Chapter 506: A Third Researcher

The words left behind in the old system seemed simple, but Freya had learned that simple phrases often concealed the longest histories. As the team investigated a third researcher, she kept her attention on what could actually be proven. The collaborator list reveals a third researcher who worked on behavioral architecture during the earliest publishing experiments.

Derek preserved the relevant records before expanding the search. Mercer reconstructed the software permissions and timestamps, while Claire compared terminology against the narrative archives. Nobody was allowed to turn resemblance into identity merely because a theory felt satisfying.

Her name appears repeatedly in technical drafts but disappears completely from later public documentation.

Freya found herself less shaken by the idea of being observed than she expected. Perhaps she had become used to discovering that strangers, researchers, algorithms, and even fictional readers had once evaluated versions of her. What bothered her now was not observation itself but interference.

A survey taken years ago could be strange without controlling her. A compatibility score could be invasive without creating her marriage. The line became different if someone had used those predictions to manipulate events in the real world.

Louis understood the distinction immediately. Corporate attacks were territory he knew. If the observer account had been connected to the people who engineered his collapse, then the mystery was no longer only about old research. It touched a deliberate campaign that had damaged employees, companies, families, and their marriage.

Even so, Louis did not quietly launch a private operation without telling Freya. He explained what Derek wanted to investigate, which records would be accessed, and what risks existed. Freya noticed the effort and approved the search.

Months earlier, he might have considered that level of disclosure inefficient. Now he understood that efficiency was not the only value inside a marriage.

Freya continued working while the investigation moved forward. Sunroom's cultural-center redesign had passed another engineering review, and construction was gradually returning to schedule. The crisis had made the team more disciplined rather than more fearful.

Awake Stories was also settling into its expansion. The new imprint had received enough promising submissions that Freya delegated the first acquisition round to its editors. She wanted the company to develop judgment beyond her personal taste.

The Open Page remained her favorite place to escape complicated theories. She stopped there one afternoon and found a university student asleep over an open textbook, two children arguing over a fantasy series, and an elderly couple sharing coffee beside the window.

Nobody knew that somewhere in an evidence archive, a decades-old system had once labeled Freya a match.

She liked that.

At home, her relationship with Louis continued repairing itself through repetition. He volunteered information before she asked. She accepted help without assuming it came with control. They still disagreed, sometimes sharply, but the disagreements ended with both people knowing more rather than less.

Freya's notebook had changed too. The facts section was growing longer, while the prediction section had disappeared entirely. She no longer cared whether an old model had anticipated a choice. Prediction did not own the choice after it happened.

The hidden manuscript remained sealed.

Sometimes Claire asked whether Freya was still curious about its remaining headings.

Of course she was.

Curiosity simply was not the same as permission.

The legal team also reviewed each historical record before contacting anyone named inside it. Too many innocent people had already been pulled into Crosswind's history through careless data collection.

That evening, Freya recorded the latest evidence, closed the notebook, and looked toward Louis.

"Whatever we find," she said, "we don't decide what it means before we know what happened."

Louis nodded. "Agreed."

It was a small promise, but after everything they had survived, Freya trusted small promises more than dramatic ones.