Sublevel 14 didn't appear on any city map, corporate or otherwise. It existed in the architectural gaps where Prosperity Heights' foundation met the original Mongolian bedrock, spaces that had been excavated during initial construction then abandoned when the megacorps realized going deeper meant dealing with unstable geology and pre-corporate artifacts nobody wanted to explain.
Bataar descended through access shafts that grew progressively older as he went down—modern plasteel gave way to early-era composite materials, then to ancient concrete that predated the city entirely. Someone had been down here before the corporations, building something in the empty steppe. The walls bore markings in languages Bataar didn't recognize, symbols that looked almost like warnings.
The air grew colder. Artificial climate control didn't reach this deep. His breath misted in the darkness, visible only when emergency lighting flickered on motion sensors that probably hadn't seen maintenance in decades.
The coordinates led him to a massive door—not modern security portal, but something older. Heavy metal, manual mechanisms, the kind of barrier designed to last centuries. It stood open just enough for a person to slip through.
Bataar checked his wrist port. 0257 hours. Three minutes early.
He squeezed through the gap.
Beyond was a chamber that defied reasonable architecture. It was too large—easily a hundred meters across, carved from solid rock with precision that suggested industrial equipment, but the walls bore tool marks that looked almost organic. More importantly, the chamber hummed with residual energy. Temporal distortion fields had been active here, probably for years. The air tasted metallic, charged with quantum instability.
Seven figures stood in the center of the chamber, illuminated by portable lighting rigs that cast harsh shadows. All wore biosignature scramblers that blurred their features into digital static. All had visible neural ports—high-quality work, probably corporate grade, which meant these weren't simple street criminals. These were people with resources and training.
"Bataar Khulan." The voice came from the central figure, female, artificially distorted but carrying authority. "Timeline refugee from Cascade Event zeta-7. Former employee of Quantum Dynamics Research, temporal engineering division. Survived pruning through emergency displacement authorization. Currently living provisional status in Prosperity Heights, Sublevel 7, unit 4-K."
They'd done their homework. Bataar kept his hands visible. "You know a lot about me."
"We know about everyone who takes jobs hunting timeline refugees for corporations." A different voice, male, younger. "We know Kayla Skovgaard hired you three days ago to find us. We know you were paid fifty thousand scrip. We also know you transferred that money to Doctor Sarangerel two hours ago."
"Interesting choice," the female voice continued. "Either you're genuinely defecting from corporate interests, or you're deep-cover operative willing to sacrifice payment for credibility. We're here to determine which."
Bataar had expected this. "How do I prove I'm genuine?"
"You don't. We prove you're not." The female figure gestured. Two of the others moved forward, producing scanning equipment. "We're going to run deep diagnostics on your consciousness. Neural pattern analysis, memory verification, psychological profiling. If you've been conditioned by Kronos Solutions—if you have hidden protocols or backup loyalties—we'll find them."
"And if you find them?"
"Then you'll experience what timeline erasure feels like from the inside." The woman's tone was matter-of-fact. "We have equipment here that can induce localized temporal deletion. Your consciousness will be pruned from baseline reality while your body remains. You'll become philosophical zombie—walking, breathing, but with no awareness inside. Permanent vegetative state."
Bataar's throat went dry. "That's—"
"Exactly what corporations do to entire timelines. We learned the technique from studying their methods. Poetic, don't you think?" She gestured to a chair in the center of the chamber—ancient metal frame with improvised neural interface equipment attached. "Sit. Or leave. Those are your options."
Bataar looked at the chair. At the scanning equipment. At seven figures whose faces were digital blur but whose body language radiated professional paranoia.
He thought about walking away. Going back to Sublevel 7. Trying to survive another eight months before decoherence made him probabilistic ghost.
Then he thought about the forty-three patients in Sarangerel's medical pods. About Echo, the woman flickering between existence and void because timeline erasure had caught her mid-upload.
About seventy million people who'd been his neighbors, his colleagues, his family, all erased because someone accidentally developed technology that threatened corporate patents.
Bataar sat in the chair.
