14. Rethan
RETHAN
The former administrator refuses to meet inside any building with a registry seal.
I find that detail more informative than the message itself.
Maev Orlan served twelve years as assistant administrator for the regional resource office, then resigned without ceremony and returned to Jwoon III under a medical exemption too vague to be accidental.
She ignored my first two requests. On the third, she sent coordinates, a time, and one instruction.
No official walls.
So we meet at an abandoned threshing shed on the northern edge of the valley, where old machinery rusts beneath vine growth and wind moves through gaps in the roof. Lucy arrives beside me with her work jacket buttoned against the cold and a hand-light tucked through her belt.
“You think this is a trap?” she asks.
“I think fear chose the location.”
“That was not a no.”
“No.”
She gives me a look. “You are terrible at comfort.”
“Yes.”
The corner of her mouth twitches, then fades as a woman steps from behind the broken grain lift.
Maev Orlan is small, gray-haired, and sharp-faced, with a cane in one hand and a sealed document tube clutched in the other. Her eyes move first to my Authority insignia, then to Lucy’s mud-stained boots.
“You brought Hartwell,” Maev says.
“She knows the valley,” I reply.
“She knows how to make people brave. That can get them killed.”
Lucy’s expression hardens. “Did you come to warn us or help us?”
“Both, if you listen.”
I activate a recorder, then hold it visible in my palm. “Do you consent to testimony?”
“No.” Maev’s answer comes fast. “Not yet. I speak first. You record later if I decide you deserve it.”
I turn off the device.
Lucy glances at me, surprised.
Maev sees it. “Good. Maybe he can learn.”
“I am here to verify events,” I say. “Not punish a witness.”
“Helix punishes witnesses without your assistance.” Maev taps the document tube against her cane.
“Thirty-one years ago, I processed land classification updates from the outer settlements. Flood adjustments. Boundary corrections. Old parcel names translated into regional coordinates. Then came a batch from Solaris Valley.”
Lucy steps forward. “The missing years?”
“Part of them.” Maev’s gaze drops. “The packet included references to a founding covenant. Not the full document. Enough to prove restricted commercial use. I flagged it for senior review.”
“What happened?” I ask.
“The file came back amended.”
Wind scrapes a loose panel against the shed frame.
Maev swallows. “The covenant references were gone. Parcels tied to common land had been reclassified as dormant reserve. Burial hills became undeveloped rise. Shared water channels became utility corridors. I challenged it.”
“And?”
“My supervisor told me the corrections had been authorized above local level. Then a consultant tied to one of the resource trusts visited my office.” Maev’s fingers tighten on the tube.
“He knew where my sister lived. Knew the medicine my husband needed imported. Knew enough to make refusal feel expensive.”
Lucy goes still.
My grip remains light when Maev hands me the tube. “You were coerced.”
“I was reminded that obedience cost less than truth.”
“And you altered the files?”
“No. I refused. Two days later, I was removed from classification review. Someone else completed the amendments under a temporary administrative seal.”
I open the tube. Inside are copied memos, old access logs, and a private note written in registry shorthand. I scan the first page.
The temporary seal matches the hidden overwrite pattern from the central archive.
“This connects the regional amendments to the altered central entries,” I say.
Maev’s mouth compresses. “Then you understand why I stayed quiet.”
Lucy’s anger arrives before her words. “You let them bury it.”
Maev flinches, but doesn’t look away. “Yes.”
“Families built lives over a lie.”
“Yes.”
“My mother sorted burial maps yesterday because your office helped erase them.”
“Lucy,” I say.
She turns on me. “No. She needs to hear that.”
“I have heard it every year since,” Maev says, and there is no defense in the answer. “I kept copies because cowardice was easier to survive if I told myself one day they might matter.”
The shed feels colder.
Filing Maev’s testimony will turn the review into a conspiracy case. Helix will demand more than reassignment now. The Authority might let them.
But corruption depends on honest officials treating boundaries as walls.
I activate the recorder again and set it on a rusted machine casing. “Maev Orlan, will you now provide formal testimony?”
The former administrator turns toward the open shed doors, where the valley fields shine beneath the twin suns.
“Yes,” she says. “Before I lose the nerve.”
Lucy does not forgive her. But she listens differently after that.
Maev speaks for twenty-six minutes.
She names the supervisor who removed her. She identifies the consultant who threatened her. She describes the amended packet, the reclassification orders, and the temporary seal. Her voice breaks once, when she gives her husband’s name. She continues anyway.
When she finishes, I seal the testimony under Authority protection.
Maev holds my gaze. “That will not protect me enough.”
“No,” I say. “It will not.”
Lucy stares at me.
I meet Maev’s eyes. “But it will make harming you more expensive.”
The old woman gives a tired, humorless laugh. “That may be the first honest official answer I’ve heard.”
On the walk back, Lucy carries the copied memos in both hands as if they were fragile glass.
“You knew filing that would hurt you,” she says.
“Yes.”
“And you did it anyway.”
“Yes.”
She walks several paces before speaking again. “Why?”
I look across the valley, at the fields Helix called dormant, at the roofs of homes placed where records claimed no lasting community had existed.
“Because the truth is no longer incomplete,” I say. “It is being obstructed.”
Lucy nods once, slowly.
She no longer looks at me as if I might become another threat.
Behind us, Maev Orlan remains in the broken shed with her cane, her fear, and testimony Helix can no longer erase.