Dust coils around the jagged shadow of Ganzir's wall. The Legion still patrol the perimeter, their sensors blind yet their routines immaculate. To them, the war never ended; their home never fell. A figure descends from the dunes, radio static muttering in her ear; a voice that shouldn't exist. "Hello, Architect." "You should be gone, Legionnaire."
—————Clink. Porcelain cup meets plate. The man who held it folds his newspaper as the café around him bustles with activity. Pleasant conversations and hissing whistles of steam. 'Another village goes quiet in the dead of night. Authorities are just as silent.' His eyes brush over the headlines as it was another Tuesday; perhaps it was. Others around him are getting on with their day just as he is. A waiter adjusts a vase of flowers, a couple sit and converse together about their day, and a child kneels in the pavement over to pet a wandering cat. Order and peace was a civic virtue in Varkos, one that the people were content with. The man raised his wrist to check his chronograph, '15:03', his train's been delayed for another 30 minutes from now. More border closes between stations in Varkos. Shortages of trains to transport Conductive Alloys between the Coalition's nations. The effects of the war still seem to linger within the Varkos Coalition, like a rumour that refuses to die, much to his dismay. Laughter emanates from a table behind him, a pleasant sound, something human, something nice. He lets it wash over him as a brief reprieve from his disdain to the war. Setting the paper down, he looks up into the distant hills, the silence of the green seems to drown out the bustling noise of the small town. Then, something catches his eyes, something beyond the distant hills, something beyond visual range. The café radio crackles temporarily with static, street lamps flicker on and trams suddenly lose power and cruise temporarily through motion. But he doesn't notice this, he only notices a familiar word, a title often revered during the old-calendar. "Hello, Architect."
He stands up, momentarily catching a few onlookers by surprise. Across the small town in the Varkos Coalition's outskirts, the sudden powerloss gets quickly, too quickly, covered up as a power plant error. And life continues.
—————
The Varkos' capital city's skyline fades against the side of the Administration building. A structural beauty of alloy and glass. Within, a meeting is already being held between the 13 countries that form the Varkos Coalition.
"Are you certain it was the Legion again?"
"Yes Councillor. Theta-Nine went offline one-hundred and sixty three minutes ago, the power dipped in the South-Eastern sectors of Varkos for only one minute thanks to the experimental capacitors built into the grid. They worked as predicted. Nations Aquila and Vinland have increased the load on their reactors to make up for the major loss of Theta-Nine."
The silence that followed after matches the sterilisation of the room. For the first in possibly decades, the air filters could be heard operating overhead the unnecessarily-white lights. "Casualties?" "Three-hundred and nine. Only forty-nine are injured and an unknown amount are considered missing. Civil Services are still searching through the rubble."
"If i may," someone suddenly interjects. "What would the press hear about this, Mr Samir?" "My Intelligence department has already fed the press, stating the reactor blew up in a freak accident.."
"Ahem" All eyes return back to the councillor. "The real report?"
Samir stutters, his breathing pausing momentarily. "We received a message originating from within Ganzir's walls. We have suspicions that there may be an Architect alive." For a long moment, no one speaks, the sound once again being sterile like the air. Then the councillor speaks again. "Bring back funding to the Observation Division. Ganzir's silence was broken."
The councillor's words settled like falling air over the table. No one voiced to object, no one thought to. Mr Samir's pen scratched across the digital screen's serach-bar below him before he caught himself doing it, 'The fall of Ba' then smoothly crossing it out, letting the digital pad erase it automatically. "Reactivation of the Observation department will require a dedicated squad to venture outwards and manage the Di.." he murmurs, moreso to himself than to the others.
"Then find people who still remember the inner layouts of Ganzir. If they've been inside Babel then even better." said the Councillor, her augments allowed her to pick up on his mumbles. "We buried that wall of theirs almost three years ago, Babel only less than a year.." she breathes in angrily, "granted it wasn't us who took down Babel, but themselves." She sighs, the scars of the war, though not physical were always there, one which was shared by everyone in the room.
"Are we certain the Legion is responsible?" someone asked, his voice soft, as if afraid to draw attention back to the situation at hand. "We haven't had confirmation since-" "Since they gutted Theta-Nine," The councillor finished for him. "Yes, I remember." Samir swallowed, nodding along. "Theta-Nine's core went offline one hundred and sixty-three minutes ago. The dip lasted forty-seven seconds and without the prototype capacitors, we would've lost the entire grid within the southeast corridors until the neighbouring provinces' power plants would have kicked in to make up for the loss."
"Civil Services have just issued an 'infrastructure failure' statement to the press." Someone else, followed up.
