Chapter 26 — Audit Trail
The first sign wasn't an attack.
It was a questionnaire.
It appeared pinned to the hall door sometime before dawn—neatly aligned, corners squared, ink dry in a way that suggested it had never been wet.
No one saw it arrive.
No one heard it leave.
It simply was.
Puck read it upside down. "Oh, I hate this font. It's very judgmental."
Valerius didn't touch it. "This is a probe."
I scanned the page. There were no overt threats. No demands.
Just questions.
> 1. DEFINE PURPOSE.
2. DEFINE SCOPE.
3. DEFINE RESPONSIBLE PARTY.
4. LIST ALL DEVIATIONS FROM BASELINE BEHAVIOR.
I felt the Shard stir—uneasy.
"They're trying to formalize us," I said.
Elric joined us, hands behind his back. "They always start with definitions. Makes erasure feel consensual."
I smiled thinly. "Then we don't answer."
Puck blinked. "At all?"
"Oh, we answer," I said. "Just not the way they expect."
I reached out—not to the page, but to the space around it.
Margins are loud when you push.
Quiet when you redirect.
I didn't add power.
I added ambiguity.
The Shard vibrated—tense, precise.
The ink on the page blurred slightly, letters losing their sharp edges.
Valerius stiffened. "Arthur—"
"I'm not rewriting," I said. "I'm footnoting."
The questions rearranged themselves.
> 1. PURPOSE: EMERGENT.
2. SCOPE: CONTEXTUAL.
3. RESPONSIBILITY: DISTRIBUTED.
4. DEVIATIONS: SUBJECTIVE.
The page fluttered, irritated.
Puck whistled. "You just gave reality a headache."
Elric nodded approvingly. "They can't file that."
"Good," I said. "Then it stays unresolved."
A ripple passed through the village—not destructive, not calm.
Attentive.
I felt eyes—not watching, but indexing.
"They'll escalate," Valerius warned.
"Yes," I agreed. "But now they have to decide how."
The Shard hummed, steady but alert.
Above us, in halls without distance, the Curator updated a log:
> ANOMALY PERSISTS.
DIRECT INTERVENTION: PREMATURE.
RECOMMENDATION: OBSERVE WITH INCREASED GRANULARITY.
The page on the door tore itself free in a silent fit of frustration and dissolved into harmless dust.
Puck laughed nervously. "I think we just passed a test."
I looked out over the waking village.
"No," I said quietly. "We just made one."