In Oversight, you learn two things very quickly.
First: nothing is ever really decided once.
Second: the only votes that matter are the ones no one admits they cast.
I didn't vote to keep Noor.
Officially.
The system logged my role as "Liaison – advisory." Clarke signed the line that kept 7F-19N active. External Review stamped it. Architecture generated the new risk category. Everyone got to pretend that what happened to Noor was a collective decision, delivered by the faceless wisdom of process.
But there is a note on his file that doesn't have a field for who wrote it.
LEAVE IT. I WANT TO SEE WHERE IT GOES.
Origin: REDACTED.
That's me.
It's still the most cowardly sentence I've ever written.
---
My office in Oversight is only slightly bigger than Noor's new one, but the air tastes different.
Null's lower floors smell like work—coffee, dust, the metallic breath of too many machines in the same room. Oversight smells like nothing. Someone decided absence of scent was what accountability should feel like.
I sit in front of three screens.
On the left: city feeds. Public stats, anonymized traffic patterns, the usual pulse monitors that tell us whether the streets above are behaving.
On the right: Null's internal metrics. Reconciliation loads, Archive throughput, daemon passes logged as comforting charts.
In the centre: the cases.
7F-19N blinks near the top of the list, the way anomalies do when you tell the system to highlight "interesting problems."
I tap into it for the third time that morning.
CASE 7F-19N – STATUS: ADMINISTRATIVE DEATH – ACTIVE ANOMALY
THREADS: RESOLVED / REDIRECTED – 96%
RESIDUAL SCORE: 4%
DAEMON CONTACT: RECORDED – OUTCOME: UNCLASSIFIED PATTERN – RISK: UNKNOWN
RECOMMENDATION: OBSERVE
Below, the new section we built around him:
NULL PROCESS REFINEMENT PILOT – SUBJ: 7F-19N
PHASE 1 – ONGOING
PHASE 2 – PENDING CLEARANCE – CLUSTER CASE 3H-DELTA "RIVERSIDE MARGIN"
And my un-attributed sentence, sitting there like a conscience.
LEAVE IT. I WANT TO SEE WHERE IT GOES.
The first time I saw it printed back at me in system font, I almost went downstairs and told him. Hello, Noor, your continued existence is brought to you by my worst instinct: curiosity dressed up as principle.
I didn't.
Oversight doesn't confess. We annotate.
A soft ping opens a small, grey box in the corner of the screen.
LEGACY NOTE INTERCEPTED – UNINDEXED ORIGIN
VIEW? [Y/N]
I stare at the Y like it might bite.
Oversight gets the leaks first. Old logs that fall out of compression. Comments someone forgot to scrub. Untagged audio that bubbles up from Null's older layers when the architecture shifts.
Usually, I hit N.
Today, I hit Y.
The note unfolds into text on the centre screen. Whoever wrote it didn't bother with headings or fields. It reads like a letter to no one.
Memoir 002 – the man who counted missing people.
By the third sentence, I know two things.
One: this is not supposed to be in any system I have access to.
Two: the person who wrote it built something I now pretend to supervise.
I read about the girl in the eastern blocks. The missing poster by the station. The way her scarred lip reappeared in a simulation doorway that never existed on any map.
I read about thread IDs and river bodies and tables that made hands shake.
I read the line that makes me stop breathing for a full three seconds:
What if Null was never a project to fix the city.
What if the city, tired and exhausted, built us as a last experiment to see whether we would choose to erase everything except ourselves.
On the city feeds to my left, a tram rolls over a bridge in real time, its bright advertisement skin reflected in the river. On the internal metrics to my right, the daemon's last reconciliation pass is a neat peak on a graph, labelled SUCCESSFUL.
Between them, on my screen, someone who came before me is counting ghosts.
At the end of the note, a line:
It spoke the name of the street I grew up on.
The one that no longer exists on any map.
The system asks:
ADD TO ARCHIVE AS PERSONAL NOTE? [Y/N]
FLAG FOR PURGE? [Y/N]
I hover over both.
If I purge it, it goes wherever everything we're ashamed of goes. Hard to reach. Easy to forget.
