Chapter 28 — The Shattered Vault
The tramways ran on schedule again. Iron Silence had lifted days ago, and Oversight Sector 8B had returned to its characteristic rhythm—clerks hunched over terminals, Bamboo forecasts flowing in neat columns, the Republic's bureaucratic machinery grinding forward with meticulous efficiency.
Chris Xiong walked to his desk that morning with something approaching relief. The crisis—whatever it had been—was over. Foreign powers flexing muscle, the Houses responding with their typical paranoid precision, and now everyone could return to normal. He'd watched the fleet movements on public feeds like everyone else, marvelling at Sky's interceptor formations and Bear's power displays, thinking: Just geopolitics. Superpowers posturing. Nothing to do with me.
His datapad showed the morning's assignments: Bamboo medical forecasts needing cross-verification, Dawn Bureau ledgers requiring reconciliation, licensing discrepancies to resolve. Mindless work. Safe work. The kind that let him disappear into numbers whilst the Republic's vast machinery moved around him.
And yes—not long ago, he'd released ECSE-v2 through the rejects' tap. But that wasn't theft. Not really. Not in the way the Houses would frame it.
The anomaly that had birthed the emotional-cognitive simulation engine had been him. His presence. His connection to the machines. The technology wouldn't exist without him, wouldn't have been possible without that quantum resonance only he could generate. In every meaningful sense, ECSE-v2 was his creation, not the Republic's. He'd simply freed what he'd helped birth.
His Southern Commonwealth upbringing had taught him that knowledge belonged to humanity, not locked in Patriarch vaults for oligarchs to hoard. Innovation should flow freely, serving the many instead of enriching the few. The rejects—pushed to society's margins, denied access to the very systems they helped maintain—deserved better. They'd built the tap. They'd kept the channel open. They'd risked everything for a chance at equity.
Giving them ECSE-v2 had been an act of justice. Small, quiet, but righteous.
The Federation, Gaule Republic, and Southern Commonwealth would benefit too. Medical applications. Therapeutic breakthroughs. Cognitive simulation technologies that could revolutionize everything from education to psychological treatment. He'd given the world a gift, freed from the Houses' extractive licensing schemes and merit-based gatekeeping.
Iron Silence? That had been the Houses overreacting to shadows. Typical paranoia from powers too long unchallenged, seeing threats in every democratic impulse, treating information freedom as existential danger.
Chris pulled up his first assignment and began working. Around him, Sector 8B hummed with normal conversation—clerks discussing lunch plans, market reports, weekend recreation. Life returning to baseline.
He'd done a good thing. The Republic would never know. And even if they discovered the breach eventually, they'd blame the rejects, or the Federation's intelligence apparatus, or some faceless saboteur.
Not a foreign-born clerk maintaining Bamboo forecasts.
Not him.
By midday, he'd almost convinced himself it was true.
The cafeteria filled with its usual lunch crowd. Chris sat with his tray—noodles in broth, steamed vegetables, cheap protein—chopsticks working mechanically whilst clerks around him discussed quarterly reports and licensing disputes. The air smelled of soy sauce and recycled ventilation. For once, he felt almost invisible, just another body in the Republic's endless bureaucratic machinery.
Then every screen in the cafeteria went dark.
Conversations died mid-sentence. Chopsticks paused halfway to mouths. The sudden silence carried weight, the kind that preceded announcements no one wanted to hear.
The screens blazed back to life, and the Bear Patriarch's face filled every display.
His House emblem burned in the corners—a stark symbol that commanded attention even in static form. The Patriarch himself sat behind a plain desk, no ornaments visible, only the weight of authority in his weathered features. When he spoke, his voice carried across every canteen, office, and public square in the Republic.
Chris took another bite of noodles, only half-listening. Another security announcement. The Houses were always restructuring something, warning about something, tightening protocols. Around him, clerks settled into the practiced expression of people pretending to care about official speeches.
"Citizens of the Republic," the Bear began, each word measured and deliberate. "Three days ago, our nation faced coordinated pressure from foreign powers whilst simultaneously discovering internal breach. The measures we took—activating Iron Silence, sealing our borders, securing our systems—were not theatre. They were necessity."
Chris chewed mechanically. Internal breach. Foreign pressure. The standard language of House paranoia. He reached for his tea, mind already drifting back to the afternoon's forecasts waiting on his desk.
"The nations of the West and the East believe that weapons of mass destruction are mankind's greatest danger. Nuclear arsenals. Biological weapons. Chemical agents capable of ending millions of lives." The Bear Patriarch leaned forward slightly, his gaze seeming to pierce through the camera. "They are wrong."
The cafeteria held its breath. Chris's chopsticks paused halfway to his mouth.
