Orphaned Seed
Copyright© 2026 by Fantasylover11
Chapter 21: Footage
The records office smelled like recycled air and warm electronics.
Noah had started to hate the smell.
It meant someone was about to tell him reality could be rewritten.
He sat at a terminal with the same bored attendant two stations down, tapping keys like he was doing Noah a favor by existing. The corridor behind them carried the muffled sound of the commons.
Noah kept Masking up anyway.
The Focus drain was a steady ache.
FOCUS: 112/128
The midterm flare had handed him a milestone he hadn’t asked for. He’d put the point into Wit anyway. If someone was editing reality, he needed to be faster at seeing the seams.
He pulled up his showcase run.
Clean footage.
Grain in the exact places the Veil always failed.
No obvious splice.
That was the problem.
If someone wanted to trap him, they wouldn’t do it with a visible cut.
They’d do it with procedure.
Procedure meant a trap that could pretend it was neutral: a form that took seventy-two hours to process, a review board that met “as needed,” a write-access list that only existed if you already had permission to see it.
Noah opened the raw log.
He compared it to the snapshot he’d saved in his boring file.
The numbers matched.
Then they didn’t.
Not the big ones.
Not the kind you could point at.
Tiny shifts in timing.
Half-second offsets.
A stability curve that smoothed where it should have jagged.
His stomach tightened.
Somebody was scrubbing.
Not to accuse him.
To hide something else.
He scrolled again.
For an instant, a corrupted line appeared at the bottom.
NULL//CHOIR
Not a username. A signature.
Then it vanished.
Noah’s head throbbed.
He blinked hard.
Memory tried to slip.
He clenched his jaw and held on.
The Veil wanted him to forget.
Or someone was using it like that.
Noah closed the raw view and opened the official archive.
The version the ladder used.
The version that decided point totals.
The version everyone treated like law.
His run looked perfect.
Too perfect.
No jaggedness.
No hint of interference.
No reason to ask questions.
Anger moved through him.
Not heat.
Direction.
The official archive wasn’t being edited to catch him.
It was being used to bait him into making a scene.
If he complained about a record that looked clean, he’d look paranoid.
If he overexplained, he’d look guilty.
If he pushed hard enough to force access, he’d look like a threat.
Noah exhaled slow.
“I need the write-access list,” he said to the attendant.
The attendant didn’t look up. “You don’t.”
Noah kept his voice calm. “I do.”
The attendant sighed like Noah was asking for a room key.
“That’s restricted,” he said.
Noah held still.
Read the Room caught a micro-shift.
The attendant wasn’t just annoyed.
He was afraid.
Someone had leaned on him.
“Who told you to say no?” Noah asked.
The attendant’s fingers froze.
He looked at Noah for the first time.
“Don’t,” he said.
Noah swallowed his temper.
“Fine,” he said. “Then tell me this: if I file an audit request, who reviews it?”
The attendant hesitated.
Then his gaze flicked toward the same door down the hall Noah had noticed before.
Not an answer.
An arrow.
Noah nodded once.
The official archive was part of the trap.
The question wasn’t whether someone could edit.
The question was who got to decide what counted as real.
Noah stood.
His knees ached with restrained adrenaline.
He walked out of the records hall without looking back.
Upstairs, the dining hall noise hit him like a wall.
Trays clattered.
A freshman laughed too loudly.
Someone argued about a midterm that mattered to the surface world.
Noah took a plate he didn’t want and scanned for the people who were his.
Jules sat at a corner table near the windows with a bowl of soup untouched.
Imani perched on the back of a chair at a different table like furniture rules were optional.
The familiar tug hit: keep them out of it.
He sat with Jules anyway.
“You look like hell,” Jules said.
Noah huffed a breath. “Thanks.”
Jules’s expression didn’t soften. “What happened?”
Noah kept his voice low.
“Records are clean,” he said. “Too clean.”
Jules’s eyes sharpened. “They’re scrubbing.”
Noah nodded.
“And someone’s leaning on the attendants,” Noah added.
Jules glanced around, then back. “Yeah. They leaned on me too.”
Noah went still.
“Who?” he asked.
Jules’s jaw worked once. “A Crownline rep I don’t know. Polite. Offered to ‘help’ me stay in good standing if I stopped showing up near you.”
Noah’s stomach clenched.
“What did you say?” he asked.
“I said no,” Jules replied. “Then I walked away before my face gave me away.”
Noah exhaled.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Jules stared at him. “Stop apologizing for other people’s choices.”
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