Chapter 173| The Records Room
The panel finally, quietly hummed to life nearly two hours after they’d begun, Myria’s careful, patient work paying off in a soft, mechanical click that echoed through the chamber’s considerable silence, and Allen felt his own chest tighten as the reinforced door swung open onto a space entirely different from the weapons cache they’d already documented.
Rows of considerable filing cabinets stretched before them, alongside a bank of dormant computer terminals and a small, dedicated server rack humming faintly in the room’s far corner, and Farrow’s technical specialists moved immediately toward the electronic systems while the rest of the group began, carefully, working through the physical records.
"This is genuinely it," Myria said quietly, pulling the first considerable folder from its drawer, her hands carrying visible, uncharacteristic tension. "Subject files. Organized alphabetically, by designation rather than name."
Allen crossed to her side, watching as she carefully opened the folder to reveal a considerable document, header text confirming what months of careful, patient investigation had already begun to suggest.
Subject Group Four — American Registry. Status: Active Monitoring, Post-Extraction.
"Post-extraction," Vivian repeated slowly, joining them, her own composed exterior straining visibly against the weight of the discovery. "Extracted from what, though?"
Myria continued reading, her voice growing quieter, more careful, as the document’s considerable contents unfolded. "It’s a summary report," she said. "Dated six years ago. It describes—" She stopped, swallowing hard, before continuing. "It describes four S-rank Hunters, deliberately identified as promising candidates for what it calls ’controlled fusion methodology testing.’ Recruited under false pretenses. A supposed joint operation, presented to them as a legitimate, sanctioned mission."
"That’s not what happened," Irene said, voice tight with rising, considerable fury. "We were trapped in a dungeon. Misclassified. We fought a dragon."
"According to this," Myria said carefully, "there was no dragon. Not a natural one, at least. The document describes an engineered creature, constructed specifically from harvested monster-core fragments, designed to simulate exactly the kind of prolonged, extreme combat scenario their methodology required for proper observation."
The room fell into heavy, devastating silence, and Allen watched his wives absorb the revelation with the particular, individual grief that had defined every prior discovery along this considerable, painful path — Vivian’s careful stillness, Irene’s barely restrained fury, Everlyn’s silent, trembling hands pressed against her own mouth.
"The eleven hours," Vivian said slowly. "That part was real."
"That part appears accurate," Myria confirmed, still reading. "The document notes ’exceptional subject resilience, exceeding projected survival parameters by a considerable margin.’ They expected you to die. When you didn’t, when you survived and defeated the creature entirely, it says here they classified the outcome as ’an unanticipated but genuinely valuable data point.’"
"And the disabilities," Allen said, forcing the question out despite how much he dreaded the answer. "Were those—"
"Not deliberately inflicted," Myria said quickly, catching the direction of his fear. "The document confirms your individual injuries predated this incident, each occurring separately, exactly as you’ve always remembered them. That much, at least, was never altered."
Everlyn’s shoulders sagged with visible, overwhelming relief at the confirmation, and Allen felt his own chest ease slightly at the news — whatever cruelty this conspiracy had orchestrated, at least the deepest, most personal wounds his wives carried had been genuinely their own, earned through their own considerable, selfless sacrifice rather than manufactured for some experiment’s cold, clinical purpose.
"Then what was altered?" Vivian asked. "If not that."
Myria turned to the report’s final pages, her own composure finally, visibly cracking as she read the concluding notation aloud. "’Memory contingency protocol implemented post-extraction. Cover narrative constructed to consolidate individual incidents into unified, natural origin event. Implementation imperfect; residual inconsistencies anticipated but assessed as low-risk given subjects’ presumed non-recovery status.’"
"They didn’t expect us to ever be in a position to question it," Allen said slowly, understanding settling with cold, considerable weight. "They discarded you afterward, assuming you’d never have the resources or reason to look closely enough to notice the seams."
"And then you found us," Vivian said quietly, reaching for his hand. "And gave us exactly that."
Allen held her hand tightly, the room’s considerable, devastating revelation settling around them, and felt Farrow’s own presence at his shoulder, her voice carrying uncharacteristic, genuine gentleness.
"There’s more here," she said quietly. "Considerably more. I think we need to keep reading, however difficult this proves. But I wanted you to know — whatever else this room reveals, you already have the answer that matters most. What happened to you wasn’t natural. It wasn’t your fault. And now, finally, you have the proof."
Allen nodded, drawing his wives close around him, and together, they turned back toward the room’s remaining considerable files, ready, finally, to learn the whole of a truth that had waited, patiently, six long years to finally be properly, fully uncovered.
Irene wiped her eyes fiercely, anger and grief warring visibly across her features as she reached for the next folder in the drawer. "I want to read the rest," she said. "All of it. I’m done letting someone else’s careful lies decide what I do and don’t get to know about my own life."
"We’ll read it together," Allen said, and settled beside her, the records room’s considerable, waiting archive stretching before them, six years of buried truth finally, patiently, coming into the light.
Vivian, meanwhile, had drifted toward the server rack, where Farrow’s technical specialists worked to extract whatever digital records the dormant system still held. "How long until we know what’s actually on there?" she asked.
"Hard to say," the lead specialist admitted. "The encryption’s considerable, but not impossible. Give us a few hours, and we should have at least partial access."
"A few hours," Vivian repeated, glancing back toward the records room’s considerable, waiting silence. "I suppose we’ve waited considerably longer than that already."
Myria, still working steadily through the physical files, paused over a folder marked with a designation Allen didn’t recognize. "This one’s different," she said slowly. "Not part of Subject Group Four. A separate entry entirely, dated considerably earlier than your own incident."
"Another family," Allen said quietly, remembering the small, personal belongings Everlyn had found earlier.
"Several other families, it looks like," Myria said, her voice tightening with fresh, mounting horror. "This facility’s history extends back considerably further than six years, Allen. Your wives weren’t the first. I don’t think they were even close to the first."
The revelation settled over the room with fresh, considerable weight, and Allen found himself, staring at the archive’s endless, waiting rows of files, understanding with growing and uncomfortable clarity exactly how much larger this entire, patient conspiracy’s cruelty truly extended — a truth that reached, apparently, considerably further back than any of them had yet properly imagined.