"Causalities?" The councillor asks again, though less formal this time. "Same as before, many are still unaccounted for." The air systems wheezed overhead, every intake sounded like a mechanical fault waiting to make itself fully known. Then Samir hesitated, eyes flicking across his datapad. "Going back to the.. 'Architect'." Even saying the name seemed to sting like glass, as if saying it would manifest the survival of those they tried to kill. "No," the councillor interjected. "I don't need anymore information regarding.. them . The suspicions are enough for me to bring back the Observation Department. Upon reactivation, have them triple their surveillance on the South-Eastern borders, directed within a 140° angle towards Babel's centre."
She stands up, sliding the chair back and turning on her heels, leaving the chair untucked away from the board table as she approaches the doorway.
"Nothing must go in or out of Ganzir's walls unless it's us. I don't care what the other two Nations are doing, though if they try to intervene, do try to prioritise diplomacy." Pausing in her final step, she turns ever so slightly to face the other people in the room, "And for the love of whatever it is you all believe in, make sure the people never hear that word again." The door sealed. The hum returns. As the other people start to leave the room, following the Councillor's instructions, Samir stays behind; staring at the map display. Most of the Coalition still grows weakly green, sectors pulsing with their fragile, newly refurbished grids. Then, at the southeast edge, a flare of red, though brief like a heartbeat, flashes from one of the sectors.
Samir waits, expecting one of the alarms to blare and a fault to appear on one of their screens, but neither happens. He waits a little longer, he did see it, right? Sighing disappointedly, he gets up and gathers his collection of items. Clutching the datapad tightly under his arm like an unfolded newspaper, he walks out of the room, letting the door click shut under a hiss behind him. "Observation goes active at once." He mutters, repeating the Councillor's words, he wasn't expecting to have his division return; at least not this shortly after it was shut down.
Straightening his collar, he walks with purpose along the corridors, finding an elevator that was guaranteed to be empty and not in use. The Observation Division was not something someone should hurry towards lest they dare catch a stray eye after all. At the elevator, he presses his hand against the panel, the screen recognising his palm index and sliding from red to green. Inside, the air was quieter, sterile, almost calm against the bustle of bureaucratic activity that seems to leak through the elevator doors. Hesitantly, his fingers hold just above the numbered keys, one for each floor, before he began entering the sequence that overrides the standard use of an everday machine. The numbers form no illogical pattern, yet when he hit the final one, the light above flickered once, then the panel reset itself to a black-lit screen. The floor count above the doors vanished, the surveillance within the elevator starts looping and editing itself, displaying fake visual footage to whoever sits behind the screens at that moment. There is no confirmation tone either, no "Doors closing" or "Moving to Floor...", just silence. Silence and the sudden cutting of a voice through the moment. "Hold the doors!"
Glancing up, a man in a grey uniform was jogging towards him, files held tightly under his arm, breath coming out in almost vapour regardless of the room's temperature. For half a second, Samir's hand twitched towards the door control, then reality won. He lowered his gaze and pretended not to hear. The doors sealed shut with a sound too soft to be mechanical. The last thing he saw through the narrowing gap was the man's confused expression, frozen in that narrow wedge of light before the walls swallowed it whole.
Inside, Samir readjusted his collar once more and drew in a long, measured breath. The Observation Division had operated in secrecy for nearly a decade, only to be sealed away once the walls of Ganzir fell. Reviving it meant more than just reopening a department, it meant acknowledging that Babel's Shadow still lingered; that he was willing to stand within it yet again.
The elevator slowed with a muted hiss, then stopped altogether. No Chime, no voice announcing the floor. Only the faint click of pressure equalising behind the sealed doors. When they did slide open, the environment beyond was like nothing compared to the busy, militant-bureaucracy in the previous floor he left. The air smelled faintly of ozone and abnormal alloys. The corridor ahead was narrow and lined with ribbed steel; industrial, complex, scientific, claustrophobic. Sparse blue lighting traced the ceiling in pulsating bands that made every movement flicker.
It felt less like an institute's corridor and more like a buried artery of the building, supplying information instead of blood. He stepped out, the elevator shutting softly behind him like a vault, only to recede back to whichever direction it came from earlier. The floor beneath his boots was a hexagonally gridded alloy that resonated faintly with each step. Faint blue light move down around it; between the lines. Faint vibrations can be felt from below, a deep mechanical hum, constant, like the heartbeat of something that hasn't learned to sleep properly.