If I archive it, someone can cite it later as "legacy concern – resolved."
Either way, the man who counted missing people disappears into the paperwork.
My thumb taps a third option that isn't on the screen.
EXPORT TO LOCAL.
A tiny icon drops into my private, off-the-books folder. The one I pretend doesn't exist. The one I keep open only when the door is locked and the cameras blink slow.
I don't vote to delete him. I don't vote to canonize him. I just… hide him.
Cowardice, again.
A notification pings in my peripheral vision.
MEETING CONFIRMATION: FIELD TEAM – CLUSTER CASE 3H-DELTA
TIME: 09:30
LOCATION: MAINTENANCE BRIDGE – RING 2
Of course.
We never meet in proper conference rooms for things like this. Too easy to record. Too easy to pretend we didn't know what we were agreeing to.
---
The maintenance bridge on Ring 2 looks out over one of Null's cooling spines. From here, the building feels more like a creature than an office—a vertical lung exhaling cold air, cables like ribs.
Mara is already there, leaning against the railing, chewing on a cable tie.
"Caldwell," they say around the plastic. "You look like you've just read something you weren't supposed to."
"Occupational hazard," I say.
"Which direction?" they ask. "Up or down?"
"Sideways," I say. "That's the worrying kind."
They snort and spit the mangled tie into their hand, tucking it into a pocket instead of throwing it away. Somewhere there's a drawer full of chewed plastic in their workspace. Knowing that comforts me in ways it shouldn't.
"We have a cluster to talk about," I say.
"We have three dreams and a migraine to talk about," they correct. "But yes, technically, a cluster."
Ahead of schedule, the door at the far end of the bridge opens.
Two people step through.
The first is Clarke, of course. Clipboard, tie, the usual expression of a man whose job is to stand between catastrophe and deniability.
The second is new.
"Field Archivist Haneul Ji," Clarke says by way of introduction. "Assigned to 3H-DELTA as primary contact."
Haneul offers a hand to me first, then to Mara. Their grip is dry, firm without trying to be impressive. They look younger than they are—early thirties, maybe—but their eyes have the tired focus of someone who has listened to too many stories end badly.
"Call me Han," they say. "Everyone does. Unless they're angry."
"Why would we be angry at you," Mara says. "You voluntarily walk into people's grief for a living. That makes you either a saint or a masochist."
"Occupational hazard," Han says, echoing me with a small smile.
Their badge has two identifiers: NULL – FIELD ARCHIVE / RESIDENT – RIVERSIDE MARGIN.
Local, then.
Of course they picked someone from the district we're about to dissect.
Clarke takes up a position that lets him watch all of us at once and none of us comfortably.
"External Review has greenlit Phase 2," he says without preamble. "Pending final safety parameters."
"Define 'safety'," Mara says.
"Define 'parameters'," I say, out of habit.
Clarke ignores both.
"Cluster 3H-DELTA is formally designated an entangled thread field," he continues. "Multiple admin-dead cases, high residual, ongoing link to living networks. Primary objective: reduce uncontrolled pull. Secondary objective: test new integration protocols using Case 7F-19N."
"You mean Noor," Han says, quietly.
Clarke glances at them.
"You're already familiar with the case?" he asks.
Han nods.
"Riverside reads the papers too," they say. "Or it used to. That 'man the system forgot' story went around. People have opinions."
That story. The one Noor sabotaged from inside. The one we turned into a training module and then broke on purpose.
"Opinions," Clarke repeats.
"Suspicion, fear, religious reinterpretation, jokes," Han clarifies. "The usual ways people metabolize being told they can disappear twice."
Mara leans forward on the railing.
"And you?" they ask. "How do you metabolize it?"
Han shrugs one shoulder.
"I listened to my neighbours," they say. "Then I applied for this job."
There's a small silence after that. The kind where you can hear the building thinking.
"Han will be our cover story," I say, picking up the thread. "Standard reconciliation assistance. Outreach visit. We'll be there as support."
Clarke nods.
"Official composition: one field archivist, one handler, one technical support," he says. "Plus our anomaly, under supervision."
"Unofficial composition?" Mara asks.
