Warm air washes over us as the door seals shut behind our backs.
The corridor opens into a residential maintenance level, narrower than the Furnace Tier but far more unsettling. Pipes run openly along the walls, wrapped in insulated casings that rattle softly as steam passes through them. Above, the ceiling vibrates with distant footsteps—people living their lives just one layer up, unaware of what's straining beneath them.
That knowledge sits heavy in my chest.
"This sector wasn't built for stress," the observer says quietly. "Older housing. Retrofitted too many times."
"So it's fragile," I reply.
"Yes," they say. "And populated."
The woman with the goggles moves ahead, her device already humming as it scans the corridor. Its needles twitch erratically, refusing to settle on a stable reading. She frowns, slowing her pace.
"It's not centralized," she mutters. "Multiple micro-distortions."
That's new.
We pass a row of sealed doors, each marked with unit numbers and faint personal sigils etched by residents—small charms, protective marks, attempts at reassurance. The symbols blur slightly as I look at them, not because they're unstable, but because my attention keeps getting pulled elsewhere.
Downward.
The pressure behind my eyes returns, sharper than before. It doesn't spike all at once; it builds gradually, threading through my thoughts with an insistent patience. I know this feeling now.
Something unfinished is forming.
I slow my steps. "It's below us."
The observer nods. "Basement level. Shared infrastructure."
Of course it is.
Residential faults don't announce themselves dramatically. They accumulate quietly—missed inspections, ignored complaints, small failures written off as tolerable. Here, those oversights have nowhere left to go.
The deck drifts closer, its hum deepening. One card edges forward, heavier than the others, but it doesn't separate fully. It's waiting.
The woman stops in front of a reinforced hatch set into the floor. Steam leaks from its edges in thin, irregular bursts, carrying a sour metallic scent that makes my skin crawl.
"This shouldn't be venting," she says. "Pressure's wrong."
The observer kneels, placing a hand against the hatch. Their jaw tightens. "It's warm."
Warm means active.
Above us, something crashes—furniture, maybe, or a door slammed too hard. A muffled shout follows, then another. The sounds are distant, distorted by layers of metal and stone, but unmistakably human.
They're already feeling it.
"Elias," the observer says, not looking up. "You're up."
I swallow and step closer to the hatch.
The moment I focus on it, the pressure spikes violently. Images flood my mind—cramped corridors, flickering lights, arguments that never resolved, repairs delayed because they weren't urgent enough. A dozen small moments overlap, none of them catastrophic on their own.
Together, they form something worse.
"This isn't one record," I say through clenched teeth. "It's… layered."
The woman curses softly. "A composite fault."
"That shouldn't be possible," the observer says.
"It is if no one ever finished noticing," I reply.
The deck hums in agreement.
I kneel beside the hatch, placing my palm against the metal. It's hot enough to sting, but I don't pull away. The contact sharpens my focus, anchoring the flood of impressions just enough to make sense of them.
I see it clearly now.
Years of neglect. Small compromises made in the name of efficiency. A cracked support beam written off as stable enough. A pressure valve flagged for maintenance and forgotten. Residents complaining about noises that never made it past automated filters.
No single moment demanded attention.
So none of them received it.
The composite record stirs, reacting to my awareness. Heat builds rapidly beneath the hatch, and the deck shifts sharply, one card sliding free at last.
Its surface flickers, struggling to stabilize.
LOCATION: Virelis – Residential Sector, Sublevel CEVENT TYPE: Structural Failure (Composite)
The words refuse to settle.
The record is fighting completion.
"It's going to breach," the woman says urgently. "If that hatch fails—"
"—the whole stack above it goes," the observer finishes.
I grit my teeth and steady my breathing.
"This isn't like the Furnace Tier," I say. "There's no single ending."
"Then make one," the observer says.
Easy for them to say.
The pressure behind my eyes surges, and for a moment I almost lose my grip on the present. Voices overlap in my head—arguments, apologies, promises to fix things later. The weight of it presses down hard enough to make my vision blur.
I force myself to narrow my focus.
Not on the collapse.
On the decision point.
There's always a moment where things could have gone differently. Not saved entirely, but redirected. A repair approved. An evacuation ordered. A warning taken seriously.
I search for that moment.
The record resists, its instability flaring violently. The hatch rattles beneath my hand, bolts groaning as pressure builds.
Above us, someone screams.
The sound cuts through the chaos like a blade.
I latch onto it.
The scream isn't part of the record—it's happening now. It grounds me, anchoring my awareness in the present instead of letting it drown in the past.
I focus harder.
The deck vibrates intensely, its hum bordering on painful. The card's surface flickers, lines trying desperately to lock into place.
I feel the city react.
Pressure doors slam shut above us. Steam vents roar to life, dumping excess heat into controlled channels. The systems are bracing, but they won't hold forever.
My head pounds, and a sharp pain lances through my temples as the composite record surges one last time, straining against completion.
This isn't about stopping the failure.
It's about defining it.
I draw a slow, steady breath and make the decision.
I choose the moment no one wanted to admit existed.
The instant the thought settles, the pressure behind my eyes spikes sharply, then steadies. The chaos in my head tightens, fragments snapping into alignment like debris dragged into a single current.
The record reacts.
