The Five Evolution

『"Frame by frame."』

Walls lost meaning to Hiro as he zoomed past them.

One step he was in front of a sealed security door. The next, he was inside it, getting past a biometric scanner that never even registered him.

He kept this going, descending lower and lower until he arrived at his destination. Sub-Level 7 of the archives.

Hiro let out a slow breath as his body fully solidified on the ground. He glanced around after settling down, eyes tracking the sheer scale of it all.

Sub-Level 7 was deeper and larger than Hiro expected, housing rows upon rows of boxes and data cores.

Finding any information here must have been work.

Fortunately, Hiro was only interested in finding out what was taken on the night of the lockdown, that is of course, if his theory was correct.

He moved forward slowly and quietly. Every few meters, thin scanning beams swept the air, passing through everything. And each time that happened, he vibrated his body and went undetected.

He went on like this until he got to the nearest terminal and immediately came to a stop. At the center of the screen, sat a single prompt.

ACCESS REQUIRED.

That was it. Just a blinking cursor waiting patiently.

Hiro stared at it for a second before reaching into his pocket and pulling out the folded piece of paper Ethan had given him.

The access code. Ethan’s golden ticket.

He looked around the empty archive, then he kissed the paper. "Never let it be said that Ethan Bass doesn’t come through when it matters."

He carefully entered the authorization codes and the screen chimed before turning blue with an hour glass revolving at the center.

For that brief moment, nothing happened, the hour glass just kept spinning. Then the entire archive came alive. Rows of data expanded across the display as the filing structure unfolded before him.

"Oh." Hiro leaned closer. "Oh that’s beautiful."

The archives weren’t just organized physically. They were organized digitally too.

Every file. Every report. Every personnel record. Every classified incident. All categorized through a massive indexing system.

He tapped on an icon and the primary directories appeared first.

ACTIVE PERSONNEL

Current Institute members.

INACTIVE PERSONNEL

Retired, transferred, or missing personnel.

DECEASED PERSONNEL

Killed in action, natural causes, corruption events.

RESTRICTED PERSONNEL

Sealed records requiring Director-level approval.

Hiro’s eyes immediately drifted to the last category. "Call it intuition," he said as he clicked it. "Or a complete lack of self-preservation."

The Apostles didn’t seem like the kind of people who risked exposing themselves for ordinary information. If they’d gone through all that trouble, whatever they took had to be important.

A new set of directories unfolded and his eyebrows climbed. The filing system was even more detailed than he’d expected. Everything was sorted using alphanumeric designations.

R-SERIES

Restricted Awakener Profiles.

Director-Level Clearance Required

Hiro whistled softly. "Okay. Now we’re getting somewhere."

He expanded the directory and more folders appeared.

R-RED

Anchors.

R-PURPLE

Corrupted personnel.

Turned. Possessed. Compromised.

R-BLACK

Erased personnel.

Officially never existed.

Hiro stopped. "That’s terrifying."

He clicked onward.

R-GREEN

Contractors.

R-ORANGE

Vessels.

R-WHITE

Killed In Action.

For several seconds he simply stared. The Institute had entire categories dedicated to things it didn’t want people knowing existed. And somehow that wasn’t even surprising anymore.

"Huh." Hiro leaned back. "This is gonna take a while." He rolled his shoulders, interlaced his fingers, then cracked his knuckles one by one, and the sound echoed softly through Sub-Level Seven.

"Alright." His grin returned. "Let’s see what we have here." His fingers touched the keyboard and the terminal instantly became a blur.

Most people typed around forty words per minute. Hiro was currently operating somewhere closer to two million words per minute as search parameters exploded across the screen.

Access logs.

Archive history.

User records.

Timestamp records.

Cross-references.

Filter after filter after filter.

He ignored the file contents completely. He wasn’t looking for information, he was looking for activity. Anything done within the last thirteen days. That was his window.

Thirteen days ago. The day Amara received the message and the day the lockdown started.

Thousands of records flashed by and he kept typing, narrowing it by hundreds, then dozens.

His eyes tracked every result as fast as the terminal produced them. Most were routine, like Director access, security audits, medical reviews. Essentially, nothing useful.

Then one file appeared.

ELIZABETH BASS

R-WHITE Classification.

Last Accessed:

4 Days Ago

Hiro stopped typing. The room suddenly felt quieter as his gaze lingered on the file. He didn’t need to guess who accessed it.

