WORLD OF FICTION (WOF)

Without a representative badge, Serah had to ask permission to enter every room.

Claims Reception rejected her twice.

The temporary wall accepted her after an officer stated her name aloud.

Toby’s secured corridor made her surrender the leather case at the entrance.

She entered carrying nothing except a small paper bag.

Toby looked at it.

"Bribery?"

"Orange."

"Worse."

She sat outside the transparent partition.

A guard remained between them.

Serah opened the bag and removed the fruit. The peel broke on the first turn.

She frowned at it.

Toby noticed.

"Bad day?"

"My licence board meets tomorrow."

"Because you admitted a person was a person."

"Because I used claimant procedure against claimant interest."

"Procedures dislike discovering their verbs have subjects."

Serah began peeling again.

"You knew the development witness was preserved."

"Yes."

"You knew it could authenticate Elias."

"Yes."

"You did not tell Achebe."

"No."

"Why?"

Toby looked at the steel plate covering the route symbol beneath his table.

"Because authentication is not testimony."

"Explain."

"Development assets are stored with revision pressure attached. The system knows what changed around them. It can compare author behaviour."

"That was useful."

"It can also treat the asset’s memory as owned evidence."

Serah stopped peeling.

"If the figure speaks?"

"The claim decides whether the speech belongs to a person or to the preserved file."

"That is why the offer uses Claims Reception."

"Yes."

"Can personhood be established first?"

"Not through the claimant’s process."

"The Errata established Elias independently."

"Elias had witnesses."

"The development figure has Elias."

Toby laughed once.

"He is the person who deleted them."

"Still a relation."

"Not a friendly one."

"Dorian proved hostility can qualify."

Toby looked at her.

"That was a living person recognising another living person. This figure may have spent years classified as unused material."

"Years?"

"Route time."

"How long outside the route?"

"No answer."

Serah separated one orange segment.

"Give me one fact I can verify."

Toby rubbed his bruised chest.

"Preserved development figures receive a retention phrase."

"Where?"

"Inside the first unused line attached to them."

"What does it do?"

"Tells them why they were kept."

"Who writes it?"

"Operator, purchaser, or automated evaluator."

"Could you have written this one?"

"Yes."

"Did you?"

"No answer."

Serah ate the segment.

The guard shifted beside her.

"What is the phrase likely to say?"

Toby looked at the sealed speaker in the ceiling.

"Do not let the author complete authentication."

Serah’s hand stopped.

"That is a guess."

"Yes."

"You said fact."

"The fact is that a retention phrase exists. The wording is my fear."

"Why would a development witness sabotage authentication?"

"Because authentication may return it to whoever preserved it."

"The claimant."

"Or the old hold."

"Your hold."

Toby looked away.

Serah folded the broken peel around the remaining orange.

"Is the current claimant an inherited Quill account?"

"No answer."

"Did you preserve the figure to stop Elias completing the Story?"

"No answer."

"Did someone above you order it?"

"No answer."

She stood.

Toby said, "If it crosses the side gate, do not ask who owns it first."

"What should I ask?"

"What it wants."

"Claims procedure will not."

"You can."

"My authority is suspended."

"That has not stopped you recently."

Serah looked at the partition.

"You think I should violate procedure again."

"I think procedure already violated them."

The guard opened the exit.

Serah placed the untouched half of the orange on the floor beside the partition.

"Your old hold permitted extraction."

"Yes."

"It did not save ASH–31."

"No."

"Whatever you intended."

Toby’s face changed.

She left before he answered.

Claims Reception had accepted the development-witness offer while she was gone.

Achebe had negotiated custodial attendance.

Mira had secured the room.

Elias had not yet accepted.

Serah entered through the temporary wall.

A metal side gate stood in the centre of reception.

Iron bands crossed old wood.

A torn royal banner hung above it.

Black rain fell on the other side without wetting the floor.

The little postern beneath the western tower stood open.

A human shadow waited behind it.

No face.

No name.

One hand rested against the door.

Across the gate, a retention phrase appeared.

DO NOT LET THE AUTHOR FINISH YOU.