The two figures moved with practiced efficiency, attaching neural interface cables to his biosignature port. The connection felt invasive—probes sliding into his consciousness like fingers through water. He felt them accessing his surface thoughts, then diving deeper, pulling up memories he'd tried to forget.
His childhood home. His mother teaching him to cook buuz, traditional Mongolian dumplings, on Sunday mornings.
Gone. Never existed.
His first job at Quantum Dynamics. The excitement of working on cutting-edge temporal research.
Gone. The entire company erased with the timeline.The moment of pruning. Emergency alarms. Colleagues screaming as reality began unraveling around them. Bataar running for the displacement chamber, knowing he had authorization and they didn't, knowing he was abandoning them to non-existence—
"Stop." The female voice cut through his memories. "We're seeing genuine trauma. Survivor's guilt consistent with someone who experienced timeline erasure firsthand."
"Could be manufactured," the younger male voice argued. "Kronos has consciousness editing capabilities. They could have implanted false memories to make him sympathetic."
"Check his quantum signature."
Different equipment activated. Bataar felt something scan him at molecular level, reading the subtle dissonances in his cellular structure. Every timeline refugee carried markers—quantum inconsistencies where their body belonged to erased reality while existing in baseline present.
"Signature is authentic," a new voice reported, older, methodical. "Degradation patterns match six-month exposure to timeline displacement. This isn't fabrication—he's genuinely decoherent."
"Then he's either legitimate refugee or very expensive corporate asset they're willing to sacrifice for infiltration."
"There's one more test," the female voice said. "Bataar Khulan, tell us why you're here. And I want the truth—not what you think we want to hear, not some noble speech about justice. The real reason."
Bataar met her scrambled gaze. "I'm here because I'm dying. Not from decoherence—though that's happening too. I'm dying from being ghost. From asking corporations for permission to exist. From playing by rules designed to erase me." He paused. "My timeline got deleted for accident. My parents never existed because some researcher accidentally invented something that threatened patents. That's not justice. That's not stability. That's genocide with legal paperwork."
"And you think we can fix that?"
"No. I think you can't fix it any more than I can. The corporations own time itself. They own consciousness, genetics, space, everything that matters. We're insects arguing with extinction." Bataar felt the neural probes still wrapped around his thoughts, reading his honesty. "But I'm tired of being insect that collaborates. If I'm going to not-exist, I want to not-exist fighting back."
Silence filled the chamber. The seven figures looked at each other—some kind of silent communication through their neural stacks, probably encrypted channel Bataar couldn't access.
Finally, the female figure nodded. "Disconnect him."
The neural probes withdrew. Bataar's consciousness snapped back to his own skull, leaving him disoriented and nauseous.
"Welcome to the Anchors," the woman said. "My designation is Weaver. You don't get to know my real name, my history, or anything that could compromise operational security if you're captured and interrogated." She gestured to the others. "These are Wire, Granite, Echo—yes, we name ourselves after what we save—and three others you don't need to meet yet."
"I passed your test?"
"You passed enough of it." Weaver deactivated her scrambler. Beneath the digital blur was a woman in her thirties, mixed Central Asian and European features, with neural ports that suggested military background. Her eyes held the exhausted determination of someone fighting unwinnable war. "You're not corporate plant. You're genuinely desperate. That makes you useful, but also dangerous. Desperate people make mistakes."
"What happens now?"
"Now we explain what we actually do, and you decide if you're still committed." Weaver gestured to the chamber's far wall, where ancient equipment had been retrofitted with modern technology. "This facility was built forty years ago, before the megacorps fully consolidated power. It was independent temporal research station studying natural temporal fluctuations in this region. The corporations shut it down, claimed the research, but they left the infrastructure."
She activated a holo display. It showed branching timelines, vast tree of probability spreading from baseline reality. "Every second, baseline timeline generates billions of branch possibilities—quantum fork points where different decisions create alternate realities. Most branches collapse immediately back into baseline. Some stabilize long enough to develop independent existence. Those are the timelines corporations monitor."
"And prune when they become inconvenient," Bataar said.
