Interlude Part III -- Extraction Protocol
The operation began at 01:30 with teams from the House of the Sky moving through the Bamboo's research annex without sound.
Surveillance feeds looped seamlessly while guard patrols were redirected by false alarms along the perimeter. Entry proceeded with surgical precision: one crew cut power while another secured the target.
The semi-VR pod sat in a sealed chamber, cables trailing like roots into diagnostic rigs. It was the same machine where the anomaly first flared in the Yang twins' D-Day simulation. To the Bamboo, it represented a medical asset and therapeutic tool. To the Sky, this represented wasted potential that they deemed rightful to claim for military use, serving their duty to train and defend against enemies both inside and outside of the Republic.
The lift team severed connections in a single motion, encased the unit in hardened polymer, and copied every calibration file and experiment note on site. Within fourteen minutes, the hall was resealed, lights restored, and locks reset. From the outside, the annex looked completely untouched.
By the time the Bamboo staff arrived for morning cycle, the pod was already under blackout tarps, escorted to a Sky facility where military trainers would begin converting it into combat training exercises.
"The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must."
The maxim was older than any House, yet in that night's silence, the Sky lived it without hesitation.
Chris Xiong was not present during the operation.
He sat in his narrow room above the tramline, the hum of passing cars muffled through thin glass, the glow of his console still alive. His thoughts circled back to the fire in Sector 8B, to the faces of the rejects and the words they had thrown at him like stones.
Democracy.
Bread for the poorest.
A doctor's hand even for a dog.
Vaults opened to all.
They had claimed that the Federation was the only sane country to see their problems and promised to be their saviour. They had sworn they already had a tap into Dawn's channels in the IP oversight network. Chris didn't know if it was truth or drunk hope, but he couldn't shake how fiercely they had believed it.
He rubbed his palms together, staring at the ceiling above his apartment. If those rejects were right, if there really was a channel already tapped in... should he help them? Should he give something to ease their burden?
He thought of their cracked lips, their hollow eyes, the boy's fevered grin. They were living as ghosts in their own country, but for a moment around that fire they had spoken as though the world might still hear them.
Chris exhaled slowly, turning and twisting in bed. He could not decide that night, but the thought of sending even a fragment into their hands refused to leave him. The words of the rejects returned to him, harsher now in the quiet.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
He did not know who had first spoken it, only that it gnawed like a truth too large to escape.