"Weapons of mass destruction destroy cities. Intellectual property destroys civilizations. A nuclear weapon kills millions once. Stolen technology reshapes how nations wage war, manipulate populations, and control their citizens forever. The pen is mightier than the sword—not as metaphor, but as measured reality. That is why we guard the IP Vault with the same vigilance others reserve for nuclear arsenals. And that is why it must now be reforged."
Chris set his chopsticks down slowly. Reforged. That wasn't routine security language. That was fundamental restructuring. The Vault—the foundation of the Republic's entire power structure—didn't get "reforged" for minor threats.
"The Vault, in its current form, has proven vulnerable. A singular repository holding the lifeblood of our Republic invites catastrophe. Therefore, by unanimous decision of the Eighteen Patriarchs, the Vault will be restructured. No longer will it rest in a single chamber. It will be divided into secure nodes distributed across our territories—each independent, each redundant, each capable of preserving our collective knowledge should any single point fail."
Chris's pulse began to quicken. Vault restructuring. Unanimous Patriarch decision. This was serious. More than paranoid overreaction. Something had happened. Something significant enough to force constitutional change.
The Patriarch's expression hardened.
"A cord of three strands is not quickly broken. This principle guided our ancestors; it will guide our future. Distributed resilience ensures that no single strike—foreign or domestic—can cripple the whole. Some among us have already attempted intrusion." His voice dropped, carrying absolute certainty. "The Rejects of Society, and those who shelter them, believed they could steal what they had not earned."
The word hit Chris like a physical blow.
Rejects.
His hand froze on his tea cup. Around him, the cafeteria remained calm—clerks nodding agreement, dismissing the threat as typical House security concerns. But Chris's mind was racing backward through recent events.
The rejects. The tap. The channel he'd used.
Not long ago, he'd leaked ECSE-v2 through their network.
Iron Silence had been called soon after.
The timing. Just enough time for the Federation to realise what they had. Just enough time to coordinate extraction protocols. Just enough time to position carrier groups for—
Oh god.
"They failed," the Bear continued. "But their failure was warning enough. We will not allow a second attempt."
Failed?
Chris's throat constricted. He'd felt the data go through the tap—he knew THAT much. The connection had been real, the transfer had completed. But whether anyone on the other end had successfully extracted it before the Republic detected the breach...
He couldn't be sure.
Was the Bear telling the truth? Had the intrusion actually failed, the data intercepted before it reached whoever was waiting? Or was he lying to the public, claiming victory while ECSE-v2 was already in foreign hands?
His hands started trembling against the table edge.
"Do not mistake our vigilance for arrogance," the Bear Patriarch's voice pressed on, filling every corner of the room. "The Houses do not guard the Vault to keep it from the people. We guard it because knowledge, mishandled, destroys faster than fire."
Fire.
The word echoed in Chris's skull like a bell tolling.
He'd used that metaphor before, hadn't he? Recently, standing in the server room with his palm pressed against the node, feeling ECSE-v2 slip through the rejects' tap into the world. He'd thought of fire then. He'd thought of Oppenheimer watching the mushroom cloud bloom over the desert, whispering words from the Bhagavad Gita.
"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."
He'd prayed then—desperately, hopefully—that he had not loosed fire, but bread. Knowledge to help. Innovation to heal. Democratic principles made real through freed information.
But the Bear Patriarch was talking about fire. About destruction. About knowledge destroying faster than nuclear weapons. About breaches serious enough to restructure the entire Vault system. About threats that had triggered—
Iron Silence.
The pieces slammed together with devastating clarity.
What if the carrier groups hadn't been posturing? What if Iron Silence hadn't been political theatre?
Chris's vision began to tunnel. The cafeteria sounds grew distant, muffled, as though he were underwater. He'd watched it all on public feeds—three carrier strike groups, Federation naval assets, Gaule Republic warships, Southern Commonwealth showing solidarity. Thousands of personnel. Sky's interceptors scrambling across contested airspace. Markets suspending. Diplomatic channels going silent. The world holding its breath.
The timing.
His leak had happened recently. Iron Silence had been called soon after.
What if they'd been connected? What if the three powers had coordinated—not for theatre, but for ECSE-v2? What if the fleets had been covering an extraction, providing military protection while someone took what he'd sent through the tap?
His "small act of righteous rebellion." His democratic idealism. His certainty that he was helping the oppressed, serving humanity, acting righteously.
Had he triggered it all?
Because of him.
He hadn't loosed bread. He had let loose fire.
And only blind luck—random, inexplicable chance—had prevented the fire from consuming everything. If it even had been prevented. If the Bear wasn't lying. If ECSE-v2 hadn't already reached foreign hands despite the Republic's defensive response.
He didn't even know for certain what he'd caused.