"Exactly. Corporate timeline management isn't about stability—it's about control. They erase branches that threaten profits, develop competing technology, or demonstrate alternative social organization. It's genocide of possibility itself."
Another figure—Granite, based on the voice—stepped forward. He was massive, probably had military augmentation under his clothes. "Timeline pruning takes 4.7 seconds to propagate through quantum foam. That's the window. If we can extract consciousness from dying timeline and anchor it in baseline reality before pruning completes, the person survives."
"How?"
Weaver pulled up technical schematics. "We built extraction equipment using scavenged corporate technology and research from this facility. When we detect timeline scheduled for pruning—we have source inside Kronos Solutions who leaks the schedules—we open temporary portal into dying branch. We pull out whoever we can reach in that 4.7-second window. Usually fewer than twenty people per timeline. Out of millions."
The weight of that settled on Bataar. Twenty saved. Millions erased.
"Why so few?"
"Because extraction is dangerous," Wire spoke up—young male voice from earlier, now with face visible: barely twenty, with the intense focus of true believer. "Opening portal into collapsing timeline risks cascade failure. Stay too long, you get pulled into the erasure. We've lost four Anchors in two years. Four people who ceased to exist because they were trying to save others."
"And the ones you save need extensive medical support," Weaver continued. "Quantum decoherence, identity stabilization, biosignature masking. That's where Doctor Sarangerel comes in. She keeps them solid while we arrange false identities."
"False identities that don't hold up to corporate scrutiny," Bataar said. "These people are living on borrowed time."
"Yes." Weaver's expression hardened. "But borrowed time is better than no time. We give them years they wouldn't have had. Decades, if they're careful. That's more than they'd get from corporate 'justice.'"
Bataar looked at the ancient facility, the improvised equipment, the seven exhausted figures fighting impossible war against entities that owned reality itself.
"You can't win. Even if you save thousands, corporations erase millions. Even if you expose their crimes, they control media, law, consciousness itself. You're not resistance—you're just prolonging suffering."
"You're right," Weaver said simply. "We can't win. The system is too big, too entrenched, too powerful. Every person we save is drop in ocean of genocide." She moved closer. "But here's what I learned after my brother got erased with his timeline: winning isn't the point. Fighting is the point. Every person we save is proof that corporate power isn't absolute. Every refugee we hide is act of defiance against entities that claim to own time itself."
"That's philosophy, not strategy."
"No. It's survival." Weaver's voice carried steel. "Because the alternative is accepting that corporations have right to delete reality. Accepting that timeline erasure is legal, necessary, inevitable. Accepting that we're all just temporary property waiting to be liquidated for shareholder value." She paused. "I won't accept that. None of us will. So we save who we can, knowing it's not enough, knowing we'll probably die trying, knowing it won't change the system."
Bataar understood. This wasn't revolution. This wasn't even reform. This was refusal. Simple, stubborn refusal to cooperate with erasure.
"What do you need from me?"
"Two things," Weaver said. "First, Kronos Solutions knows you were investigating us. Skovgaard will activate 'alternative assets'—wetwork teams—to eliminate both the Anchors and you. We need you to help us identify those teams before they strike."
"How am I supposed to—"
"You worked in temporal engineering. You understand corporate security protocols. You know how they think." Weaver pulled up more data. "We have partial intelligence on Kronos operations, but we need someone who can interpret corporate security patterns. Someone who used to be one of them."
That made sense. Bataar's experience at Quantum Dynamics had included security training—corporations were paranoid about temporal technology theft. He understood how they compartmentalized operations, how they structured wetwork teams.
"And the second thing?"
Weaver's expression grew more serious. "We're planning major operation. There's timeline scheduled for pruning in seventy-two hours. Branch designated epsilon-9. Three hundred thousand people. Kronos classified it as 'ideological contamination'—the branch developed economic system based on resource sharing instead of corporate ownership. They're erasing it to prevent the idea from spreading."
"You can't save three hundred thousand people."
"No. But we can save two hundred. Maybe three hundred if we're lucky and willing to take risks." She gestured to the equipment. "We've never attempted extraction on this scale. It requires opening larger portal, maintaining it longer, processing more consciousness transfers simultaneously. The risk of cascade failure is enormous. We could lose everyone—the refugees, the Anchors, and destabilize baseline reality in the process."