Clarke looks toward the cooling spine, avoiding my eyes.
"Depending on who you ask," he says, "one experiment, two potential whistleblowers, one liability."
"I like being a liability," Mara says. "It feels honest."
Han's gaze travels between us, taking the measure of Null's strange little family.
"I thought Oversight people were… colder," they say to me finally.
I huff out something that is almost a laugh.
"We are," I say. "We just thaw near maintenance."
Clarke clears his throat.
"Before we talk logistics," he says, "there's… an addendum."
He taps the clipboard, as if the gesture can soften whatever's written there.
"External has requested additional monitoring," he says. "Specifically of Oversight involvement."
I feel the quiet vote sneaking up behind me before he says it.
"Meaning?" I ask.
"Meaning they want you on record," he says. "Every step. No more anonymous notes on 7F-19N. No more redacted origins. If you want Noor in the field, you put your name on the line."
The railing feels suddenly colder under my hands.
So that's the trade.
I get my experiment. Noor gets his field trip. The city gets a chance to show us its teeth. And I lose the last small protection of the "Origin: REDACTED" box.
Han shifts their weight.
"If it helps," they say, "Riverside will know your name anyway. They always find someone to blame."
They don't say: better you than Noor.
They don't have to.
Mara leans back, watching us both.
"You don't have to do it," they say. "You can flinch. No shame in that. They'll still send him. Just with someone who won't bother pretending they care."
I wish they'd phrased it differently.
I wish they hadn't phrased it exactly the way my brain does when I don't sleep.
The thing about the quiet vote is that you never really get to abstain. Refusal is just another kind of yes, routed through a different form.
"I'll sign," I hear myself say.
I feel Han's eyes on me. Mara's. Clarke's thin relief.
"Of course you will," Mara says softly. There's no mockery in it. That somehow makes it worse.
Clarke hands me the tablet.
There it is, in clean, unfeeling letters:
OVERSIGHT LIAISON: TESS CALDWELL
APPROVES FIELD USE OF ANOMALY CASE 7F-19N IN CLUSTER 3H-DELTA
RISK ACKNOWLEDGED. RESPONSIBILITY ACCEPTED.
At the bottom, a blinking cursor where my signature should go. Space for my hand to make it real.
I hesitate.
On the left-most screen in my office, three floors above us, a tram is crossing a bridge. In my memory, an old woman is singing through thin walls. In a hidden file in my private folder, a man without a name is counting missing people.
In a server somewhere deep under our feet, a line of code that learned the name of a street that vanished is humming six notes it doesn't understand.
And down in his small, fake-windowed office, Noor is looking at a projection of the city and trying to decide whether he's more afraid of being content or dust.
There is no safe vote here.
Only the ones I can live with.
I sign.
The tablet beeps once, satisfied.
"Good," Clarke says. "Then we move to practicalities. Han—"
"Wait," Mara says suddenly. "Before we bury this in routes and cover identities."
We all look at them.
They chew on nothing for a moment, teeth working the air where a cable tie used to be.
"You know the training dummy," they say. "The one Noor named. 'Emergent refusal.'"
Of course. Pilot-03's new costume.
"It's in rotation already?" I ask.
"Faster than I'd like," Mara says. "Compliance loved it. 'Adds realism,' they said. 'Learners respond well to unscripted elements.' It's in three new modules and a proposal for a public-facing 'educational experience.'"
Han grimaces.
"Riverside is going to love that," they say. "Nothing says trust like making haunted mannequins for outreach."
"That's my point," Mara says. "We keep turning anomalies into features. Pilot-03. Noor. Whatever's in that Riverside cluster. We don't solve them. We brand them."
"Is this the part where you tell me not to go," I ask.
Mara shakes their head.
"This is the part where I ask all of us," they say, "to remember that the things we call patterns are often just people we've decided not to listen to properly."
Han lets out a slow breath.
"I know the riverside cluster," they say. "Not as data. As home. If it feels like we're running an experiment on my neighbours, I'll walk."
"That's why you're here," I say. "So there's at least one person in the room whose first loyalty isn't to the building."
