly not local, moving with military position, rifle slung, radio's constant. Helicopter's circle overhead, low in predatory. We never see Mark. One time we think we hear him shouting, pleading, or roaring, it's impossible to say. They end silence. We're once to melt down felt like a secret, now it's become a cordon. Helicopter bearing the white gliss of government health circle low, sending power through the air. I trade glances with Lena, resolve hardening. If we try to move north, spotters will catch us. As daylight claws at the sky, Lena does what I cannot sheer sights, and her horse, day's voice, the phrases her father used to teach her, protect the line, keep to your own, don't draw from the lake when the lights move. She flinches at her own words as though they're not hose at all. She turns to me, jaw set. If we're caught, they'll take us to the new field hospital by the marina, no one comes out of there, even if you look fine, they put you in isolation 24 hours under blinking lights when you come out, people say you don't talk right anymore.

42:11Her hand is cold in mine. If you can get away burn this, don't let them get it back. She cusses me the notebook the original, with the logbook pages, her family scrolls, arrows linking phase markers, notes of sleepworking and fever. My hand closes around it of its own accord. We crawl along the tree line. No path is safe. Twice we're nearly found a line of boots pass us so close they smell mint on someone's coat. Lena closes her eyes and matters in what might be French, might be something else. Her hands are shaking badly. At a clearing by the lake shore, the wind picks up. The water is moving, although the sky is dead calm. Patches of ice flow, like glimmering in sheets under the surface. Here the whole basin looks like a single eye, white running to black, ridden rust. I sense as strongly as if someone had shouted a compulsion to approach the water. Lena does too. We hold each other back, not trusting it, not trusting ourselves. Beyond a clearing, they've set up the quarantine code in a line of government agents and white suits, a tent filled with flats of medical gear, makes you of trio stations.

43:12No one is talking. If we go that way, we're lost. Behind us, the woods are thick but movement can be seen of the residents probably hiding in families or alone. There is no safe direction. As we debate, a distant explosion rocks the ground, the mill office ignited by something insane. Black smoke twists, then full skyward, military agents scatter, radios barking new orders. We use the confusion. Lena drags me along the crumbling stone shore into a drainage culvert. We vanish underground, crawling through thick mud, running hands along cold, rude pipe. Inside the pipe's mouth, with light pulsing strangely outside, a Lena gasps presses a trembling palm to my forehead. If it starts if you lose time or something, don't let them write it for you. The center of iron is overwhelming what raw alive. My thought flicker. Names paid in and out, then stabilized. A C-Cov numbers on the steel, 1978, 1999, 2012 and 2023. Year after decade after decade, always a phase, always a resumption. Lena tugs messily, if points to a shaft leading up.

44:14Above blinding, daylight hutside the cordon. A straight shot to the edge of the woods and beyond them, the upper lake. We climb in silence, rapping knuckles, swallowing panic. My mind splinters. As daylight hits, I see figures by the water. Not government, not locals, people from the photos in the vault. Men and women in disarray, kneeling at the banks, some speaking and low, syncopated murmurs. There are shines silver in the dawn. Nasea is transfixed. Is this the inheritance that she whispers? A chill seas is me not of cold, but of comprehension. It's not just change, it's continuation. A continuity enforced over time, hidden by cycles of culling and surveillance. Lena's hands lits her mind. She walks toward the lake shore slow, hesitant, yet pulled by something that doesn't belong to her. I follow, screaming her, naming a whisper so desperate a taste of blood. She ignores me her eyes are full of water, lits moving in an alien cadence. On the muddy bank, her feet hit the water. A choke, torn between risking everything to rescue her and keeping what's left of myself away from whatever is pulling her in. She turns back.

45:15Her face is soft, tears painting iron stains down her cheeks. Let it go, Amber, you can't take it all with you. She wids into water up to her waist. The other inheritance now I can't pretend I don't know what that means the pot, making room for another. The water is black, reflective, unbreaking. A watch, Lena dissolve, not disappear into that shining, ripping mass. I want to run. I want to scream. My body doesn't move. The wind picks up cold, biting, full of whisper's session to understand what to do. I write a Lena's name again and again in the notebook, and catching on trembling hands. From the west, the government cordon closes in. A voice calls through a megaphone, listing numbers instead of names hands up, down to your knees. There is no escape left to hope for. I stagger up from the water, leaving Lena's wet footprints painted in mud behind me. I take the USB and notebook and begin to walk away from the water, head spinning, ignoring the shouts of men in my eye. I shove the notebook deep inside my coat. A sharp, electric sting in my palm blood from a scrape, red running dark, heavier than it should be. I wipe it across my jeans, but it glistens almost black.