After all, the Observation Division was never dismantled, it was buried. Its power source still ran somewhere deep within, silent and obediently waiting for orders. Security pylons flanked the corridor, each one bearing the Varkos Coalition's emblem, though these were half-scratched away by hand, instead replaced by a black sigil that resembled an eye within a compass. The symbol of the Division. 'The Watcher's Eye' Samir approached the first checkpoint. A wall-mounted camera adjusted its angle and lens toward him with a minor hum. Recognition software, isolated from the building's local network flared briefly across the screen below it, then dimmed. The door ahead slowly sighed open. Inside was the heart of the Division, a cavernous chamber stacked with tiered stations, all positioned around a central console in the centre of the room. Each station, empty now except for the glow of monitors that were left on by mistake. For a moment, the sight of them made him feel as if the ghosts of his former operatives, technicians, analysts, 'Nascents', who once stared into these same screens were still here with him. He ran a hand along the railing, the metal cold as if untouched for years; only for a couple. The floor below was a sea of dark terminals, their surfaces coated in a thin film of dust, disturbed only by the faint shimmer of holographic projections which were beginning to stir as power was rerouted through the system.
Then came the voice, synthetic, layered with static. "Observation Division protocol reactivation request detected. Authorisation pending." Samir drew out a small metallic tag from his pocket, etched with the same sigil as on the wall pylons, and held it to the console. The lights across the chamber flickered in response, one by one, as though something ancient and hungry was waking from a long sleep.
Samir mutters to himself, almost as a defensive ward: "Back to Observation Duty."
The chamber's walls began to hum, and along the far side, the glass panels came alive. Walls that were seemingly bare, painted metal came alive and flickered to projections of the first images immediately collected from the surveillance relays being reconnected across the Eastern Continent. Static walls turned into outlines: patrol deployments, Varkos, Heleran, both can be seen.
Somewhere deep within the skyscraper, the Observation Division has opened its single, blind eye once more. And as the systems came online, Samir couldn't help but feel that something else, something yet to be seen, had noticed the opening too.
—————
A soft chime echoed across the chamber, followed by a voice, feminine, yet filtered through the same distortion that came with the previous voice.
"Administrator online... eighty-six percent systemic integrity. Subroutines dormant. Awaiting Directive."
Samir looked towards the central dais, where a cylindrical pillar of light descended from the ceiling, various blue lines leading from it to the projectors that form its baseline shape. Within it, data swirled like dust caught in sunbeams, occasionally fading away as the ones and zeros refract into the cylindrical shape to resolve into the outline of a figure, a woman's figure with her shape half-formed and her features never staying still long enough to define.
"Designation?" Samir asked in mild caution. Unsure if it really is _her_.
The voice paused, as if considering how to answer. "Pre-Catastrophe Prototype: Observation Division Administrative Intelligence, model-Theta. Referred to... informally, as 'Seraphine'."
Samir frowned. "You survived the purge order."
"I was archived beyond primary access layers. Those who issued the order lacked the clearance to find me." There was something almost prideful in her tone. "The Division's systems remain intact. Personnel registry are partial. I have initiated recall protocols for all active agents transferred upon closure."
"Already?" Samir echoed, moving down the steps towards the dais.
"Correct. Contact networks, biometric tokens and classified identification keys. Twenty-two of the original one-hundred-and-eight remain within Coalition Service. Eighty-Six are deceased or missing in action. The remainder..." The holographic shape flickered, reforming into a constellation of blue motes that coalesced into the outline of names scrolling down invisible glass. "The remainder will require replacement." Though her features don't stay the same too long, her face lingered long enough for Samir to notice the Proto-AI showed emotion; disdain.
"Replacements? You can find candidates?" Samir exhaled quietly, while he holds doubts on who the remainder were, he knows he's unfortunately correct on his guesses.
"Of course. Observation is my purpose."
The chamber lights dimmed as data began streaming across every display. Personnel files opened like blooming flowers, psychological profiles, loyalty metrics and mental-aptitude assessments numbering in the dozens. Some bore the seal of Military Intelligence, others the faint watermark of the Ministry of Public Order. Seraphine was not merely accessing past archived files, she was restoring them prior to the data-purge.
As he watched the screens, he saw messages transmitting across secure lines: encrypted summons issued under dormant Division Authority. Operatives who had thought their past being buried were about to receive a reality-check. The network was rebuilding its web.
Samir felt the weight of what he'd set in motion lay on him.
"How long until full operation status?"
"Seventy-two hours. Less if you authorise autonomous personnel selection."
He hesitated, but not enough to change his mind. "Do it."
"Confirmed."
The pillar brightened briefly, and for the first time, Seraphine's tone softened, just a fraction, enough to sound almost alive.
"Welcome back, Director Samir. The blind eye reopens."
The room is once again filled with light as the Observation Division comes online, floor by floor above them, system by system.
Somewhere far above at the rooftop of the skyscraper, encrypted directives rippled outward through the Coalition's networks. Old agents felt their long-silent communication codes reactivate; others, new recruits, unsuspecting, would soon receive their invitation to serve a Division that should have stayed dead.
Samir stood beneath the awakening lights at the centre console, the glow painting him pale and distant. Outside the city roared in Ignorance. Within, the Division blinks once again.