Heat surges beneath the hatch, metal groaning as if protesting the decision being forced upon it. The card in front of me trembles violently, its surface flickering between clarity and distortion.
I ignore the pain and focus harder.
Not on the collapse that's coming—but on the meeting that never happened. The maintenance report flagged as non-critical. The inspector who hesitated, knowing something felt wrong but lacking the authority to shut the building down. The resident who heard the noise at night and convinced themselves it was nothing.
That hesitation is the fault line.
I lock onto it.
The deck hums with sudden intensity, the vibration rattling my teeth. The card's text sharpens abruptly, lines etching themselves into place with painful precision.
OUTCOME: STRUCTURAL FAILURE CONFIRMEDTRIGGER: DEFERRED INTERVENTIONCASUALTIES: LIMITED BY CONTAINMENT
The words burn into my vision.
The moment the outcome stabilizes, the composite record convulses. Heat erupts from beneath the hatch in a violent burst, and I'm thrown backward as the metal plate buckles inward with a deafening crack.
The observer grabs my arm, hauling me back as the floor gives way.
Below us, the structure collapses—not upward, not outward, but inward. Support beams snap and fold as pressure vents downward into designated channels, steam roaring through reinforced shafts built precisely for this kind of failure.
The building shudders violently.
Above us, alarms scream to life.
Red lights flood the corridor as automated systems engage. Pressure doors slam shut with bone-jarring force, isolating sections of the residential stack. I hear distant impacts—furniture toppling, walls cracking—but no immediate collapse.
The city is containing it.
I lie on the cold metal floor, gasping for breath as the pressure drains from my skull. My vision swims, dark spots dancing at the edges, but the suffocating weight is gone.
The record is finished.
Text flickers weakly at the edge of my vision.
[Unresolved Record stabilized.][Composite failure contained.]
No relief follows.
Just exhaustion.
The woman with the goggles kneels beside me, her device already scanning. "You're alive," she mutters. "That's a start."
"Evacuation's in progress," the observer says into their wrist disk. "Containment successful. Damage localized."
They glance down at me. "You did it."
I swallow, my throat raw. "I chose who got hurt."
They don't correct me.
"That choice was already made," they say quietly. "You just finalized it before the city did it blindly."
I push myself into a sitting position, every muscle protesting. The deck hovers closer, heavier than ever, its presence pressing against my awareness like a weight I can't set down.
One card settles deeper into place, its surface no longer flickering.
It's permanent now.
The corridor fills with the hiss of steam and the sharp crackle of cooling metal. Somewhere above us, people are shouting—confused, frightened, alive. Emergency response teams will handle the rest.
They won't know how close it came.
They won't know about the composite record, or the moment that defined their survival. And part of me understands why.
Knowing wouldn't help.
The observer extends a hand. I take it, letting them pull me to my feet. My legs shake, but they hold.
"You're adapting faster than expected," they say. "That's… concerning."
"For who?" I ask.
"For everyone," they reply.
We step back from the ruined hatch as stabilization crews move in, sealing the breach with reinforced plating and layered sigils. The city hum begins to normalize again, its systems settling into a new equilibrium.
But something feels off.
I close my eyes briefly, scanning inward the way I've learned to do. The ache behind my eyes is gone, replaced by a dull heaviness in my chest that wasn't there before.
Residuals aren't dispersing.
They're stacking.
I look at the deck and know, without needing confirmation, that my record has thickened again. Each completion leaves an imprint, and those imprints aren't fading with time.
They're becoming part of me.
The woman with the goggles notices my expression. "You feel it too, don't you?"
"Yes," I say quietly.
She exhales. "That's not supposed to happen."
The observer turns sharply. "Explain."
"Most Witness-class operatives shed completed records within hours," she says. "He isn't. He's integrating them."
Silence stretches between us.
"That means what?" the observer asks.
"It means," she replies slowly, "that he's not just observing outcomes. He's becoming a cumulative record."
The words send a chill through me.
A cumulative record.
A living archive of unfinished things brought to an end.
The observer studies me with new intensity, something wary entering their gaze. "If that's true, then Elias isn't just stabilizing faults."
They trail off, but I know the rest.
I'm changing the way the city balances itself.
We leave the residential level under heavy containment protocols, ascending back toward controlled zones. The alarms fade behind us, replaced by the steady rhythm of Virelis returning to order.
But the city feels different now.
More responsive.
As if it's learned that when pressure builds, I'm part of the release mechanism.
That thought sits cold and heavy in my gut.
Back in the lift, the observer speaks quietly. "You did well today."
I don't answer.
Because "well" feels like the wrong word for deciding which failures become survivable.
The lift doors slide open onto a secure corridor, and we step out into cleaner air and brighter light. For a moment, everything feels almost normal.
Then the deck hums again.
Not in response to danger—but anticipation.
I meet the observer's gaze. "There's another one."
They check the disk, then freeze. "That's not possible."
"It is," I say. "I can feel it."
Somewhere in Virelis, another unfinished thing is forming. And this time, it's closer. More personal. Not infrastructure or machinery—but something tied to people.
The observer swears softly. "We're going to have to accelerate your schedule."
I nod, already exhausted.
Because if this continues, the city won't just rely on me.
It will build around me.
And I don't know what happens when a world starts treating a person like part of its core system.