WORLD OF FICTION (WOF)

The strip frame contained thirty-one Chapter tabs.

Achebe arranged them on a steel tray inside a plain examination room. Each tab was a narrow strip of leather with two holes where it had once been bound into something larger.

Numbers ran across them.

All the way to 31.

No titles remained.

The cutting edges were too clean for decay.

Elias stood behind a marked line on the floor. The boundary splint kept his right foot fixed whenever he shifted. Mira held the release key. Two security officers stood by the door.

Toby sat on the opposite side of the room under guard.

A pale bruise circled his chest where the machine had pulled his name. He had spoken little since.

Priya was absent.

Medical had taken her after the hook caught her badge. Lio Fen remained with her to record any change in attention or identity stability.

Dorian was also absent.

His new brace required fitting. The invisible cut in the medical corridor had widened the grey boundary by two millimetres.

The spread had stopped again.

For now.

Achebe pointed to the tabs.

"Do you recognize them?"

Elias looked at the numbers.

"My novel had thirty-one Chapters."

"That was not the question."

"No. I don’t recognize the material."

Toby leaned forward.

One guard put a hand on his shoulder.

He stopped.

"It’s binding hide," he said. "Cheap. Used on low-attention fantasy Canons because it holds Ink without carrying much identity."

Mira looked at him. "You’ve handled it."

"Yes."

"For stripping?"

"Yes."

Achebe opened a second evidence tray.

Inside lay a black scale recovered from the machine.

Its surface had a line of text cut into it.

The dragon’s shadow fell across the—

Elias’s unfinished opening.

It stopped at the same place his laptop had.

No added city.

No remembered name.

Just the sentence as he had left it.

He stepped closer.

The boundary splint locked.

Mira caught his arm before he fell.

He pulled away once stable.

"May I touch it?"

"No," Achebe said.

Elias stared at the scale.

"It came from my Story."

"Likely."

"Likely?"

"The handwriting matches your recorded sample from the contaminated folder. We still lack your original document."

"My Chapter count matches."

"Yes."

"The sentence matches."

"Yes."

"What else do you need?"

"Enough evidence to avoid lying to you."

Elias looked at Toby.

"You knew these machines stripped Stories."

"Yes."

"Would they leave tabs?"

"If someone ordered an inventory."

"Who?"

Toby looked toward Achebe.

She said, "You may answer."

He laughed without humour. "Generous."

Mira stepped nearer the table. "Toby."

He looked at the tabs.

"Crews didn’t usually keep Chapter divisions. They wanted usable pieces: settings, weapons, power systems, characters with strong audience attachment."

Elias felt sick.

"What happened to the rest?"

"Depends."

"On what?"

"What sold."

The room stayed plain and bright.

No one explained the cruelty after he had already understood it.

Achebe placed a brass label beside the tabs.

It had been fixed inside the strip frame’s feed housing.

Source material had burned away around most of the letters.

Three fields survived.

FORMAT: SERIAL FICTION.

STATE: UNFINISHED.

YIELD: REJECTED.

Mira read the last line. "It rejected the Story?"

Toby shook his head.

"The yield."

"Difference?"

"The frame found material. Someone decided none of it was useful."

Elias looked at the tabs.

Thirty-one Chapters.

Years of work reduced to rejected inventory.

Four readers. One perhaps himself.

He had joked about nobody caring because the alternative had hurt more.

Someone had found the Story.

Someone had cut it apart.

"What does rejected yield mean for the Canon?" he asked.

Toby did not answer.

Achebe did.

"It may have been abandoned after extraction."

"Alive?"

"Unknown."

"Dead?"

"Unknown."

"Stripped?"

"The evidence supports that."

Elias crossed his arms over his chest.

The black ring around his ankle pulled against the splint.

"Was the em dash taken from this?"

Achebe looked at the scale.

"Possibly."

Toby said, "No."

Every head turned.

Achebe asked, "Evidence?"

"The cut."

He pointed without crossing the guard’s reach.

"The frame removed the Chapter tabs and opening scale together. The em dash in Ember Sovereign arrived through a route permission. That mark was routed separately."

"Why?"

"I don’t know."

"You answered quickly."

"Because strip frames don’t send punctuation into other Canons. They reduce material. They don’t seed it."

Mira’s eyes narrowed. "Unless someone changed the procedure."

"Yes."

Achebe placed the scale in a sealed sleeve.

"One grounded conclusion: a Story matching Elias’s Chapter count and opening sentence entered a stripping process."

"Before I died," Elias said.

"The frame was present on Route 9–Null during the six-month event. That does not prove when the Story itself was processed."

"So we still know almost nothing."

"We know more than yesterday."

Elias hated the accuracy.

The door opened.

Ivo Pell entered with a medical message for Mira.

She read it.

"What?"

"Dorian’s brace fitting failed."

Elias stepped toward her.

The splint locked again.

Mira kept reading.

"The gold scar responds to every palm restraint. They’re changing the design."

"Spread?"

"Contained."

"Can I see him?"

"He said no."

Elias stopped asking.

Achebe collected the evidence trays.

"Toby remains under secured observation."

Toby looked up. "For how long?"

"Until I determine what you concealed and what you genuinely do not remember."

"That could take years."

"Yes."

Mira folded the medical message.

"Elias needs housing."

"He remains in observation," Achebe said.

"His room was destroyed because the route targeted him."

"He also left it against instruction."

"He would have been dragged through the wall if he stayed."

"Both facts remain."

Mira considered.

"Observation ward. Seven nights. Training suspended until the ankle stabilizes and discipline review closes."

Elias looked at her. "You already cancelled it."

"I’m extending it."

Achebe nodded.

Decision made.

No one asked Priya.

That absence felt larger than Elias expected.

The officers escorted Toby to the door.

Elias said his name.

Toby stopped.

"Did you know my Story before we met?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

Toby looked back.

"No."

It was the only honest answer available.

He left.

Achebe carried the tabs toward evidence storage.

One leather strip remained stuck to the tray.

Chapter 31.

Elias saw a faint impression along its underside.

"Wait."

Achebe stopped.

Mira used a plain metal tool to turn the tab over.

A salvage stamp had been pressed into the leather.

The date matched the six-month Route 9–Null event.

Beneath it sat a short processing instruction.

AUTHOR UNAVAILABLE.

REMOVE STORY BEFORE COMPLETION.

Elias read the line twice.

The Story had not been stripped because it was already dead.

Someone had acted while he was still writing it.

On the other side of the wall, deep inside the secured evidence level, the black dragon scale tapped once against its sleeve.

Like a claw testing glass.