It was situated beneath the East River.
Not metaphorically.
Literally.
A disused maintenance tunnel is thus designated on all available infrastructure maps. Redesignated decades ago as "non-functional" after a broken water pipe. And yet, inexplicably, it had power, access, and a series of HVAC reports filed in the name of a shell corporation owned by Phase IV.
Ivy stood at the FDR underpass platform at 1:07 a.m., her boots soggy from drizzle, staring at a bolted metal door partially hidden by a downed street sign.
Talia had offered to go along.
Elias had demanded.
But Ivy had refused.
This was no longer a conversation.
This was extraction.
She forced the door open with a rusty maintenance key Helena had sent from Connecticut. It creaked, flakes of rust scattering the ground like fragile ash. At its back, the tunnel ducked into a downward shaft illuminated by faint industrial fluorescents.
She hurried.
Light footsteps. Gloves on.
The air inside was arid. Humming. Radiant with warmth.
Whatever was down here was living.
The tunnel narrowed after sixty yards, splitting into three passages. Ivy followed the vibration on the floor, not logic or Carradine's advice. Don't follow the blueprints. Follow the pulse.
And there it was.
A blast door with a biometric lock.
Already open.
Someone had already gone inside.
Inside was a room the width of a subway platform.
Rows of humming servers. Green flickering lights beat metronomically. Fiber cables, as agile vines, transmitting information to rows of buzzing nodes.
It was more than just a data center.
It was a room for deletion.
There was one master terminal screen, displaying a file queue:
Purge Status: 61% complete.
Files remaining: 13,243.
Target folders: "Stillpoint Legacy" | "Carradine Branch" | "Behavioral Strain Markers"
Ivy's heart skipped a beat.
Their wasn't just erasing evidence; they were erasing people's histories.
She typed furiously, fingers a blur across the keyboard. Her drive inserted. Her cloned access key active.
The system fought back immediately—firewalls, blockers, ghost redirects.
But she was ready.
Helena's backdoor protocol broke the surface in under twenty seconds.
Copying files…
Ivy watched the meter inch up gradually.
1%…
3%…
8%…
And then the power surged again.
The lights flickered.
A proximity sensor beeped once, cold and unforgiving.
And Ivy wasn't alone anymore.
A man stepped from the shadows behind the racks. Early forties. Gray at the temples. Corporate attire stretched over military precision.
Not a security guard.
A cleaner.
Not the kind who mops floors.
The kind who cleans people out of history.
"You shouldn't be here," he said.
Ivy didn't flinch.
"I'm always where the cleanup starts," she replied.
He stepped closer.
"You have no clue what you're doing. These files are not information. They're social architecture. Predictive scaffolding. You take this down—"
"—and you stop engineering people's lives," she finished.
His expression didn't alter.
"You're going to be forgotten."
She glared at him.
"That's the intention," she said. "But not before you are."
He attacked her.
She slammed the server panel into his chest and took off.
Around the rack. Behind the relay node.
He followed fast.
But she wasn't resisting.
She was delaying.
The upload hit 43%.
On the console, her screen flashed a silent inquiry:
Secondary Extraction Node Detected—Activate Remote Clone?
She clicked YES.
A flash of text: Signal sent. Elias Rourke: Remote location received. Download queue initiated.
He was there.
If she didn't get away, at least the files would.
The cleaner completed its second loop.
"I know who you are," he said, breathing easy. "The girl everyone whispers about. The myth. The movement. But you're a terrified woman in the dark, aren't you?"
"No," Ivy declared, standing behind the backup array.
"This is the woman who remembered everything you tried to forget."
She grabbed a server casing and yanked.
Sparks flew from the core.
Smoke billowed into the aisle.
The cleaner plunged, gagging.
Ivy ran for the console.
Upload: 88%.
Her fingers flew.
Drawed out the drive.
Tucked in the clone.
And took off.
The rear corridor was scorching to the touch.
A fire had taken hold—whether caused by her sparks or something else, she couldn't know.
She didn't look back.
She clawed up the side shaft, pulled herself out as the thing above creaked—
And a gentle fold buried the tunnel beneath the river.
The server farm was gone.
But the backup drive was still in her pack.
The echo was preserved.
She staggered into Elias's apartment at 3:21 a.m.
Bruised. Burned. Alive.
He grabbed her before she fell onto the floor.
She didn't utter a word.
Just gave him the drive.
He nodded, understanding everything.