46:18The world warps in and out as helicopters descend. There are me in minute shouts hands, let's all blurry and indistinct. Someone in a suit pins my wrists. A thorough voice drones test her, steel batch. She's one of them, report as phasedry. I try to shout a Lena's name. The syllable smother under layers of static. I blink and the sky darkens even as it brightens in the east. I'm somewhere else stripped of my coat surrounded by plastic sheeting and hot lamps. A man leaned over my face, name, date of birth, place of employment. I give the mancers maybe their mind, maybe not. They prick my arms, swab my mouth, stare at my eyes for signs I can't hide. The humming in my skull returns, strong enough an oscillation, attuning fork-driven deep inside. Someone mentioned public health clarification, someone else trait expression and contain to note for transfer all in the tones of a vet clinic, not an emergency room. Fracer appears blank-eyed sitting on a cot, hands pressed over his ears. He says nothing. Two uniformed men hauled him away by the elbows, he's limp, I'm resisting.

47:19I see Lena's notebook in the hands of a technician, backing it for evidence. Outside helicopter winds to life. A catcher reflection in the glass of woman in a government park black around the eyes, shaking. She smiles. I realize after a moment it me. They move me through the cordon to a new tent tighter, brighter, cleaner. Here every surface is either padded, stainless steel or white is blown. They strip away my phone, my boots, my field jacket. Someone checks my pupils, measures my pulse, asks me to count backwards from a hundred. Static curls behind my eyelids, my answers do not sound like my own. The hump beneath the surface grows louder. They say you will be decontaminated than transferred, this is the proof call. I ask what about the others? No one answers. From my cot I watch the sky brighten, for the loss no fed light to reflect off the eye and lake. Man white move in single file, always turning their faces away. Every so often an engine kicks to life a boat, a truck, a chopper then fades to nothing. Finally a technician with a badge green A. Approaches.

48:20He drops Lena's notebook beside my cot in a plastic sleeve. Didn't see you write a thing, doctor, he says, voice flat. Clean bill of health, if you can call it that. His eyes are cold, mouth twisted. Not how call, they'll figure out what's left after the report. The doors open. It'll lead me from the tent. The wind stings my face harsh and full of sediment. The voices around me are muffled as if I'm underwater. I marched onto a waiting helicopter. No one meets my gaze. No one calls me by name. As the skids leave the ground, I catch one last glimpse of the shoreline. There at the edge of the lake, the fountain procession figures walking and out of the water, not quite vanishing, not quite reappearing. I hold the plastic wrap notebook tight, pressed against my chest, hot still for me in foreign time. The harm is in me now. That much I know. The chopper climbs pulling me away. I do not look back again. My last act is simple, I force my eyes open wide, fix myself on the closest. Most ordinary thing the faded mark on my hand from the last eye and test, the way my nails catch the plastic of a Linus book.

49:21I focus on that small patch of skin and grip the notebook with everything I have left, while the well trinks below me to lines of light and ice, until I cannot distinguish the leak from the memory. I wait as wide as the windhouse passed, and let the cold tell me I'm still here. I wait as wide as the windhouse passed, and let the cold tell me I'm still here. Landing cum sharp, rough, more drop than a descent. I lurch as the chopper touches down, ankles jolted, nearly by my thumb. The door hiss is open, cold air snatching at my face. Two men in gray lead me off one at each elbow, the grip is strictly business, but still bored as I'm roughness, like I might slip from the grasp and vanish into the frosty ground. I see chainlink topped and raise a wire, spotlights bright as noon, banks of red lit lens is tracking every step. A temporary looking camp, white tents reinforced against wind, row after antiseptic row. Beyond, a line of black SUVs, idols near the ragged tree line. All temporary nothing here is meant to last, but the protocol inside it. I'm walked through a chemical saw a vestibule stripped again, hosed off with some stinging agent.