"Yeah..." His voice softened as a faint sadness crossed his face. Then he shook his head. That wasn’t what he was here for.

The cursor resumed moving, and the results continued shrinking.

Ten files.

Five.

Three.

Two.

One.

Hiro’s hands stopped moving. There it was. A single restricted file called the R-42-Red-series.

Last Accessed:

13 Days Ago

Timestamp:

02:30:17

Two hours after the lockdown had been initiated and security was pulled from the lower archives, two hours and thirty minutes before Michael Chen delivered the Apostles’ message.

For several seconds Hiro simply stared at the screen. Then a slow grin spread across his face. "Well," he sat back in his chair, "what do we have here."

Thanks to the system’s settings, no restricted file could be copied out of the terminal or fully viewed. This meant whoever accessed it, did so to find out its physical location in the archives.

"I’ve got you now you son of a bitch," Hiro said as the coordinates were displayed on the screen.

R-RED-42. AISLE 17. SECTION C. ROW 4. SHELF 2

"Always wanted to say that."

Before the terminal finished refreshing, Hiro was already gone as a gust of wind swept through the archive in his wake.

Shelves blurred past him, rows upon rows of classified history flashing by as he navigated the labyrinth of Sub-Level Seven. A second later he skidded to a stop.

AISLE 17. SECTION C. ROW 4. SHELF 2.

Hiro’s eyes immediately locked onto the label and the shelf was empty.

"...Oh." He stepped closer. There was no file, just an empty slot between two neighboring records.

Slowly, Hiro reached forward and ran his fingers across the dust of the metal shelf. All that was left was the rectangular outline where something had once rested.

Hiro’s grin widened. "Okay." His fingers drummed on the shelf, feeling that electric thrill of discovery. "R-Red-42," he said quietly. Like naming it made it more real.

But what was R-Red-42? Why would the Apostles want a file about an Anchor?

He needed more information. Needed to see the security footage from that night, evidence that exposed them and proved his theory without a doubt.

The security room of the archives was in a different section, a small room near the back of Sub-Level 7 that monitored all archive activity.

Hiro phased through two more walls to reach it, emerging inside a space filled with monitors, data terminals, and consoles.

He sat down at the main console, pulled up the security feed, and started watching footage from thirteen days ago.

He cranked the playback speed to maximum, watching two hours of video blur past in seconds while his enhanced perception caught every frame, every detail, every anomaly.

He hit the end of a clip and checked the time elapsed on his watch. Eleven seconds.

"Ugh..." he cracked his neck, tapping his foot repeatedly. "Too slow."

Finally, he got to the timestamp: 02:30:17. The minute of when the file’s coordinate was accessed and he leaned forward.

The exact moment associated with the missing file.

Hiro hit play, and the footage rolled forward.

A pair of guards completed a routine patrol. One yawned and the other checked his datapad. Then both left and the aisle remained empty.

Hiro frowned, rewound and watched again. But still nothing.

Another rewind. Nothing.

Another. Nothing.

There were no intruders or suspicious movement. Not even invisible figures. The file simply existed. Then later it didn’t.

"Huh." He leaned closer.

The cameras weren’t ordinary security cameras. Archive surveillance monitored infrared, ultraviolet, thermal signatures, electromagnetic distortions, and motion tracking.

The Institute had spent ridiculous amounts of money making sure nobody could sneak into the archives without getting caught on camera.

Invisibility wouldn’t work because the cameras would still catch body heat, displaced air, and electromagnetic interference.

And speed wasn’t an explanation either. Hiro knew that better than anyone. Its shutter speeds were insane. And once again, displaced air would be flagged.

Hiro scrubbed backward and watched again. And again. And again. It was the same footage, the same aisle, the same guards, and the same empty shelf.

"I don’t understand..." His voice was barely a whisper now.

Someone had definitely taken the file. The physical evidence proved it. But the footage showed absolutely nothing. No thief. No intrusion. No breach. Nothing. Just a perfectly normal archive.

Hiro narrowed his eyes and rewound again, this time slower. Frame by frame, and his gaze remained fixed on the timestamp.

02:37:14

02:37:15

02:37:16

02:37:17

...

Hiro froze. "...wait." He leaned closer to the screen very slowly, and a smile began forming on his face.