Oppenheimer had at least known he was building a weapon. The Manhattan Project scientists had understood the implications, had debated the morality, had reckoned with consequences even as they proceeded. They'd been trying to end a war, stop fascism, save millions of lives through terrible mathematics.
Chris had just thought he was being good.
He'd convinced himself that freeing knowledge was righteous. That democratic principles justified his actions. That his Southern Commonwealth idealism made him morally superior to the Houses' oligarchic control.
And he'd nearly killed millions because of it.
Or had he? He still didn't know for certain. Didn't know if the extraction had succeeded. Didn't know if the Republic had intercepted the data before it reached foreign hands. Didn't know if Iron Silence had been response to successful theft or failed attempt.
All he knew was the timing. The terrible, damning timing that connected his leak to international crisis.
Not through wisdom or sacrifice or tragic necessity. Through arrogance masquerading as idealism. Through the catastrophic naivety of believing good intentions could protect him from consequences he'd been too blind to foresee.
The Bear Patriarch's voice cut through Chris's spiralling horror.
"Access belongs only to those proven worthy through merit and contribution. It is this principle that has allowed the Republic to endure where others collapse into chaos."
Worthy. The word felt like accusation. Chris had thought himself worthy to judge what knowledge should be freed, which gates should be opened, who deserved access to innovations they hadn't earned through the Republic's merit system.
He'd played god with technology he barely understood, consequences he couldn't predict, and geopolitical forces he'd dismissed as oligarchic paranoia.
The Patriarch's final words fell like a judicial sentence.
"To those who betray the Republic from within, know this: the walls have ears. You may hide in shadow, but justice walks in daylight. We will hunt you. We will find you. And justice will be done."
The Bear House emblem burned on the screens for three long seconds before fading to black.
The cafeteria stirred back to life slowly—clerks exchanging glances, voices rising in murmurs about vault restructuring and security measures. Most seemed reassured by the Patriarch's words, nodding approval at the distributed architecture, discussing which Houses would host the new nodes.
Chris reached for his soup bowl with hands that wouldn't steady.
His chopsticks slipped.
Broth splashed across his tray and onto his sleeve, noodles sliding across the table. A few nearby clerks chuckled softly—clumsy foreigner—before returning to their meals and conversations about vault nodes and security protocols.
Chris's ears burned as he dabbed at the stain with his napkin, but his hands trembled far more than the small accident deserved. The Bear's words echoed in his skull with every heartbeat: We will hunt you. We will find you. And justice will be done.
Around him, life continued. Clerks finished their lunches. Conversations flowed about quarterly projections and licensing updates. The Republic's machinery grinding forward with characteristic efficiency.
None of them knew they were sitting next to someone who'd nearly ended the world.
None of them knew the Bear Patriarch's threat was meant for the clerk wiping soup off his sleeve with shaking hands.
Chris gathered his tray with stiff movements, each motion requiring conscious effort. The scrape of his chair against the floor felt too loud. His footsteps echoed wrong. Every clerk's casual glance seemed to linger a fraction too long.
He left the cafeteria without finishing his food, walking toward the lifts whilst trying to appear unhurried, trying to look like just another worker returning to his desk after an ordinary lunch.
The corridors of Oversight Sector 8B felt different now. Narrower. The fluorescent lights colder. Every camera mounted in the ceiling seemed to track his movement with mechanical precision. Every security checkpoint he passed logged his presence, added another data point to patterns that algorithms were already analysing.
The walls have ears.
Chris pressed the lift button and waited, counting his heartbeats, forcing himself to breathe normally whilst his thoughts spiralled. If they searched systematically—and they would—patterns would emerge. His name appeared at the Wall Pod when the first anomaly struck. His name appeared in IP Oversight systems near the breach timeline. His access codes had been active in the server room.
Twice was coincidence. Three times was evidence.
The lift arrived with a soft chime. He stepped inside, alone, and watched the doors seal. His reflection stared back at him in the polished steel—a young man in Republic work clothes, indistinguishable from a thousand other clerks.
But beneath that ordinary surface, he carried guilt that felt carved into his bones.
The Republic had just declared intellectual property more dangerous than weapons of mass destruction.
And Chris had stolen their most sensitive technology, channelled it to the Federation through the rejects' tap, and branded it with three letters that spelled his name.
CCX.
Christopher Xiong.
He'd signed his confession in the code itself.
The lift descended. Chris closed his eyes and tried to remember what safety had felt like before he'd decided that knowledge hoarding was unjust, before he'd convinced himself that democratic idealism justified actions he hadn't bothered to think through.
The answer didn't come.
Only the Bear Patriarch's voice, echoing endlessly: You may hide in shadow, but justice walks in daylight.
