09 — Core

The greatest threat to a harmonious system is not open rebellion, but private misalignment. An individual may continue to perform their assigned function, speak the approved language, and move within the prescribed channels, yet still become destabilising if they permit grief, suspicion, or personal dissatisfaction to supersede trust in the whole. Systemic failure begins as a minor divergence in perception long before it manifests as material disorder.

—Naomi Feld, The Frictionless Economy: Principles of Resource Allocation

“Good afternoon and welcome to the Athenaeum Club. May I take your coat and umbrella?”

A young man in a dark jacket with gold-trimmed lapels and cuffs, his smile easy and practised, extended his hands to relieve Sharon of her wet items.

“Thank you,” Sharon said.

Inside the massive wooden double doors, pale marble rose into gold leaf and a coffered arch that trapped the noise from Waterloo Place before it could taint the intellectual sanctum.

“Are you visiting a member today?” He shook the umbrella once before slipping it neatly into a brass stand.

“Yes,” Sharon said. “Councillor Herbert invited me to join her for tea.”

Recognition flickered across his face, the slight recalibration of someone confirming an expectation.

“Is the Councillor already here?”

“She is. I’ll show you to the Morning Room.”

Sharon followed him into the entrance hall, her shoes leaving damp-marks on an elaborate red rug that extended through the three-storey hall and climbed the grand marble staircase. The porter turned right without slowing and gestured towards an open door.

“Enjoy your visit.”

The room was quiet except for the crackle of a fire. On her only previous visit to the Athenaeum Club, it had been full of congratulations and raised glasses. Invitations from Francis as bookends to her marriage.

Francis sat in a deep green leather chair angled toward the fireplace, her back straight, one hand resting lightly on the arm. The fire threw a warm light across the china tea service on the low table in front of her. Lamps and sconces cast shadows on the golden embossed wallpaper and oil portraits that crowded the wall above the mantelpiece.

Francis stood immediately when she saw Sharon.

“Sharon, my dear. So good to see you.”

Sharon crossed the room and accepted the embrace. Francis held her a second longer than politeness required, then stepped back and gestured toward the chair opposite.

“Sit.” Francis lifted the teapot and poured. “Vanilla rooibos. You mentioned when we were on holiday in Malta that it reminded you of your grandmother.”

Rooibos by the pool under foreign stars. Francis sitting there with her after an argument with Ari.

“You remembered.” Sharon sat. The chair was soft and deeper than it looked, the leather warmed by the fire.

“I remember what matters to those who are dear to me.” Francis set the cup down carefully in front of her.

The smell was exactly right—vanilla and earth, and a mild sweetness. Sharon smiled and, for a moment, said nothing.

Behind Francis, the fireplace was framed by portraits in heavy gilt frames. Sharon’s eyes moved across them as she took her first sip.

Michael Faraday, his expression alert and thoughtful. John Tyndall, pale-eyed and severe. Roderick Murchison holding a geological specimen, as if pausing mid-explanation. Richard Owen regarded the room with the disapproving look of someone accustomed to correcting other people’s foolish mistakes.

And beyond Francis’s shoulder, above a small bar on the far wall, the most familiar face in the room looked down from its frame—Darwin. His beard was white, his posture slightly stooped, his expression thoughtful but not gentle.

Then she looked at Francis. None of these men had changed the course of the world quite as much as her very much alive ex-foster-mother-in-law.

“We haven’t seen each other in a while,” Francis said.

“No, I thought it would be better for Ari if he felt you were supporting only him,” Sharon replied.

“That’s kind, but I don’t think he would have noticed.” Francis smiled, not breaking eye contact.

“You’re probably right.” Sharon laughed.

A cinder in the fireplace snapped softly, the spark drawn up the chimney flue.

“Have you heard anything from him?” Sharon lowered her cup.

Francis’s expression did not change. “No. It’s been five days since I last spoke to him. I don’t know what to think. All the resources at my disposal and—nothing.”

A small silence settled between them. Outside the tall windows the afternoon light had begun to soften toward evening.

Sharon stared into her cup.

“I’m not even sure why I continue to care what happens to him. I spent months moving on.”

Francis did not answer immediately. She folded her hands in her lap and looked toward the fire.

“Endings don’t erase history’s impact,” she said after a moment. “Some attachments are foundational even if the structures built upon them don’t survive.”

Sharon let out a quiet breath. “New Scotland Yard came to see me about him,” she said. “You probably already know that.”