50:21The bagelina is notebook separately, a protest, fingers numb, but the technician examining it gives nothing away. He locks it in a clear box, tags it in heredom, teary lips serve, and cuts it down a hole with purposeful steps. I try not to shiver. Metal cuff stitch every table, cent of old copper and ammonia blending in the air. So caught, another attendant to different badge, different gaze, but the same hollow caution. He sits across from me and slides over a thin tablet. Questions come clipped in mechanize when was your last exposure to a tree to lake water. The list all close contacts from site 6p to describe any recent periods of memory loss. Each time I answer, he checks his screen like it's the answer key in some test I never signed up for. He barely looks at me. My name always full doctor. Amber doll sounds strange in his mouth, like he's reading it from a blank page. He draws blood. I don't object. The needle sting is nothing against what churns beneath my ribs. As he fills vial after vial, I catch my reflection in the shield above us. The woman there is gaunt, eyes rim black, jaw clenched.

51:22Her mouth doesn't move. He leaves me briefly door a jar just enough for voices outside to filter in. Another phase 3, to know higher iron, move her to red monitoring, protocol specifies loss of cognitive integrity, but no subject breakdown yet. I shut down tongue thickest stone. I want to sleep, but know if I do as I'll be the lake, not me, dreamy. Hours are maybe just minutes. I'm shuffled through a warrant of flights in wire. The constant hum in the walls alone, insistent vibration is so familiar now I barely notice it except when it waves as or pulses harder. The sound triggers phantom images, Lena's feet splitting black mud, phrases pale hands, marks left a buried understatic. A woman meets me polish black boots, posture like a drawn line. Her uniform says public health, her bearing says military. She looks at my wrists. Dr. Dal, you are to be evaluated for acute environmental exposure and trait transmission, non-cooperation won't be tolerated. Her smile is all muscle, no warmth. They walk me into a portable office freaking of printer ink and fear. Two officials, one civilian glassy eyes, the other a man in a suit whose hands never

52:25still. The table is clean except for black folder, clothes and crusted at one call note with flake rust. I'm offered a chair. I decline. The man's rugs opens the folder. Photographs spill across the laminate, the vault, the canisters, a bloodwork chart peaking crimson, a blurry image of alienating into the water. My stomach drops, but my voice remains steady. I see me want a statement. The civilian leans forward, pushing his knuckles into the folder spine. What did you transmit from the comm struck, Dr. Dal? I play dumb. Routine survey data, protocol calls for backup to external agencies, nothing else. The official with moving hands grows animated. If that were true, we wouldn't have had a breach at the main perimeter of a lost three personnel in underchild hours. What is on the drive? A brief surge of satisfaction. If they're disrattled, maybe not all the signals were jammed. I say you have the drive, you already know. He stands abruptly. The face signatures are mutating with each cycle. Are you aware you were observed contacting local inheritors? Are you aware your own exposure logs mark you as a primary carrier?

53:28My pulse stutters, eyes filling my mouth. I bite back a retort. Your memory may not be reliable. He adds peering at me as if measuring every twitch. Trade induction can present us. A fragmented recall periods of dissociation, effective instability, new linguistic competence, I read the logs, I cut in. I know what they mean. Silence then. It hands thick, pregnant and this. The woman in uniform straightens. Dr. Dal, do you emit contact outside parties with material not authorized under protocol? Here, finally, is the fork admit deny or smudge the line for other. I hesitate. Which too much has passed a pretend ignorance and a Lena's words rush back. If they clean us up in the day to vanish, this all happens again. Yes, I say my voice clear, louder than I expect. I sent out everything I could logs, recordings, press analysis, protocols, everything they're refused to log in the official file. The uniform woman mulls her lips tight. No warning, no fanfare she cites a manila envelope across the table. You have to be remanded for photoscreening impossible long term monitoring pending outcome,

54:32your professional credentials will be suspended. My life is better in voluntary. You're not trying to cure anything. She nods once. We're not authorized for containment, only triotian data collection until higher clearance we mark, we call as needed. I don't ask what cult means here. I already know. Her eyes say as much. They escort me from the tent. I make no resistance. Why bother? The system has run before, will run again, each time more buried under layers of bureaucracy and adaptive language. Back in the monitoring tent, I'm handed a taboo'd probably blank or watching for patterns and how I hold it. I ignore it. I review my body, finger by finger, hand by shaking hand, watching for loss of agency or will. I write a lien over the back of my palm, tracing each letter again and again. If the trade is in me now, I want it to inherit her name nothing else. From outside, a commotion of hair of God's hustling structure, orange plastic gleaming in the thin sun. For a moment, the flopping sheet lifts and I see phrases face blank and still, mouth moving

