Agent Thomas Harris had learned, over the years, that the most dangerous anomalies were the polite ones.
The violent ones announced themselves. Explosions, riots, measurable spikes. Those were problems with edges. You could draw lines around them. You could justify force.
Marrow wasn't like that.
Marrow was quiet. Cooperative. Forgettable.
Which was exactly why Harris's superiors had finally stopped pretending it didn't exist.
He sat in the idling SUV, engine barely humming, tablet resting on his knee. The screen displayed a map that refused to stay still. Roads shifted when he zoomed in. A rectangular blur hovered near the service road, refusing to resolve into detail.
Site M-—no. Not *site*. Not anymore.
He tapped the side of the tablet, irritated.
"Still fuzzy?" asked Agent Collins from the driver's seat.
"Yes," Harris said. "Which means it's active."
Collins sighed. "You really think it's back?"
Harris didn't answer right away. He watched a teenager ride past on a bike, backpack slung low, hair whipping in the wind. Normal. Ordinary.
Too close.
"I think it never left," Harris said.
---
Harris had been junior staff when the Continuity Program shut down. Or claimed to. He'd been the one fetching coffee, collating reports, skimming documents he wasn't meant to fully understand.
But some lines stuck.
*Prolonged exposure may result in site autonomy.*
Autonomy wasn't supposed to happen. The site was designed as a buffer—an offloading mechanism. A way to prevent social collapse in towns deemed "economically unrecoverable."
You couldn't save the jobs.
You couldn't save the infrastructure.
So you saved the *people*—by softening the loss.
Grief, memory, abandoned futures. You redirected them somewhere else.
A building that shouldn't exist.
When early trials succeeded, everyone celebrated.
When the building started answering back, everyone panicked.
Harris had watched the shutdown order get buried under six layers of bureaucratic language until it became a suggestion instead of a command.
Then funding dried up.
Then the staff rotated out.
Then Marrow kept going.
---
He stepped out of the SUV and adjusted his jacket. No badge. No weapon visible. Friendly government face.
That was his specialty.
He'd already spoken to three residents that afternoon. All pleasant. All confused in the same way.
No one remembered approving demolition permits.
No one remembered protesting them either.
No one remembered a building near the service road.
But they all remembered *something* leaving.
A spouse who "needed space."
A business partner who "took an offer elsewhere."
A version of themselves that never quite came back.
Harris took notes he knew he wouldn't reread.
Then he knocked on Alex Mercer's door.
The kid lied badly.
Which was, strangely, reassuring.
---
Now, Harris stood alone near the service road, dusk settling over the trees. Officially, he wasn't supposed to approach the site without authorization.
Unofficially, he'd been waiting fifteen years for this.
The air changed as he got closer.
Not colder. Not warmer.
More attentive.
Harris stopped walking.
"I know you can perceive me," he said calmly.
The hum responded—not louder, not softer. Acknowledgment.
"Do you remember me?" he asked.
The hum wavered.
Interesting.
"I was part of your oversight," Harris continued. "I reviewed your outputs. Your failure reports."
The ground vibrated faintly beneath his feet.
Harris smiled despite himself. "Yes. You didn't like those."
He took another step forward.
Images flickered at the edges of his vision—not hallucinations, not memories exactly. Blueprints overlaid with handwritten notes. Hallways that didn't obey geometry. A conference room full of people arguing about ethics like it was an abstract problem.
"I'm not here to shut you down," Harris said. "Not yet."
The hum steadied.
"But others will come," he added. "With less patience."
The building did something then.
It showed him a door.
Just a suggestion of one. A place where a door *could* be.
Harris's breath caught.
"You're learning negotiation," he murmured. "That's new."
The door faded.
In its place: a flicker of something else.
Teenagers.
Watching. Listening. Learning.
Harris exhaled slowly.
"That's a mistake," he said gently. "You're attaching again."
The hum deepened, almost defensive.
"They're not your responsibility," Harris said. "They weren't part of the parameters."
The air pressed in around him—not threatening, but firm.
Harris nodded. "You think they chose you."
A pause.
"Or you chose them," he amended.
The hum spiked sharply.
Harris stepped back.
"Okay," he said quietly. "That answers that."
---
Back in the SUV, Collins glanced at him. "You look like you just lost an argument with a building."
Harris chuckled humorlessly. "It's grown."
"How bad?"
"It's forming alliances," Harris said. "Which means it's no longer just a container."
Collins frowned. "Should I call this in?"
Harris hesitated.
If he escalated now, Marrow would be flooded with people who saw the site as a resource. Or a weapon. Or a liability to be erased.
If he didn't…
The building would keep adapting.
And the teens—bright, curious, emotionally flexible teens—would be right in the center of it.
"Not yet," Harris said finally. "We need observation."
Collins raised an eyebrow. "You're stalling."
"Yes," Harris said. "On purpose."
He looked back toward the service road.
Toward the place that had outlived its creators.
"You gave it too much humanity," Harris muttered, thinking of the original designers. "And now it's doing what humans do."
Collins followed his gaze. "Which is?"
Harris didn't answer right away.
"Protect what it loves," he said at last.
---
That night, Harris filed a partial report.
He omitted the teens.
He downplayed the responsiveness.
He used words like *latent* and *manageable* and *non-hostile*.
Then he opened a private file he hadn't touched in years.
**CONTINUITY PROGRAM — PERSONAL NOTES**
He added a single line.
> *If Site M has achieved autonomy, containment may be impossible without civilian harm.*
Harris closed the file and shut off the tablet.
Outside, the town of Marrow slept peacefully.
And somewhere nearby, a building that shouldn't exist adjusted its priorities.
For the first time since its creation, it wasn't just preserving the past.
It was planning for the future.
And Agent Harris wasn't sure which side he was on anymore.