“DCI Ardone, no doubt. What did you think?”

Sharon considered for a moment. “She notices everything.”

“That was my impression as well.” Francis’s mouth curved slightly.

“If anyone can find him,” Sharon lifted the cup again, “it will be her.”

Francis stirred her tea slowly. “She’s thorough. I’m not surprised she came to see you. She’s been speaking with everyone connected to his unauthorised data access.”

“Did she tell you what he was looking for?” Sharon asked, tipping her cup up and her head down to not make eye contact with Francis.

Francis shook her head. “Only that he was digging into medical databases, but I already knew he was doing that. It started a few weeks ago and I asked him to focus on his own work. He was using the pandemic as a way to,” Francis shrugged, “escape.”

Sharon lowered her cup onto the table. The porcelain clicked against the saucer. She couldn’t tell if Francis was blaming her for casting Ari adrift.

“Maybe it was my fault,” Francis said. “If I hadn’t told him to leave it alone, maybe he wouldn’t have accessed unauthorised data and got into whatever trouble he’s in now. You know how he avoids conflict.”

She did, but she also knew that this time it was different.

“Did you hear from him before he went missing?” Francis asked.

The question caught Sharon off guard. She assumed that Francis knew that she had seen Ari. Then the realisation moved through her slowly, like a dye diffusing through agar. Alene wasn’t sharing everything with Francis. Alene hadn’t told her about the transmission, that the pathogen may have been created, not evolved.

Charles Darwin’s portrait stared at her, unblinking, from across the room.

Sharon leaned forward slightly. “I told Alene everything I knew, including that the pathogen might be a misfolded protein.”

Francis’s attention sharpened.

“It’s a prion?”

“I think so, and I may have identified it.”

Sharon outlined the mechanism in simple terms—the chain reaction of protein misfolding, the difficulty of detection.

When Sharon finished, Francis nodded slowly. “That would explain why the health committee scientists haven’t identified it yet. Have you shared your findings with them?”

“Not yet,” Sharon said. “I’m still running tests. To be sure.”

“Send what you have,” Francis said. “They need a new direction.”

Francis stood. “We finished the Waterloo Gardens Conservatory this summer. Have you visited?”

“No.” Sharon remained seated, confused by the abrupt change of subject.

“Then we should correct that,” Francis said. “Come.”

They stepped out of the Morning Room and back into the entrance hall. The space seemed even larger now after the quiet of the smaller room. They ascended the grand staircase, their footsteps softened by the thick red runner. At the centre landing, recessed in a niche framed by Corinthian columns, a marble statue stood watch over the room with the bland serenity of a sage who had already heard every theorem and argument.

“Do you know why this club was founded?” Francis asked.

“No, why?”

“So scientists would have somewhere to argue with politicians,” Francis said.

“I didn’t realise we were arguing.” Sharon paused on the steps, her hand tightening on the rail.

Francis laughed. “Of course not. Besides, the politicians always won, even when inevitably proven wrong. Power in the wrong hands.”

“You can say that because you’re both,” Sharon said.

Sharon caught up to Francis at the landing. They took the right staircase and went up the last flight to a balustraded mezzanine overlooking the entrance hall.

“That’s the theory, but I don’t always win and I’m not always right,” Francis said. “The bridge is this way, through the Drawing Room.”

The Drawing Room spanned the full width of the building, its pale sage walls holding a high coffered ceiling trimmed in cream and gold. A few members seated in the scattered clusters of teal leather chairs looked up as they entered and quickly looked away. Tall windows dressed with cinched-open rose curtains lined the room, separated either by packed mahogany bookcases or duos of mottled ochre Corinthian-capped columns. Scagliola technique, she noted, plaster and pigment, not real marble.

As they walked the length of the room, Sharon slowed to take in the pale busts atop each bookcase, lit with the warm glow of tiered brass chandeliers. Sir Isaac Newton’s severe profile, then Francis Bacon, his expression composed. John Locke gazed forward as if examining an idea too large to fully relate.

“The founders had fourteen busts commissioned in 1830 for this room,” Francis said. “Some nonsense about the club’s ideological ancestors.”

Francis opened one of the tall windows that served as a French door at the far end of the room. They stepped through it onto a glass bridge that crossed the garden toward a geodesic dome. Warm light glowed from within the dome through the triangular panes, lighting the surrounding trees of Waterloo Gardens, yet ineffective against the grey sky.