55:32without sound. They dose him with something in emotion stills. I think suddenly, of old man Karen. If he's here, he's silent if he's not perhaps to late cleaned him back as it does the rest. A younger God, face too open to be from a core team, edges near, whispers with a nervous tilt. They'll send you south after this, not many make it further, if you have anyone you want to remember you, right fast. I nod. If face recedes. My hands move almost outside my will, filling the blank screen, times, names, the lights, every code word they're stuck. My own memory skips, hazes at edges but I force myself to script everything I can before the window narrows. Moment to moment, everything speeds. Medical's hustle through the tents with case files comes operators mutter about spill-over-risk and secondary clusters then voices pitched for our own eat themselves. Twice, I feel the world bend at his launch as if the hum beneath my skin pulses and do it with the lake miles away but near his breath. The staffed opt to come size, ringed hollow, badge won nearly smooth. He hooks two cold fingers at my chin, commands me to attract the pen-line, repeat the string backward, count seven random numbers.

56:34I do not well but not entirely wrong. He grants notes straight positive and moves on. I resist. I rye. In the margins of the tablet's interface, I type out a message to my own fragmented future self. I tell you. Hold her for transfer, someone orders. Face to be high integrity, high risk. I want to sleep. My head drips, the metacop bites my shoulder blades. I dare to hope the data made it, that some agency already has a copy of what we found. The tents then is dusk falls. Fud lights angle across the camp, eliminating figures lined up for screening for culling. I count each face, knowing most are marks perced in records none of them will ever see. I try to imagine Alina did she slip through the trees or enter the water itself. Did Mark find a way north? Are any of us ourselves, in the end, when the protocol finishes writing all the lines? Through her slit in the tent, I spot the lake, distant now, surface black but lively, white sparks flickering like a message coated from no one or for everyone at once. A voice cracks through my reverie alone, kind, barely above thinking aloud.

57:36It take green, the evidence technician, dropping Alina's notebook back on my cart in case in a fresh plastic sleeve. He bet he was spurs. It helps you have something that's still yours. He vanishes before thanks can form. I dig him with a fingernail tearing the seam, freeing a single sheet. I read the familiar lines Alina's father's crawl, the phased code, all punctuated by drifts of her own writing, desperate but determined, if you read this, you are still you. It occurs to me, shuddering, that even that is not a guarantee. I copy it anyway, trace in my own lines over hers, scribbling the only thing I know is not contaminated, her voice carried forward. Custickans, horns, rumbles, trucks idle and shoppers, reverend more personnel are loaded to locals and outsiders, soldiers and scientists. A field commander calls names and numbers, some checked off briskly, others disappearing into the ethanol lit blur. Someone sits beside me hesitant but warm. The guard from her other, pressing a folded slip of paper into my palm. Get clear if you can, there's forest north, safe houses, the road past the old dredge cuts through, if you feel yourself changing, keep to your name, keep to your own story,

58:37it helps. I can't believe before I can ask his. Along on I open a slip coordinates, a date a single word, inheritance. My heart races. The word feels faded, almost heavy with promise or doom. Suddenly, orders bark a transfer units, move now, and hands grip my arms, rough now, hurrying me up into the next waiting vehicle. A clutch of lean is notebook, press the slip of paper deep in my pocket. They load us in, rows of sullen faces, everyone holding something a coat, a bag, a notebook. Of searchlights raid the departing rows, while the sound of the lake is just memory and thunder in the clouds. We pull away from the tents, diswarling in the high beams. Land and lake separate to memory from body, body from inheritance. Every fragment, every page, every pulse claimed or changed. There is no going back. As we leave, lighting splits, the north sky just wants briefly. For an instant, every truck entry casts a hard shadow, and the lake returns my gaze with a sown and broken. I watch. I do not blink. I refuse to look away.

59:37No one in the transport speaks. When finally headlights flood the edge of the wilderness, and civilized roads reappear, I hurry to scroll lean as name again over the pace edge, rough and in stubborn. I promise myself, whatever changes, whatever washes through my blood, this one thing I will not surrender, not to the lake, not to the protocol, not to the memory that shifts beneath my hands. That is all there is. That is all I have left. I close my eyes just long enough to see the lake, to hear a leaner's voice, remember it and reel and unyielding, even as everything else threatens to fade. And that is the end. Thank you for listening, and I will see you in the next one.