I don't say: mine used to be to the city too.
I moved up here, into Oversight, into the air that smells of nothing, precisely so I could stop thinking about the street that burnt when I was thirteen. The one that isn't on any map because someone decided documenting that kind of failure was bad for investor confidence.
Sometimes I wonder if the daemon learned it before or after we tried to forget.
Clarke clears his throat.
"Phase 2 briefing," he says, pulling us back into the smaller circle where things feel manageable. "Han, you'll identify three primary contact points—a family node, a workplace node, a community node. We'll start with conversations, not cuts. Noor will be presented as… what, precisely?"
"An intern?" Mara suggests.
"A consultant," Han says, smirking. "People trust consultants. They know you're temporary."
"A survivor," I say, before I can stop myself.
Three sets of eyes land on me again.
"There's power in that word," Han says slowly. "Dangerous power. The kind that makes people tell you things they won't tell anyone in a vest."
"And the kind that scares Null," Mara adds. "Survivors don't fit cleanly into success metrics."
Clarke rubs the bridge of his nose.
"We can't walk him through Riverside wearing his file on his chest," he says. "But we also can't pretend he's just another staffer. News got out. Rumours filled in the gaps."
"We tell a version that isn't a lie," I say. "He died on paper. He came here. He works inside the system that processed him. He wants to see what happens on the other side of the forms."
"That makes him sound like a crusader," Clarke says.
"He isn't," I say. "He's tired. That reads better."
Han laughs once, low.
"People trust tired," they say. "Tired doesn't sell them anything."
We begin to talk routes then. Hours. Cover stories. Who we'll say we report to when residents ask what we can actually change.
All the while, the signature on the tablet hums at the edge of my awareness, a new thread tying my name to whatever comes next.
---
After the meeting, I don't go back to my office immediately.
Instead, I take the stairs up two more levels and walk out onto the only balcony in Null that looks at the real city instead of a projection.
It's small, half-forgotten. Probably meant as a smoking area before policy changed. Now it's just a rectangle of concrete facing the river.
From here, Riverside isn't a cluster ID.
It's buildings stacked like tired teeth along grey water. It's spray-painted slogans half-washed away by time. It's laundry hanging from balconies even in winter. It's the sound of trains and boats and the occasional argument drifting up from the streets.
I lean on the cold rail and let the fog off the water dampen my face.
Somewhere out there, on a street that waits between heartbeats, a girl in an orange scarf is sitting on a wall, listening to fridges hum and traffic lights click.
She doesn't know my name either.
Good.
Oversight works best when the people we're failed by don't have a face to throw stones at.
In my pocket, my hand finds my personal card.
CLIENT: NOOR [REDACTED]
CLASS: P3 – NARRATIVE RESISTANT
ROLE: LIAISON
The line under ROLE is blank.
They haven't decided what I am yet. Or maybe they want to see what I write.
I fish a pen out of my other pocket.
For a moment, the nib hovers uselessly. There are too many words that fit.
Handler.
Collaborator.
Coward.
Witness.
In the end, I write the only thing that feels exact.
WITNESS.
The ink seeps into the laminate a little, making the letters look tired before their time.
Back in my office, I open my private folder again.
Memoir 002 sits there, blinking softly.
Beside it, I create a new document.
No title yet.
Just a first line:
I didn't build the daemon, but I keep signing for its work.
I add a second, almost without thinking.
No one deserves to be turned into content.
I don't remember deciding to quote the scratched metal on the Shelving Floor. Or Noor's hesitant handwriting in his notebook. Or Pilot-03's interrupted sentence in a training hall full of foam.
The words are just… there.
Under my cursor, they look smaller than they feel.
There's a vote in writing them down.
A quiet one, at the edge of the larger experiment.
I save the file without adding it to any system index.
Not archive. Not purge.
Just… here.
For now.
Outside, the river slides past the building, carrying everything we've thrown into it.
Above, the city pulses. Below, the building hums.
Between them, tucked in a folder that doesn't officially exist, a man who counted missing people and a woman who signed for one of them sit side by side, waiting to see what we do next.
Act twenty-first's end – "official duty never exists within the vote".