The first clerk told Tessa that the clinic’s certificate had never been filed.
Tessa placed the receipt on the counter. “This says your office received it.”
The clerk glanced at the stamp. “That says we received an application.”
“It lists the certificate by name.”
The clerk read the smaller writing, then turned to the screen. “The document isn’t in the file.”
“I know. Yesterday another clerk told me it had been challenged. I’d like to know why and where it went.”
The clerk gave her a room number on another floor. Tessa had seen enough of the building the previous day to know the corridor at that end held vehicle permits. She asked whether the office handled clinic applications.
“They handle transfers.”
“What kind?”
“Transfers.”
Tessa wrote down the clerk’s name from the plate on the counter and the room number. The clerk noticed.
“You don’t need to do that.”
“I need to remember where I’ve been.”
The vehicle office did not handle clinic documents. Its clerk was kind enough to check a directory and direct her to a records room on the ground floor. There, a man behind a half-open door said that certificates sometimes traveled between intake and review in batches. He could search a batch number but could not identify one from her application number.
“Who has the intake register?” Tessa asked.
“The first office.”
She looked at the stairs she had just descended. “Can you call them and tell them what I need?”
The man considered, then picked up the phone. He explained the issue, listened and gave her back the receipt.
“They’ll have a supervisor look.”
“Thank you.”
“Ask for the batch number. Don’t let them send you back here without it.”
At the first office, the supervisor was helping an elderly applicant whose identification photograph had faded. Tessa waited while he found a way to confirm the woman’s identity using another record. The delay cost her twenty minutes, but she could not resent him for solving someone else’s problem carefully.
When he was free, he read her receipt and asked the intake clerk to bring the register. It was a thick bound book, the kind used when the electronic system failed or a document needed a physical chain of custody. The clerk opened it to the date on Tessa’s receipt.
There was her application number. The next column listed the clinic’s certificate. A later column recorded its transfer to a review stack, followed by a batch number and destination code.
“That’s not clinic review,” the supervisor said.
“What is it?”
He consulted a printed sheet. “General provider applications. Different queue.”
“Who moved it?”
“The initial is here.” He pointed to a mark that looked like a single letter. “It identifies the person who processed the batch, not necessarily whoever requested the transfer.”
“Is there a reason?”
“No reason recorded.”
The supervisor allowed her to copy the line and verified the batch number. Tessa wrote each character twice, once in her notebook and once on a separate sheet. She asked for a certified copy, but the office required a formal request. She submitted one and kept its receipt.
The clinic called while she was still at the counter. Leah had reached a patient whose appointment needed an authorization the clinic could not provide before its registration was complete. The patient could travel to a partner provider the next day, but the bus required two changes and would add several hours to an already difficult week.
“Is she willing to take the referral?” Tessa asked.
“She said she needs to ask her employer for time off. She didn’t sound hopeful.”
“Give her my number. I’ll speak to her.”
The supervisor waited while she stepped aside. The patient explained that missing another shift might cost her wages she needed for rent. Tessa could not issue the authorization the clinic lacked. She called Marisol, who found an opening at a registered service nearer the patient’s workplace. The opening was two days later, not tomorrow. The patient accepted it because she could attend after work, but the appointment she had expected at the clinic was lost.
When Tessa returned to the counter, the supervisor had written the general provider office’s address and the name of the administrator responsible for the batch.
“Can you call him?” she asked.
“I can tell him you’re coming. I can’t make him find it faster.”
“Please call.”
He did. The administrator’s assistant confirmed that the batch was in their office but said it had not yet been fully sorted. She would ask the administrator to see Tessa after lunch.
Outside, Eli waited on the steps with two paper-wrapped sandwiches. He had come from a training desk where he had reserved Sera’s markers. He handed Tessa one and listened while she explained the transfer.
“Someone moved it,” he said.
“The register shows a transfer. It doesn’t say who requested it or why.”
“Pell tried to get access to Darius’s records.”
“Pell works for Meridian.”
“And Aegis is on the assessment list. Then the clinic certificate ends up in the wrong stack just before the deadline.”
“Those are different organizations. We haven’t established a connection to the transfer.”
Eli bit into his sandwich, chewed, and swallowed before answering. “In the other life, Rook’s people at Aegis could make things disappear from a file. I watched them do it.”
“You told me about the raid. You didn’t tell me about this.”
“A porter reported an injury after a gate run. The guild’s copy of the report said he hadn’t been on the registered team. He was there. I carried his bag out.”
“Do you know who changed the record?”
“No. I know what the guild used the altered record to deny.”
Tessa held her sandwich without eating. He had told her about regression in the days after the first expedition, and she had learned to ask which details he had seen and which he had inferred. The question did not make his account less painful to hear. It gave her a way to act on it without telling the volunteers that a particular person had done something they could not yet prove.
“Keep the name of that porter,” she said. “If there’s a way to check what happens to him here, we can try.”
“His name was Leon.”
“And today we need this certificate.”
“I know.”
She took a bite of the sandwich. It was dry but filling. Eli had remembered that she often forgot to eat when she was working. He did not point that out, which made her grateful.
A commotion rose from the street below. A delivery van had stopped abruptly at the curb, its rear door swinging open. A box slid down the ramp and struck a cyclist’s front wheel. The cyclist fell, scraping her hand, while the driver scrambled to catch a second box.
Tessa was moving before Eli. She reached the cyclist, who was already trying to stand. Eli stopped the second box with his foot and helped the driver lower it safely.
“Can you move your arm?” Tessa asked.
The cyclist did, then winced. Her palm was bleeding where it had hit the pavement. She was alert and angry.
“He didn’t secure the door.”
