BLOODCAPE
Chapter 99 – The Price of Not Knowing

Chapter 99: Chapter 99 – The Price of Not Knowing

The terminal’s light cast Camilla Varn’s face in sterile blue as she watched the trace logs cycle backward.

Frame by frame.

Tessa Lyne, looping in reverse.

Archive Terminal 12B. Exit corridor. Backtrace ping. Power node skip. Route divergence at sublevel junction 04-B.

Each motion rendered into a string of time-coded vulnerability. A trail of mistakes, intent, and—most dangerous of all—curiosity.

Camilla sat perfectly still, eyes flicking across the screen with mechanical precision. She didn’t blink often. When she did, it was like a process rebooting.

The program she was using wasn’t on any official Zodiac registry. It was buried behind five layers of falsified code, written by her own hand nearly eleven years ago—when this had all been theory. When ghosts were just assets without names.

She toggled a subroutine.

Four containment routes compiled automatically.

INTERCEPTISOLATENEUTRALIZEERASE

All viable.

All clean.

All insufficient.

She deleted them.

One by one.

Not out of mercy.

Out of experience.

Because none of the Zodiac would act with precision. They would act with impulse.

Scorpio would vote for a clean termination and call it stability.

Gemini would use it to start a debate wrapped in manipulation.

Libra would vote on time, not truth.

And Leo...

Leo might act last—but when he did, things ended.

Camilla stood.

Her coat, still half-wrapped around her shoulders from the night before, slipped to the floor. She didn’t pick it up.

She crossed to the far end of the room—a room no one else had entered in years. Technically, it didn’t exist. Not on floor plans. Not in building schematics. Even janitorial algorithms skipped it.

A gentle hum filled the background—deep and old, the kind of noise that only lived where something once dangerous had been stored and forgotten poorly.

She knelt in front of a blank steel panel.

Pressed her palm to the floor.

The sensor lit once. Then hissed.

A square of the floor receded with a faint clunk.

And there it was.

The other Camilla.

The one the others had buried in a series of silent reports and polite denials.

Not Camilla Varn, Director of Genetic Containment.

Camilla Varn, Tier-Black Handler.

She reached into the case slowly. With reverence, not nostalgia.

The lid opened with a brittle snap, like a breath held too long.

Inside: a black infiltration suit, folded with military precision. Neural stabilizer clips. Auto-sedate cuffs—manual, analog, precise. A compact pulse-stunner. Field med rig. Old, but functional.

And a dermal override badge. Untraceable. Hard-coded to bypass gene-locked doors via burn imprint.

She laid each piece on the steel table beside her, hands sure, movements silent.

Then, at the bottom—

A scorched black disc.

Solaris’s tracker node.

No interface. No lights. Just quiet.

But she knew it still worked.

Just in case he ran too.

She clipped it to her belt. The weight felt familiar. Not comforting. Just expected.

Camilla crossed to the weapons cache embedded in the wall.

Pressed her thumb to the reader.

The drawer groaned before it opened, like the past fighting back one last time.

Inside, wrapped in a weathered polymer sleeve, lay a photograph.

Edges curling. Color faded to grey-blue hues.

Solaris, years younger. Unsuited. Hands shoved into his pockets. His smile was unfinished—caught between calculation and distraction. His eyes, even then, were somewhere else.

Beside him—

A girl.

No name.

No listed identity.

No mask yet.

Her hand rested on his shoulder.

And he didn’t stop her.

Camilla didn’t know what the girl had become.

Only that she wasn’t supposed to be remembered.

Camilla stared at the photo for a long, deliberate moment. Then tucked it inside the collar of her infiltration suit. The inner lining had a slip-pocket. She’d built it that way—for keepsakes no one should see.

Her fingers hovered over the zipper.

Then sealed it.

No speech. No oath. No dramatic shift.

But the atmosphere changed.

The room didn’t get heavier.

It got sharper.

Like it could cut.

She stepped back to the console.

Cleared the logs.

Wiped her activity.

Triggered a buried elevator override wired into a forgotten maintenance lift that hadn’t moved in eight years.

No trace.

No timestamp.

No permission requested.

The wall opened with a quiet slide, revealing a tunnel choked with silence.

She stepped into the dark.

Paused.

Then said, not to the systems, but to the past:

"You don’t bury ghosts."

Her voice dipped, flat and final.

"You brief them."

—

Three floors above the Zodiac briefing chamber, the halls ran quieter.

Not silent.

Just... old.

The upper spire didn’t hum like the lower sectors. No foot traffic. No student clatter. No sensor drift. Just shadow and old design, built before surveillance became a religion.

Zodiac Leo walked alone.

His boots didn’t echo.

The walls didn’t blink.

Sensors registered him, then opted not to record.

He didn’t wear his ceremonial coat. He hadn’t in years.

Just the pressure-sealed boots of a field commander who still walked like he was out there. Still carried himself like the war hadn’t ended—because for people like him, it hadn’t.

The ping came just as he turned into the North Corridor.

A soft, encrypted pulse against the subdermal node in his wrist.

He didn’t look down.

Didn’t stop.

He blinked once.

Text floated into his augmented feed—white, clinical, absolute.

[PROTOCOL NOTICE — PROJECT INHERITOR]STATUS SHIFT: CODE RED — ACTIVECODE WHITE — ECHOINGTRACE CONFIRMED: ROOK VALE / TESSA LYNEOVERRIDE PENDING — CLAUSE 0 AUTHORITY

He read it.

Twice.

His face didn’t change.

No sigh. No question. No curse.

He closed the feed with a flick of his eye.

And kept walking.

Not toward the command floor.

Not toward Camilla.

Instead, he turned left.

Into a hallway few remembered.

The Memorial Vault.

Officially called Historical Data Archives.

But everyone knew what it was.

Here, beneath obsidian-glass walls, sealed records sat frozen in time—no photos, no accolades, just names. Some real. Most not.

Leo walked past line after line.

Until he reached the corner.

Bottom shelf.

Smallest nameplate in the room.

SOLARIS

Underneath:

CLASSIFIED UNDER CLAUSE 0ACCESS RESTRICTED – FULL LOCK

He stopped.

Stared.

The light here wasn’t artificial. It was filtered. Natural. Dim. Like the room had taught it not to be loud.

Leo reached out.

Pressed two fingers to the glass.

Not to scan.

Not to trigger anything.

Just to touch it.

Just to remind the world someone remembered.

The seal didn’t respond.

Of course it didn’t.

Solaris hadn’t spoken in ten years.

Not since the mission that never received a final report. Not since he vanished behind firewalls and fear.

Leo finally spoke. Only to the glass.

"He asked me not to interfere," he said quietly. "Said the next phase needed to happen without hands shaping it."

A breath.

"But he never said I had to watch."

The system pinged again.

Faintly. Like it was unsure if it was allowed.

Leo reopened the alert.

Hovered over the transmission field.

He could send it. Could flag it for review. Could summon the Zodiac to vote.

Instead, he deleted it.

The entire alert.

Gone.

No trail. No reaction. No escalation.

Just silence.

He stood for another long moment.

Then turned.

And as he walked, his voice—low, sure—cut through the stillness like a blade:

"Let them break before we cage them."

The lights dimmed behind him.

Not because he told them to.

But because some systems still remembered who he was.

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