The corridor door did not open.
Cedric placed his hand on it naturally, the automatic gesture of someone who has crossed that space many times. The surface did not resist. It simply did not respond.
It remained there, immobile.
Cedric tried again, this time more decisively. Nothing.
"Is it blocked?" he asked, without turning around.
Marikka immediately sensed what was missing.
Not the vibration of the lock.
Not the signal of an active seal.
A frequency was missing.
The one that Serian always produced when a space recognized a presence as coherent. A minimal, almost polite agreement.
Now it was gone.
Marikka took a step forward too quickly. The world reached her with a half-beat delay, making her clench her teeth. She leaned her hand on the wall to stabilize herself.
The stone responded... badly.
As if it were looking for a reference it could no longer find.
"It is not blocked," a voice said behind them. "It has been removed."
Cedric spun around.
The man in the light uniform had appeared without warning. Not hostile. Not furtive. Authorized. He held a rigid support in his hands on which orderly lines scrolled.
Registry.
"Removed?" Cedric repeated. "How do you remove a door?"
The man barely looked at him. "Not the door. The requirement."
Marikka felt the sentence pass through her body like a cold vibration. She wrote in the notebook, with forced calm:
WHICH REQUIREMENT.
The man read it. He nodded. "Coherence of passage."
A pause. Then: "The verification has flagged an incompatibility."
Cedric burst into a short, nervous laugh. "Incompatibility with what?"
The support emitted a sharp pulse. The man consulted it. "With an active precedent."
Marikka's breath stopped for an instant.
Serian reacted in the case with a weak, irregular tremor. Not pain. Residual instability.
Marikka wrote faster:
IT IS TEMPORARY.
The man didn't answer immediately. Another pulse crossed the support. "It is... under evaluation."
That formula.
Cedric took a step forward. "Listen, we need to—"
Marikka grabbed his wrist. No.
The contact cost her more than usual. The vibrations reached her all at once, overlapping, as if the filter had been shifted by a wrong degree.
She wrote:
WHO FLAGGED IT.
The man looked up. "A double registration."
Silence.
Not the charged kind.
The procedural one.
"Subject Marikka—" he began.
The word arrived before the gesture.
Marikka felt the name hit her with a clear, annoying delay. Too late to stop it, too early to ignore it.
The man paused. He looked at the support. "...is present in two incompatible forms."
Cedric turned pale. "Two forms?"
"One as an observed entity," the man continued, impersonally. "One as an unclassified interference factor."
Marikka wrote, with a pressure that hurt her fingers:
THEY ARE NOT TWO THINGS.
The man tilted his head. "The system does not express opinions."
Serian trembled harder.
Marikka clearly felt what was happening. The market had subtracted enough that the echo could no longer hold up alone. Now the registry was trying to resolve the ambiguity.
And when systems resolve, something is discarded.
She wrote:
WHAT HAPPENS NOW.
"Now," the man said, "we must separate the instances."
Cedric stepped in front of Marikka. "Separate what?"
"The presence," the man replied. "From the residue."
Marikka felt the blow arrive in the case first. Serian reacted with a broken, disorganized vibration. An impulse seeking anchorage and not finding it.
She wrote, larger:
NO.
The support emitted a sharper signal. The man stiffened by one degree. "This is not a negotiable decision."
Cedric looked at Marikka, then the man. "If you do that—"
"—the procedure will proceed anyway," the man concluded. "With or without collaboration."
Marikka closed her eyes for an instant. She felt the void left by the part of Serian that was no longer there. She felt the delay in her own body. She felt the city continuing to function, indifferent.
When she reopened them, she was no longer reading.
She was declaring.
She wrote slowly:
THEN REGISTER THIS.
The man hesitated. Not out of doubt. Out of unexpected load.
Marikka leaned her hand against the wall and then onto the case, creating the circuit again. This time not to defend. To mark.
Serian screamed without sound.
The vibration crossed the space like a synchronization error. The man's support flashed, the lines overlapped for an instant.
"There is..." he said, confused. "There is a data conflict."
Marikka felt the blood pulsing in her temples. The cost was immediate. Physical.
She wrote:
YOU CANNOT SEPARATE US WITHOUT LOSING SOMETHING.
The support emitted a long, irregular signal. The man stepped back half a pace. "Verification is suspended."
Cedric held his breath. "Suspended?"
"Due to irresolvable inconsistency," the man said. Then he looked up, uncertain for the first time. "Temporarily."
Marikka felt her knees give way. She leaned against the wall, letting the cold stone hold her up.
Serian was almost silent.
Not extinguished.
Reduced.
The man took a step back. "This will be flagged."
"To whom?" Cedric asked.
The man didn't answer right away. Then: "To those who manage cases that will not close."
He left.
The door remained where it was. Useless.
Marikka slid slowly down until she was sitting against the wall. The vibrations now reached her with a constant, annoying delay. A damage that would not pass quickly.
Cedric knelt in front of her. "You—"
Marikka shook her head. Not now.
She wrote, with a tired hand:
NOW THEY KNOW.
Cedric swallowed. "What?"
Marikka rested her forehead against the stone. The city vibrated stronger, as if it had registered an anomaly worthy of attention.
She wrote the last sentence, slow, heavy:
THAT THEY CANNOT RESOLVE US WITHOUT ADMITTING AN ERROR.
Serian emitted a faint, but present, echo.
It was enough.
For now.
But Marikka knew one thing with new and terrible certainty:
from that moment on, every system that touched them
would have to choose what to lose.