“I did,” the driver said. “The latch came loose.”
“Both of you can discuss that after we get out of the road,” Tessa said.
She helped the cyclist to the pavement and washed the scrape with water from her bag. It was superficial, though the woman would need a proper dressing. The driver offered a clean cloth. Eli checked the van’s latch and found a bent catch. He pointed it out to the driver, who looked at the remaining boxes and called his depot for another vehicle.
The cyclist accepted directions to a nearby pharmacy and took the driver’s details. Tessa checked once more that she felt able to continue. When the woman left, she pushed the bicycle rather than riding it.
Tessa watched the driver tie the door shut until help arrived. “You could see the latch without your ability.”
“I didn’t use it.”
“I know. You looked first.”
He considered that. “Kellan would be pleased.”
The interruption had cost them another half hour. Tessa called the administrator’s assistant from the street and confirmed that the meeting was still possible. She and Eli took the tram across town, standing because every seat was occupied. A child stared at the scrape of dust on Tessa’s sleeve. She realized she had knelt in the road and brushed it away.
The administrator’s office occupied the upper floor of a building that had once housed an insurance company. A directory listed its departments on temporary paper signs. The assistant found the batch number in a ledger and led Tessa and Eli to a waiting area beside a row of filing cabinets.
The administrator, Mr. Hartnell, emerged carrying a folder. He was younger than Tessa had expected and wore his tie loose. “I’m told a certificate may have been transferred into my queue.”
“Your batch number appears in the intake register,” Tessa said. She showed him her copy of the line.
He checked it against his folder. “That’s the right batch. There are forty applications in it, some with loose attachments. We haven’t finished sorting.”
“Can I help identify the certificate?”
“You can’t access the files. They contain other applicants’ information.”
“Can you search while I wait?”
“I have a deadline on the provider approvals.”
“So do we. One of our patients had to move an appointment today because this document is missing.”
Hartnell glanced at Eli, then back at Tessa. “I can ask a clerk to start with the attachments. If it isn’t there, we’ll need to check whether it was transferred again.”
“Can you tell me who requested this transfer?”
“I can tell you the batch came to my office. I haven’t checked the request.”
He went back through the door. A clerk emerged with a stack of folders and carried them to a table behind a glass panel. Tessa could see the movement of hands but not the names on the papers. Eli stood, sat, then stood again.
“Pacing won’t make her faster,” Tessa said.
“It might make me less likely to go in there.”
“Then pace quietly.”
He did, until the assistant asked him to leave the corridor clear. He sat beside Tessa and pulled out Sera’s training plan. The proposed marker track had a list of measurements down one side. He showed Tessa the failure from the earlier exercise and the different result after they learned the floor had an untested load limit.
“You changed two things,” she said.
“Kellan said the same. We knew about the floor and split the team.”
“So you don’t know which made the difference.”
“We know both helped us move sooner.”
“Do you know the split was safer?”
“No. It was a controlled practice. We used a rope and the area had already been inspected.”
Tessa returned the page. “At least she wrote down the failure.”
“She insisted.”
“I like her.”
“You’ve met her for half an hour.”
“She corrected you three times in that half hour.”
“That may be why you like her.”
“It is one reason.”
The clerk finished the first stack and brought out another. The afternoon light shifted across the carpet. Tessa called Mrs. Bell, as promised. Mrs. Bell reported that Nisha had knocked twice, used the chair exactly as directed and left her with a clear plan. She also reported that the biscuits had not been stolen.
“I’ll tell Nisha her reputation is intact,” Tessa said.
“Tell her the lemon ones are better. She chose the plain.”
When Tessa ended the call, Hartnell came out. “We haven’t found it in the first half. The office closes in twenty minutes.”
“Will the search continue tomorrow?”
“I’ll search the rest before the morning.”
“Can you confirm that in writing?”
He looked tired. “I can give you my name and the batch number.”
“And the fact that you agreed to search the remaining stack.”
He wrote a short note on a copy of the transfer line and signed it. Tessa gave him her contact number and asked him to preserve the batch and transfer records. He said he would not remove them from the file. The answer did not tell her whether someone else had access, but it was a start.
Eli held the office door for her. On the pavement, he said, “We should file the complaint now.”
“We will.”
“And name Aegis.”
“We can name the transfer and the missing certificate. We can’t name a requester we haven’t identified.”
“What if waiting lets them do it again?”
“Then the complaint creates a record now. Naming a guild without proof won’t make the record stronger.”
He started to object, then stopped. “I hate that you’re right.”
“You can hate it on the tram.”
At the clinic they completed the handling complaint with Nora’s help. Tessa attached a copy of her intake receipt and the transfer line, retaining the originals. Nora checked that the complaint asked for preservation of the records and a written explanation of the transfer. It did not accuse anyone of ordering it.
Leah updated the appointment book while they worked. The patient who had lost her appointment had accepted the later slot near her workplace. Another patient needed a call in the morning. The delay had already consumed transport money and volunteer time; finding the certificate would not return either.
After closing, Tessa put Hartnell’s signed note beside the complaint receipt. Eli locked the door and checked the street. A man in a dark coat stood at the tram shelter, but a bakery bag hung from his hand and he boarded the next tram.
Tessa watched the vehicle move away. “We don’t know who requested the transfer,” she said.
“Not yet.”
“No. But we know where the batch went, and he has agreed to search it.”
Eli walked Tessa to the tram. She leaned against the shelter post while he checked the timetable. The next tram was delayed, so he crossed to the bakery and came back with a warm loaf Ruth had arranged for the volunteers. They tore off pieces at the stop, scattering crumbs onto the pavement.