Chapter 280 --280
Hale worked through the day with the methodical precision that was his particular quality.
One by one the knights sat at the calibration station. The extraction function registered its presence and then was systematically removed — not just disabled, removed, the architecture itself excised and documented in Hale’s precise technical hand, every step recorded, every collar’s individual history noted.
Clean. Complete. Unambiguous.
Three hours in, between rotations, Shen stood and spoke.
He did not stand at the front of the hall. He stood in the middle of it, among his colleagues, which was the right choice — not a performance, not an announcement, just a person saying a thing to people who were in the same situation he was.
He told them about the secondary layer.
What it was. What it measured. Why it existed. How long it had been running. What the data had been used for and what it had not been used for.
He told them clearly and completely and in the specific register of someone who had carried the information for six months and had decided exactly how to say it.
The hall was very quiet when he finished.
Then a knight near the back — one of the wolf-eared ones from the original wing, whom Elara recognized from the first morning — said:
"Is it still running now."
"Yes," Shen said. "Until the implementation is complete. After today it will be documented in the official collar record — visible, acknowledged, part of the formal framework. Not hidden." He paused. "That’s different from how it started."