Outside Oversight Sector 8B, the Republic looked exactly as it had that morning. Tramways running on schedule. Workers streaming between buildings with practiced efficiency. The city humming with its characteristic order—every system monitored, every transaction logged, every movement documented.
But Chris saw it differently now.
Every camera wasn't just infrastructure—it was a witness. Every facial recognition node wasn't just convenient security—it was a hunter. Every checkpoint wasn't just protocol—it was a net closing tighter with each passing hour.
He'd walked through this city for months thinking he was invisible. Just another foreign-born clerk lost in bureaucracy, too insignificant to notice, too ordinary to track. He'd convinced himself that the Republic's surveillance was about control, not capability. That its documentation was theatre, not function.
He'd been catastrophically wrong.
The surveillance network he'd taken for granted—the Republic's systematic transparency and total documentation—had been recording everything. His presence at the Wall Pod. His work schedule at IP Oversight. His access codes in the server room. His behavioural patterns. His biometric signatures.
It was all there, waiting for someone to ask the right questions.
And now they were asking.
Chris's apartment building rose ahead—Building A, northern district, unit 412. The place that had felt like refuge now felt like a cell. He climbed the stairs mechanically, his legs operating on autopilot whilst his mind replayed the Bear's words in an endless loop.
We will hunt you. We will find you. Justice will be done.
Inside his apartment, Chris sat on the edge of his narrow bed, staring at nothing. The room was exactly as he'd left it that morning—datapad on the small desk, yesterday's clothes folded on the chair, the window showing Sector 8B's orderly skyline.
Everything the same. Everything different.
His hands still trembled. His pulse still raced. The weight of what he might have done pressed down like a physical force against his chest.
He'd watched it all on the public feeds during Iron Silence. Everyone had. The news reports showing fleet movements in contested waters—Federation naval assets, Gaule Republic warships, Southern Commonwealth maintaining formation. Sky's interceptors had been visible overhead for days, white contrails crisscrossing the sky in defensive patterns. Markets had suspended with terse announcements about "temporary security protocols." The entire Republic had held its breath while three foreign powers positioned themselves at the borders.
The feeds had called it "routine power projection." "Standard defensive response." "Diplomatic posturing."
But what if it hadn't been routine at all?
What if those fleets had been coordinating? What if the timing—right after his leak—hadn't been coincidence? What if all of it—the military mobilisation, the economic suspension, the world watching three nuclear powers face off over contested waters—
What if it had all been because of him?
Because he'd thought freeing knowledge was righteous. Because he'd convinced himself that innovation belonged to humanity. Because his Southern Commonwealth education had taught him to question authority and resist oligarchies and see information freedom as a fundamental right.
Democratic ideals that had seemed so obviously correct, so morally unassailable.
And they'd blinded him to reality.
The Republic wasn't just another government. It was a powder keg of sovereign Houses, each guarding territory and IP with absolute authority. The Vault wasn't just a repository—it was what prevented wars. Knowledge wasn't neutral—it was power, and power in the wrong hands meant death.
He'd understood none of that. He'd seen oppression where there was structure. He'd seen hoarding where there was necessity. He'd seen injustice where there was survival.
And he'd almost destroyed the world because he thought he was being good.
The black volcanic ring sat on his finger, warm against his skin. The artifact his father had left him—the bridge that had made the leak possible. In that moment two weeks ago, channelling ECSE-v2 through the servers, he'd felt powerful. Connected. Righteous.
Now it felt like evidence.
Chris pressed his palms against his eyes until colours bloomed in the darkness.
Somewhere in the Republic's vast security apparatus, investigators were analysing the breach. Tracing CCX back to its source. Reviewing access logs and biometric records. Connecting his name to the Wall Pod anomaly, to the Yang twins' semi-VR incident, to his position at IP Oversight.
The net was closing.
Or maybe it wasn't. Maybe the Bear's speech was about someone else entirely. Maybe his leak had failed. Maybe he was safe.
But he didn't believe that. Couldn't afford to believe it.
And if they found him, they wouldn't care about his intentions. They wouldn't hear his justifications about knowledge belonging to humanity. They wouldn't be moved by his democratic principles or his certainty that he'd been helping the oppressed.
They would see only what he might be: a traitor who'd nearly started a war. A naive fool who'd thought good intentions could protect him from catastrophic consequences. Someone who'd valued his ideology over millions of lives.
The Bear Patriarch's promise echoed in the silence of his apartment: Justice walks in daylight.
Chris sat on his bed as afternoon faded toward evening, the weight of realization—or paranoia, he couldn't tell which—crushing him, unable to move, unable to think beyond the simple, terrible possibility:
He might have loosed fire, not bread.
And if the Republic was coming to collect justice, he wouldn't see them until they were already at his door.