"Then why attempt it?"
"Because three hundred thousand people are about to be erased for believing wealth should be shared. Because if we don't at least try, we're no different than the corporations—calculating acceptable losses, prioritizing efficiency over lives." Weaver's eyes held fever intensity. "We're going to try to save them. As many as we can. And we need someone with temporal engineering expertise to help us not kill everyone in the process."
Bataar looked at the equipment, the ancient facility, the seven people who'd decided fighting genocide was worth dying for.He thought about his quantum decoherence. Eight to ten months before he started phasing.
He thought about the fifty thousand scrip he'd given up. His last chance at stabilization, gone.
He thought about seventy million people who'd been his world, erased for patent violation.
"I'll help you," Bataar said. "But I need something in return."
"We don't negotiate—"
"Not payment. Information." Bataar met Weaver's eyes. "You said you have source inside Kronos Solutions. Someone leaking pruning schedules. I need to know who. Because if we're going to attempt this operation, I need to understand the intelligence chain. Where the data comes from, how reliable it is, whether it could be compromised."
The Anchors exchanged looks. Weaver's expression showed calculation.
"That's compartmentalized information."
"Then I can't help you. Because I won't risk two hundred lives on intelligence I can't verify." Bataar stood. "I spent six months living as ghost because I didn't ask questions. I'm done with that. If I'm going to die fighting corporations, I need to know I'm fighting for real intelligence, not walking into trap."
Long silence. Then Weaver nodded slowly.
"Wire. Tell him."
The young man stepped forward, deactivated his scrambler completely.
Bataar stared.
Wire was barely twenty, with features that suggested privilege—genetic optimization, high-quality augmentation, the subtle markers of someone born into corporate elite.
"My name is Jakob Skovgaard," Wire said quietly. "My mother is Kayla Skovgaard, VP of Timeline Integrity at Kronos Solutions."
Bataar's mind recoiled. "You're—"
"I'm the source. I've been leaking pruning schedules to the Anchors for eighteen months." Jakob's expression held guilt and defiance in equal measure. "My mother doesn't know. She thinks I'm studying quantum mechanics at corporate university. Instead, I'm helping save the people she's paid to erase."
"Why?"
"Because I watched her come home every day and justify genocide as legal necessity. Because I have access to the real files—the ones that show timelines are pruned for profit, not stability. Because—" His voice cracked. "Because I'm twenty years old and I already have blood of millions on my hands from just existing in this system. The Anchors gave me chance to stop being complicit."
Bataar absorbed this. The source was Skovgaard's own son. The intelligence was coming from inside the family.
Which meant it was either incredibly reliable or incredibly dangerous.
"Does anyone else know?"
"Just the Anchors. If my mother discovers I'm the leak, she'll have me consciousness-wiped. She'll erase her own son's mind to protect corporate interests." Jakob's laugh was bitter. "That's the system we live in. That's what we're fighting.
"Weaver moved to stand beside Jakob. "Now you know our vulnerability. If you're still corporate plant, if you report this, you'll destroy us. Jakob will be erased, the Anchors will be hunted down, and timeline genocide will continue without resistance."
"But you told me anyway."
"Because you're right. You need to understand the intelligence to trust it. And we need to trust you with everything if this operation is going to work." She extended her hand. "So here's the choice, Bataar Khulan. Join us completely—knowing we're probably going to fail, probably going to die, probably won't change anything. Or walk away, knowing you could have fought and chose survival instead."
Bataar looked at her hand. At Jakob's haunted young face. At the equipment that would try to save two hundred people from three-hundred-thousand-person genocide.
At his own degrading body, quantum decoherence making him translucent at the edges.
He took Weaver's hand.
"I'm in. Show me the technical specifications for the extraction. If we're going to save two hundred people, I need to understand exactly how we're going to break every law of physics to do it."
Weaver smiled—not with joy, but with grim satisfaction.
"Welcome to the Anchors, Bataar. Now let's go commit some temporal crimes."