They crossed the bridge quickly to avoid the worst of the rain. Cold air chilled Sharon for an instant before the glass doors of the dome slid open and the conservatory’s humidity wrapped around them immediately.

The botanical gardens spread beneath the elevated walkway in layered terraces of green. Palms, cypress, and eucalyptus rose toward the ceiling, their leaves glistening with condensation. Clusters of ferns and bamboo thrived in the lower beds.

The grated metal walkway hung just below the canopy. No stairs led up from below, where the general public wandered.

Automated misting nozzles released soft clouds of water. Fans turned slowly overhead and drew up the scent of damp soil and plant resin. Under the walkway, the plants were arranged in carefully balanced ecosystems, each cluster curated, each species required for the others to thrive.

Francis rested her hands lightly on the rail and looked down into the greenery.

“Do you have any sense of what troubled him?” Francis asked.

“No.” Sharon shook her head. It was not entirely a lie.

Francis studied the canopy below for a moment longer. “I’m worried about him,” she said.

Then a soft tone sounded from her pocket. Her posture changed immediately. The warmth that had lingered in her expression vanished, replaced by the precise calm of someone returning to duty. She checked her comm.

“I’m sorry,” Francis said. “I have to go. I hope we’ll see each other again soon.”

She stepped away, already reading the message.

Sharon remained on the walkway. Below her, the misting system activated again, a fine silver cloud drifting through the leaves before dissipating into the foliage. Beyond the glass of the dome, the city looked dark in the fading light.

She rested her hands on the rail and observed the carefully arranged forest breathing beneath her. She had told Francis about the prion. Francis had offered nothing. Send what you have, she had said.

---

Charles stood on a raised stone plinth beside a massive steam-powered pump, rusted and defunct. Facing him, dozens of Walkers, their breath pluming, stood expectant in the reservoir’s chill, a semi-circle-shaped assemblage with the hushed reverence of a shift start. Water dripped from unseen cracks into the reservoir below, a relentless metronome counting down the ongoing decay of the cathedral-like space.

“Friends. Family.” Charles’s gaze swept across the faces. “We hold this ceremony here to remember that our community, like this water, must be contained and protected to give life. A single crack can drain us all.”

His voice carried through the brickwork, each word echoing from the curved walls a fraction late, a feedback loop of authoritative resonance.

“Tonight, we mark a rite of passage, for tomorrow, my son, Benjamin, becomes a man. Tomorrow, he goes on his first Gathering.”

A murmur of approval, a low, breathy sound, rippled through the crowd. Charles nodded to Benjamin, who stepped forward onto the plinth. The boy seemed small and terribly young, his fingers interlaced and tight to his chest. His panicked eyes found Ari in the crowd, his throat working as he swallowed. Ari gave a small, almost imperceptible nod.

Flickering torchlight cast elongated shadows that buffered and lagged across the vaulted brick ceiling like artefacts of a rendering error while the cool air, thick with the mineral scent of damp stone, helped blunt the greasy reek of burning pitch.

Benjamin took a shaky breath that was audible in the charged silence. Though still young, his speech took on an awed cadence.

“The first of us rejected the Capo world, for it was a world of isolationist greed,” he recited, his voice gaining strength, pushing the echo. “We sought to live by a different code, one of collective social responsibility. We believed that mutual inclusion, for all cultures, for all identities, was the only foundation for a true society.”

Some of the older Walkers nodded slowly, their lips silently forming the familiar words, their eyes unfocused, lost in the flickering history of the torchlight. A few of the teenagers, however, exchanged restless glances, the history a lesson learned rather than a life lived.

Benjamin faltered for a moment, as if he forgot what came next. Charles leaned down and whispered in his ear, gently putting his hand at the nape of Benjamin’s neck. Benjamin nodded, looked out at the crowd, and continued.

“When Economic Interdependency rose, we accepted the right of others to choose that life, to live in their controlled peace. But when they sought to impose that life on us, to make their choice the only choice…” Benjamin’s voice rose to a shout, “we walked away!”

“Aye,” rumbled from the listeners.

Ari shifted his weight. Cold from the stone floor seeped through the soles of his boots. The Walkers’ story loaded like source code to a different operating system, passed from mouth to mouth until even the reservoir’s bricks seemed to run it. A system grown from the ground up, forged in opposition, and sanded smooth by necessity. The CGS’s history was different—clean code, a top-down directive for a perfect system. This mélange of people joined into an integrated network through authenticity, not algorithmic order.

