Chapter 63 Ghosts in Room 814
Eli’s POV
The staff entrance smelled like bleach and stale coffee. It was a far cry from the polished lobby with its glass and chrome, and that suited me just fine.
Karl was already there, waiting near a service elevator. Middle aged, soft around the middle, sweat beading at his temples despite the chill. He kept wringing his keycard lanyard like it might strangle him if he let go.
Mila had set this up through three intermediaries and a modest envelope. His eyes darted to it now, then to me, then past me to where Sloane lingered by the doorway in a hoodie and jeans, trying to look like anyone but herself.
“You came,” he said in German, then switched to halting English. “Good. I do not wish to have this… on my conscience anymore.”
“Then let us take it,” I said. “Some of it, at least.”
We found an unused housekeeping room. Metal shelves. Rolling carts. The hum of old fluorescent lights. I stood near the door. Sloane took the one rickety chair. Mila’s voice buzzed in my ear from London.
Karl licked his lips, looked at Sloane, looked away.
“During the summit,” he began, “we were told we would have a security upgrade. From a vendor recommended by one of the conference sponsors. New cameras. Better logging. All very impressive.”
“Recommended by who,” I asked.
He shrugged helplessly. “Name on the paperwork was a local firm. But the man who came, he was not from here. He talked about remote oversight. Test cameras in high value rooms. Live feeds to an external evaluator. Our general manager was very proud.”
“Test cameras,” Sloane repeated. The words tasted wrong even in my head.
Karl nodded. “Only a few suites. For important guests. We were told it was temporary. That after the summit they would be removed.”
“And that vendor,” I pressed. “Company name.”
He fumbled in his bag and pulled out a crumpled photocopy. Mila snapped a shot through my camera and ran it.
“Shell company,” she murmured in my ear a moment later. “Behind that, a firm tied to the Council. Another Lattice node. Surprise.”
Not a surprise.
“What about the night we met,” I asked.
Karl wiped his forehead. “There was a directive in the system,” he said. “A VIP guest from the summit was to be put in Room 814. Specific code, override. Normally we honor preferences, loyalty tiers, that sort of thing. But this… it forced the assignment. Your fake name,” he glanced at Sloane, “and your real one were linked in the back end.”
I felt something cold crawl up my spine.
“You are sure,” I said.
He nodded, quick. “I remember because it was strange. The room had one of the test cameras. We were told those guests were being given extra protection.”
Extra protection. Right.
I had thought the camera in her Berlin suite was opportunistic. Someone taking advantage of a summit busy week, slipping hardware into a smoke alarm because they could. Hearing that Room 814 had been pre wired and then watching him say override code made something twist in my gut.
They had not just watched us. They had put her there to be watched.
Sloane sat very still. I could feel her trying not to move, like motion would make it real.
“So from the moment I checked in,” she said slowly, “under a fake first name, no badge, hair down… someone already knew I was coming. They flagged me. They chose that room.”
“Yes,” Karl said. “You were on a list.”
A list. High value assets. Test subjects. Whatever label they had used in their back end.
“After the summit,” I asked, “the feeds from that room. What happened to them.”
“We sent them to the external evaluator,” he said. “All the test suites. 814. A few others. They told us to wipe local storage. We did. I never saw the tapes again.”
Mila spoke in my ear. “The test camera architecture matches what we found in your cabin and her penthouse,” she said. “Council derivatives built on her old prototype. Same signature. They have been iterating since Berlin.”
Plot twist did not begin to cover it.
In my head, the night still plays in fragments. Her at the bar. Her laughing in the blurry light. Her hair spread over the pillow. Her breath on my chest when she fell asleep, thinking we were alone.
Knowing it had been filmed. Catalogued. Fed into some Council simulation as data points.
Rage rose in me, so fast my hands tightened into fists. My knuckles went white.
That night had been the one thing I kept to myself. The memory that felt untouched even when everything else got dragged into courtrooms and war rooms. Now it was just another line in a feed.
Beside me, Sloane’s face had gone pale. Not shocked pale. Hollow.
“My one free choice,” she said, voice very calm, “was their pilot episode.”
For her, the violation was double. Body. Heart. Autonomy. All turned into an experiment.
She stood abruptly. The chair scraped. Karl flinched.
“Thank you,” she said. “That is enough.”
We left him there with his envelope and his guilt. Back in the main streets of Berlin, the air smelled like rain and exhaust.
At the new hotel, I walked straight to the bathroom. Closed the door. Braced my fists on the sink and leaned over it, staring at my reflection in the cheap mirror.
My face looked wrong. Too red. Eyes too dark.
They had not just used my unit as beta testers in a war zone. They had used my body in a bed as footage. Unwitting muscle and unwitting lover, feeding their models.
For a second my vision blurred. Not from tears. From fury so hot it felt like pressure in my skull.
The one place I had ever felt unobserved beside someone was a goddamn lab test.
A soft knock at the door.
“Eli,” Sloane said quietly. “Let me in.”
This was not just about data. Or contracts. Or strategy. This was about whether we let them own even that night between us.
My fingers tightened on the edge of the sink until the porcelain creaked. Then I let go. Reached for the handle.
If Berlin had been the scene of the crime, we were the only ones left who could rewrite the report.