Brooke's Clean Records

Brooke returned to Harbor Union because running from a compromised institution only made the honest files harder to steal.

She used the front entrance, signed the visitor sheet in her own building, and let security escort her to Compliance as if humiliation were a hallway she had chosen.

Martin Kells waited outside the conference room.

"You sent Claim File Seven," she said.

"Did I?"

"Do not do that."

"Then do not say things in elevators."

She hated him for being careful and was grateful for the same reason.

Inside, Compliance asked about Kind Harbor, Nora, Lila, and unauthorized evidence handling. Brooke answered exactly enough. The whole time, a legal analyst named Petra Voss watched without taking notes.

Petra had signed the access restriction.

Brooke had never met her before this file.

When the interview ended, Brooke paused at the restroom, then turned into the archive corridor instead. Her badge failed at the first door. She expected that. She used Lila's cracked key card on the second.

The door opened.

Clean records were not clean in the archive. They were too white, too flat, too freshly boxed. Brooke found seven legacy claim files with identical witness-scan artifacts, all tied to Kind Harbor patients, all routed through foundation review accounts.

She photographed what she could before footsteps entered the corridor.

Kells appeared at the door.

"You have two minutes," he said.

"Are you helping me or trapping me?"

"Yes."

He handed her one file.

On the cover: Miles Andrew Vale, second death, pending contested claim.

"This was opened three days before his crash," Kells said.

Brooke stared. "Before he died."

"Before he died again."

At the far end of the corridor, Petra Voss's heels clicked toward them.

Kells closed the box lid. "Now run like a fraudster."

Brooke ran with the file under her coat and understood, bitterly, how many innocent people learned guilt's body language from institutions that left them no lawful door.