The pervasive hum of the Karmic Ledger now had a sharper, more insistent edge to Elias's ears. It was the sound of heightened scrutiny. Magistrate Lian, his gaunt figure a familiar harbinger of discomfort, had initiated a formal audit of Elias's entire department, citing "irregularities in several minor case adjudications." Elias knew, with chilling certainty, that Lian wasn't interested in "irregularities." He was interested in Elias.
Lian moved through the department like a silent predator, his spectacles glinting as he pored over terminals and data scrolls, asking pointed questions to clerks and analysts alike. Elias observed him with a detached precision, noting the patterns in Lian's probe. He wasn't looking for widespread fraud; he was looking for a specific signature, a unique pattern of manipulation. His own.
Elias knew his layered edits, his time-delayed triggers, and his increasingly complex methods of re-weighting karma were sophisticated. But Lian was shrewd. He was looking for the unexplained, the subtle shifts that defied the Ledger's usual logic.
He needed a diversion. A scapegoat.
Elias thought of Analyst Krell, a colleague notorious for his laziness and his habit of cutting corners. Krell was sloppy, often leaving his terminal unlocked, his digital trails poorly covered. He also had a known, albeit minor, disciplinary history for "inattention to detail" and "neglect of duty."
Working late, using the bootleg Earth Core to mask his own spiritual signature, Elias meticulously went through Krell's recent case files. He found numerous small errors: miscategorized data points, neglected cross-references, and even a few instances where Krell had simply rubber-stamped a Sutra AI recommendation without proper human review. These were the kinds of minor infractions that usually went unnoticed, lost in the daily deluge of cases.
Elias, with surgical precision, subtly amplified these existing errors. He didn't create new ones; he merely highlighted Krell's habitual sloppiness, making it glaringly obvious. He linked a few of Krell's recent rubber-stamped cases to the very "irregularities" Lian had cited, making it appear as though Krell's negligence was the source of the department's perceived issues. He then preemptively falsified logs, creating a digital paper trail that suggested Krell had frequently accessed and mishandled the specific data sets related to the audit.
The next morning, Lian's probe inevitably led him to Krell's work. The Magistrate spent hours at Krell's terminal, his face growing progressively darker. By the end of the day, Krell was called into Lian's office, his face pale and sweating. He emerged an hour later, visibly shaken, his rank demoted, and assigned to a month of menial archival tasks.
The consequence was immediate: the pressure on Elias's department eased. Lian had found his "irregularities," and he had found his culprit. The audit concluded swiftly, its official findings attributing the issues to "isolated incidents of negligence" by Analyst Krell.
But Lian's suspicion shifted, it did not dissipate. As he walked past Elias's cubicle, his gaze lingered, a knowing glint in his eye. "A regrettable but necessary measure, Thorne," he said, his voice flat. "One must always maintain the Ledger's integrity. And speaking of integrity... for future audits, I will be requesting direct access to your Sutra AI queries. Just a new departmental protocol. For efficiency, of course."
Elias nodded, a cold dread washing over him. Lian hadn't just found a scapegoat; he had tightened the leash. Direct access to his queries meant a direct window into his very thoughts, his manipulations. The game had just become infinitely more dangerous.