Read Chapter 10: Lockdown

The klaxon didn't stop. It wasn't the shrill emergency tone they'd drilled for, the one that meant fire or breach. This was deeper, a sustained bass note that vibrated through the concrete floor and into Elias's teeth. The public address system crackled, and a voice he didn't recognize—female, calm, recorded—cut through the alarm.

"This is an automated lockdown sequence. The facility will seal in sixty seconds. All personnel proceed to your designated stations. This is not a drill. All exterior access points will be sealed and inert."

Elias stood in the environmental wing's service corridor, the red key still warm in his palm from the Level Three override. Sixty seconds. He checked his watch. Hoffman's deadline wasn't for another eleven hours. The fire in food storage had been contained within the hour—he'd heard the suppression system kick in from three corridors away. Nothing about this made sense. Unless someone had decided the fire was the excuse they needed.

He started moving before he'd consciously decided where to go. The service tunnel leading to the surface hatch was the first thought—not to escape, god no, he wasn't on the manifest list for escape—but to check. To see if anyone else had made it. The tunnel ran parallel to the main access shaft, a narrow crawlspace used for cable maintenance. His shoulders scraped the walls as he pushed through, the klaxon still hammering overhead.

The maintenance hatch at the end was open. That wasn't right. Elias had sealed it behind him when he'd come down from the observatory. He slowed, listening. Voices, muffled by the metal walls. Hoffman's voice, sharp and impatient.

"—said seal everything. Now. I don't care if her car is still in the lot."

Elias pressed himself against the wall, the cold pipe digging into his spine. Her car. Someone was still on the surface.

Another voice, younger, uncertain. "Sir, the manifest shows forty-two personnel unaccounted for. If we seal now—"

"The manifest is the problem, isn't it? The manifest is why we're doing this. Seal it."

The younger voice started to protest, but Hoffman cut him off. Footsteps. Then the heavy hydraulic hiss of the main blast door engaging. Elias could feel it through the floor, a vibration like a heartbeat stopping. The surface was gone. Cut off. Everyone still up there—the maintenance crew, the late-shift staff, whoever else—they were on their own with the sky falling.

Elias stood in the dark for a long moment. The klaxon finally died, replaced by the low hum of the life support systems kicking to full power. He pulled out the satellite phone, the one he'd bought through a contact in the smuggling network off Lake Geneva. He'd never used it. It was supposed to be his escape hatch, his one piece of insurance if the Ark turned out to be worse than the alternative.

The screen glowed. No signal. Of course. The surface relay was down now, probably the first thing they'd killed to prevent outside communication. He was cut off. Trapped inside the Ark with the countdown ticking overhead.

He returned to his quarters by the maintenance corridors, avoiding the main passageways where the first-wave guests would be milling in confusion. Through a vent grill, he could hear them—the murmur of voices, a woman asking if this was part of the simulation, a man demanding to speak to someone in charge. They didn't know. They thought the early lockdown was routine, a safety drill before the real event. They had no idea they were sealing in more people than the air scrubbers could handle.

Elias's quarters were sparse: a cot, a workbench, a locker with his tools. He sat on the edge of the cot and pulled out Moreau's data drive, turning it over in his hands. The drive was small, unmarked, the kind anyone could pick up at a supply depot. But it held the key to everything. The trajectory data. The real timeline. And possibly the name of the person who'd reserved his seat.

His seat. That was the part he couldn't square. Elias Vogt, maintenance engineer with a checkered past and a dead friend's debt hanging over him. Someone had reserved his spot in the Ark months before the asteroid was even formally announced. Someone had known he'd be needed here, in the guts of the machine, close enough to see the cracks.

The satellite phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out, surprised. The screen showed one bar of signal, flickering, weak. A text message from an unknown number.

*They sealed early. You're inside. Good. Check the manifest for staff additions in the last 48 hours.*

Elias stared at the words. His contact, the smuggler, had promised only one thing—a way to reach the outside if everything went wrong. Instead, the man was feeding him information like a handler.

He typed back: *Who are you?*

The reply took almost a minute to arrive, the signal wavering. *Someone who wants the seats to be filled by the people who paid for them. And not by the ones who bought the names of the dead.*

The signal died. Elias pocketed the phone, his mind racing. Staff additions. The early lockdown. The fire in food storage. All of it connected. Someone had triggered the lockdown early to prevent more people from arriving—to freeze the manifest as it was, before more guests could show up and demand their seat. But if the manifest was smaller than the actual headcount, sealing early meant—

He stopped. The numbers. Dürr had told him the life support ceiling was 350. The manifest listed 211. But Hoffman was sealing the doors with 42 staff unaccounted for. If those 42 were actually—

Elias grabbed his tablet and pulled up the staff roster. The terminal in his quarters had access to the HR system, a slip he'd discovered on his first day. He ran a search for new hires in the last 48 hours. The list came back: 37 names. All listed as "technical contractors" with department assignments in catering, housekeeping, security support. All with hire dates within the last two days.

He cross-referenced their employee photos against the guest manifest he'd downloaded earlier. The faces didn't match any of the 211 names. But they matched something else. He pulled up Kruger's data drive, the backup files Moreau had left. There was a subfolder labeled "SOLD SEATS." He opened it and started comparing faces.

They matched. Twelve of the 37 new "contractors" were people whose names appeared in Moreau's file as having purchased a seat from a vacated manifest slot. Kruger's family. Other names he didn't recognize—bankers, industrialists, families with the kind of generational wealth that bought certainty in uncertain times. They'd bought seats from the dead. From the low-value guests who'd been deleted to make room.

And they'd flooded in as "staff" to avoid the manifest audit that would have exposed the discrepancy.

Elias set the tablet down. His hands were steady, but his heart was pushing against his ribs. The early lockdown wasn't just about Hoffman silencing the capacity lie. It was about freezing the roster before anyone could arrive who hadn't already bought their way in. The doors were sealed. The 37 "contractors" were now permanent residents. The 42 unaccounted personnel Hoffman had left on the surface—they were probably the real staff, the honest workers who'd been delayed or detained so the replacements could slip into their roles.

He thought of Mara. His sister. She was on the manifest—he'd confirmed it three times. But was she? If the manifest had been altered to delete low-value guests, what stopped someone from deleting her? What stopped the person who'd reserved his seat from deciding they'd rather have hers?

The satellite phone was still warm in his pocket. He pulled it out, but the signal was dead again. No matter. He knew what he had to do.

Dürr would know where the real manifest was kept, the paper copy that predated the digital alteration. If he could find that, he could identify every name, every deletion, every ghost who'd been signed out of existence to make room for a buyer. And if he could match that list against the headcount inside, he'd know exactly how many people were breathing air that the system couldn't replenish.

He stood, pocketing the drive and the phone. The corridors outside his quarters were quiet now, the first-wave guests settling into their designated areas. In 48 hours, the internal lockdown would complete, and the lower levels would seal off completely. But he didn't have 48 hours. He had until Hoffman realized the red key was missing.

Somewhere above him, he heard the last of the exterior locks engage. A deep, metallic thud that shook dust from the ceiling panels. Then silence. The Ark was sealed. Ten days of air. Maybe fewer, if the scrubbers couldn't keep up with the hidden guests.

Elias stepped into the corridor and headed toward the maintenance annex, where Dürr kept his workbench and his secrets.