“The CGS called us Walkers in their news reports,” Benjamin continued with an inherited pride. “They said we walked away from progress. They meant it as an insult, to make us sound like primitives. But we embraced the name. We did walk away. From their synth-food and their perfect, empty lives. We chose to walk in the dark,” Benjamin’s voice rose again to declare, “so we could live in the light of our own making!” He took the torch passed to him by his father and raised it above his head in a salute.

“So we live!” the crowd responded as one, the final words hanging in the air before being swallowed by the vastness of the reservoir. For a heartbeat, silence held. Then, a single whooping cheer from one of the teens broke the spell, and the solemnity shattered. A hundred overlapping voices crashed over Ari at once, analogue and unruly, too dense for the habits of his brain.

People surged forward, clapping Benjamin on the back with hearty thuds, ruffling his hair. Charles folded him into a fierce hug and kept him close for a long moment until Benjamin’s friends started pulling him away. Before he let go, Charles rested his palm at the nape of Benjamin’s neck. Charles smoothed the front of his suit with a fluid motion and accepted congratulations from those nearest him.

Benjamin, beaming and red-faced, squirmed free and made a direct line through the press of bodies to Ari. He stopped just short, vibrating with nervous energy, his breath coming in quick puffs.

“Did I… was it alright?”

“It was perfect, Benjamin,” Ari said, and was surprised by his warm tone.

“Then… will you come with me?” Benjamin asked, the words tumbling out. “On my Gathering? Santo said you might. He said the Fixit Kid wouldn’t want to miss it.”

That name. Ari’s jaw tightened. In his youth he’d learned to brace for the smirk behind it, but then he looked at Benjamin and understood it meant something else to him.

“Yes,” Ari said, without understanding what he was committing to doing. “Of course.”

“That’s great!” Benjamin said as a boy his age pulled him away.

The crowd began to move toward long trestle tables laden with food and drink. Before anyone served themselves, Charles approached the largest platter, on which rested a whole roasted pig. He carved the first slice with a long, sharp knife, held it up for a moment and exclaimed, “Together!” He then placed the slice on Benjamin’s plate. The crowd waited in silence as Benjamin picked it up with his fingers and took the first bite. Only then did they surge forward to help themselves.

Santo guided Ari toward the tables. As he moved past the group of teenagers Benjamin had joined, one of them muttered, “Right, then, another trip to find some old rubbish. Thrilling.” Cynical snorts punctuated the comment.

A grim-faced man with a scarred cheek blocked their path, planting a heavy hand on Santo’s chest.

“Corran,” Santo said.

Corran ignored him, his cold eyes fixed on Ari. “Last time you brought a stray back from the upper levels, Santo,” he said in a low rasp, “we lost the Millbank outpost. Don’t make that mistake again.”

“He’s not a stray, he’s a friend,” Santo countered, but his gaze flickered to the floor, avoiding Corran’s stare.

Corran gave a humourless snort, his lip curling to expose a yellowed canine before he finally stepped aside.

The small plate Santo thrust into his hands held a piece of roasted meat, its surface unevenly browned, on a slice of bread burnt along one crust. Conditioned by the flawless uniformity of Sup-prepared food, it looked full of errors, and every blistered edge proved human hands had made it. The smell of scorched yeast and animal fat made his mouth water. A pang gnawed at his gut, something larger than hunger for the meal.

Ari found himself a spot to eat near a doorway. He was almost finished when he noticed a presence beside him. It was Timmy, motionless as the stone around him.

“So… nice ceremony,” Ari offered to break the ice.

Timmy gave him the slowest possible turn of his head. His stare passed over Ari without interest, assessing him. The big man let the silence lengthen.

“Big day for the kid,” Ari tried again.

“Right. Well…”

“Leave Timmy be, mate.” Santo came up beside him and clamped a heavy hand on Ari’s shoulder, a flagon of foaming ale in his other hand. “He’s not much for chatter, are you, you great lump?” Santo winked at Ari.

Timmy’s expression didn’t change, but he gave Santo a brief, almost imperceptible shake of his head.

“He’s saving his singing voice. Quite the crooner, that one,” Santo teased with a grin. “Come on, Fixit Kid, let’s get you some proper grub. You’ll want a full belly for the Gathering.” He raised his flagon. “Here’s to a successful trip,” he added, a little too loud, “and to coming back in one piece.”

“Santo. A word.” Charles’s voice cut through the noise, sharp and cool. He had approached them silently, the aromatic bite of his cigar cutting through the smell of the food.

