Read Chapter 17: Traitor's Mark

Kruger found them in the third hour of their descent. Not with boots and rifles—he wasn't stupid enough to come down alone into the labyrinth he'd helped design. He came through the speakers.

Elias's wrist console crackled, and then the security chief's voice filled the maintenance corridor, calm as a eulogy. "Vogt. I know you can hear me. I know you're holding seven of my marked residents somewhere in the sublevels, and I know you think you've found a way to beat the system."

The group froze. Mara pressed herself against the conduit wall, her eyes wide. Roth stood beside her, one hand on the junction box they'd been wiring, his face unreadable.

"You've got three choices," Kruger continued. "You come up now, you hand over the marked, and I make sure you and your sister walk into the Ark with full privileges. Or you stay down here and you wait for the purge squads to flush you out—which they will, because I know every false wall and blind corner in this mountain."

A pause. Static. Then, softer: "Or you listen to what I have to offer."

Elias keyed his mic. "You sold your soul to Dürr once already, Kruger. Why would I believe anything you say?"

The laugh that came back was genuine. "Dürr's a hotelier playing at god. I'm an engineer, like you. I know what this mountain can actually do." Another pause. "I know about the power loop on Level Nine."

Elias felt the air leave the corridor. Roth was already shaking his head, mouthing *don't*.

"I'll make this simple," Kruger said. "You're running out of time. Impact is four days out, and the consortium is going to seal the blast doors at T-minus three. That gives you about ninety hours to do whatever you think you're going to do. I can get you to Level Nine in twenty minutes—through the security corridors, no failsafe triggers, no squads."

"And what do you get?"

"Your cooperation. You're going to find out soon enough, anyway, so I'll tell you now: there was never enough room for everyone. Not even for the people on the manifest. The consortium oversold the Ark by three hundred souls, and when they realized it, they made a decision." His voice dropped. "They're going to purge the lower residential blocks entirely—eight hundred people, all at once, the night before impact. Free up the oxygen budget. Make sure the elite guests get their full twelve days of luxury while the asteroid burns the rest of the surface."

Elias's throat went dry. "You're lying."

"I'm not. Check the purge list data stream. It's scheduled for T-minus sixteen hours. It doesn't target fifty or a hundred marked residents—it targets everyone below Level Four who isn't on the guest manifest. Your resistance cell matters to about eight hundred people you haven't met yet, and it doesn't matter at all if the whole system is designed to kill them anyway."

Static filled the corridor. Elias looked at Roth. The old man's face had gone pale, his jaw tight.

"He's not lying," Roth said quietly. "I suspected. The oxygen scrubber capacity on Level Three was rated for twelve hundred, but the guest manifest kept growing. I couldn't figure out how they intended to reconcile the difference." He looked away. "I didn't want to figure it out."

Mara stepped forward. "Why are you telling us this?"

Kruger answered through the speaker. "Because I don't want to be the one who pushes the button. The consortium doesn't care about me—I'm just the tool. When the twelve days are up and the vault opens, they'll write me off with the rest of the expendables. I've seen the manifest." His voice hardened. "My name's not on it."

Elias understood. "You want leverage."

"I want insurance. You're going to reach Level Nine. You're going to find that power loop and do whatever you planned to do with it. When you do, you'll have the ability to shut down the AI—or at least blind it long enough to make a mess. I'm offering you the fastest route, and in exchange, you keep my name off whatever list you're making when you take control."

"And the eight hundred people?"

"They're your problem, not mine. But I'll give you this much: the purge is programmed into the AI. If you can reach the power loop, you can reset the life-support priority matrix. Push it to recognize every body in the mountain as a guest. That alone would cancel the purge."

Elias exchanged a glance with Roth. The old man nodded slowly.

"Where's the access point?" Elias asked.

"I'll send the coordinates to your console. Meet me at Junction Seven in ten minutes. Come alone—your people stay here, keep your group quiet. If you try to bring Roth or you try to ambush me, I'll seal the corridor and you'll be waiting for the purge with your friends."

The speaker clicked off.

Mara grabbed his arm. "Eli, no. You can't trust him. He's the one who executed the Reinhardts—I saw him give the order."

"I know." Elias turned to face his group. Seven faces stared back from the dim maintenance light: his sister, Roth, Petrov, the Jiang twins, and two others he'd only learned names for the night before. "But Kruger just told me something I didn't know. The purge isn't a list anymore—it's a plan for everyone below Level Four. That means our families. Our neighbors. Everyone we grew up with."

Petrov stepped forward, his face pale. "If that's true, then the resistance we're building is too small. We need to get to that power loop before the purge resets, or we lose everything."

"We're at least twelve hours from Level Nine through the maintenance routes," Roth said. "Kruger's route could get us there in twenty minutes. But forty minutes from now, he'll know exactly where we're hiding and every plan we've made. If this is a trap—"

"It's not." Elias unslung his tool kit and pulled out the deactivation code Roth had given him. "He gave me something I didn't ask for. Information that costs him nothing to share but makes him valuable to us. That's a man looking for leverage, not a trap. And I need that route."

He looked at Mara. "You stay with Roth. If I'm not back in thirty minutes, you take the group to the old ventilation junction on Level Eight and you wait there. You don't come looking for me."

"Eli—"

"If I don't come back, you don't have time to grieve. You get to Level Nine, you input the code, and you save the eight hundred. That's how you honor the Reinhardts. That's how you make this matter."

She held his gaze for a long moment. Then she nodded.

Elias pulled on his pack and moved toward the junction door. As he reached for the handle, Roth's voice stopped him.

"Vogt. One more thing." The old man's face was grim. "Kruger said the purge is programmed into the AI. He's right. But he didn't tell you who wrote the protocol."

Elias turned. "Who?"

"The original algorithm that decided who was expendable wasn't Dürr's. It wasn't the consortium." Roth's eyes met his. "It was Visser."

Elias felt his blood go cold. The Dutchman's offer, his twelve-hour deadline, the way he'd known details about the bunker that no outside contractor should have known. It all snapped into place.

"Visser built the targeting system," Roth said. "He's been selling access to it since the first day. When you meet Kruger, don't just look for the route—look for the data vault. He'll have it logged somewhere. If you want to stop the purge for real, you need to know what Visser's already sold."

The message landed like a stone. Elias's twelve-hour deadline had expired hours ago, lost in the chaos of the purges. If Visser had already sold the purge algorithm to multiple parties, then the resistance wasn't just fighting the AI—it was fighting a marketplace of death where his sister's name was a commodity.

He opened the door and stepped into darkness, Kruger's coordinates burning on his wrist console.