Santo, suddenly looking far more sober, nodded. “Boss.”

Charles turned his attention to Ari. “I understand you’ve agreed to join the Gathering.”

“Benjamin invited me,” Ari said, feeling a hot flush creep up the back of his neck, concerned that he had breached an unknown protocol. “If that’s alright. What… what is it, exactly?”

“It is a tradition,” Charles said, his eyes softening as he glanced over at Benjamin, who was now laughing with the other teens. “A remembrance of the hunger from before we learned to tithe from the Sup, when we scavenged what was abandoned at the end of the Capo regime. This is how we remember. It is an initiation. A lesson in shared responsibility and survival.”

He returned his attention to Ari, his expression still softened by Benjamin’s joy. “He is elated. You have a rare gift, Mr Feld. What you did with the music player, with him. It was a kindness.”

An opening. “Charles, listen. The pandemic isn’t random, it’s by design. I have information—”

“Mr Feld,” Charles cut him off. The lines around Charles’s eyes smoothed out, erasing the father and leaving only calculation. “You look at us and see a broken circuit waiting for your soldering iron. You reduce survival to a maths problem. That way of thinking drains the life from things, reduces them to components. My world runs on blood and instinct, not algorithms. We don’t have the luxury of debugging to perfection. We endure. Your information is nothing but noise.”

“But I saw it—”

“Whatever you saw,” Charles interrupted, his words slicing through the ambient noise. Unlike his earlier speech, which had rolled off the curved walls, these words cut through the air, the echo dying at once as nearby voices thinned to listen, “is a threat you dragged into my home.”

As Charles spoke, Ari’s gaze flickered past him to Benjamin. The boy’s joy had gone taut with worry. The direct approach had failed. Over Charles’s shoulder, another route showed itself.

Charles continued. “You are here because my son is fascinated by you and because Santo vouched for you. Do not mistake my gratitude for weakness. Your only job from now on is to ensure my son’s fascination remains… productive. Do not make me regret my charity.”

The silence between them carried unburnt tobacco and creosote from the burning torches. Charles turned to Santo, his tone all business.

“Get him outfitted. He’s to be at the East Gate at dawn.”

Charles turned and walked away. Santo sighed, the cheerfulness gone from his face. “Right, then. Follow me.”

Santo led Ari to a supply alcove cut into the rock. Rummaging through a heavy canvas pack, he produced a heavy-duty torch and a coil of rope, then paused, his hand hovering over a wicked-looking climbing axe. He glanced at Ari, then back at the axe. “No,” he muttered to himself, “you won’t be needing that… not on this route, anyway.” He passed the torch and rope to Ari. “Keep these on you,” he said. “And a piece of advice. Down there… don’t trust anything that’s red with rust. That deep colour means the metal is rotten to the core. We lost a good man that way last year. Thought it would hold.”

In the Imager, danger had lived in variables and probabilities. Down here it could be one rotten length of metal and nothing underneath you.

Santo’s face darkened for a moment, the memory a passing shadow, before he clapped Ari on the shoulder.

“Listen, mate… this is… this is a dangerous world. The Gathering, Baron, even Charles. None of us are safe. I don’t know what’s going to happen with you, but if it all goes to shite… if you’re ever alone and you can’t trust anyone, not Charles, not even your scary-clever girl, you go to Junction 44.”

Santo handed him a piece of paper with a sketched map on it. “It’s an old bolt-hole from my first days down here. It’s not on any of Charles’s new maps. It’s clean. It’s mine. If you’re ever in the shite, you go there. I’ll check it. I’ll find you. Got it?”

“Got it.” Ari’s chest tightened with a strange warmth. Santo had given him a secret kept even from Charles. In all the mayhem of the past few days, the folded paper in his hand came nearer to safety than anything had.

“Thank you, Santo. This means a lot to me.”

“Don’t mention it. I mean it. To no one.” He grinned. “I’ll see you at dawn.”

Santo walked away, leaving Ari standing alone. The gear hung awkwardly from his grip. Coarse rope bit into his palm beside the torch. The tunnel pressed close around him, all rock, rust, pitch smoke, and work done by hand. He was a fraud, a technician playing at being an adventurer. For a moment, an imagined whiff of his flat’s sterile, recycled air teased his nose—a craving for safety that turned to soot.

Charles had dismissed his information and closed the door. Ari curled his hand round the rope in his pack. Dawn would find him at the East Gate. Benjamin had asked, and Ari had heard himself answer.