The Deletion Began at 4:03 AM

The deletion began at 4:03 AM.

Eunchae learned of it at 4:40 AM. Six of the nine copies stored in the cloud folder had vanished from the list.

The remaining three were smaller in size. That meant the largest ones had been deleted first, and that wasn't a human hand at work, it was sort order.

"Is there a recovery request window?" Mirae asked.

"You can request it within thirty days," Eunchae said. "Then the provider checks with the Bureau."

"So the side that checks is the side that deleted it?" Mirae asked.

"That can't be proven," Eunchae said.

Eunchae opened the storage folder's activity log. The deletion was attributed to the account owner. Her own account.

She checked the login history. There was a record of accessing her own account at exactly 4:00. The device used wasn't registered.

"Eunchae." Mirae said. "Your password got out."

"Or the session did." Eunchae pulled the log downward.

Eunchae looked at her own terminal. She had left it logged into the court filing system since yesterday. That system was linked to the Bureau's authentication.

She told Mirae the fact. Even as she said it, she knew it weakened her own statement.

"Then this gets filed as Eunchae's fault." Mirae said.

"It could be filed that way."

It couldn't be proven. The sequence remained.

In yesterday's second dismissal, a bracelet number the team hadn't submitted had been attached as a reference document. Nine hours later, the copies were deleted from Eunchae's account.

"This is the second time." she said.

"Second time for what?" Mirae asked.

"For our own material showing up on their side before it shows up on ours." Eunchae said.

5 AM. The physical card Dohyeon had handed over at the warehouse was in Saebyeok's bag. He had held it in the hospital room chair all night, and slept two hours.

Yura was asleep.

The card held seven photographs. Four of the six deleted files were on the card. The other two weren't.

"What were the two?" Mirae asked.

Eunchae checked the list. Of the six deleted files, the two missing from the card were the close up shot of the tear line on page 231 and the full page 402.

"The two most important pages." she said.

"Is that sort order too?" Mirae asked.

"Not by size. Those two were mid sized."

Dohyeon connected on the terminal. For five minutes he said nothing, and then said one sentence.

"I have the hash."

Eunchae opened her own notebook. There were seven lines of sixteen digit hashes Dohyeon had written out by hand at the warehouse yesterday.

"What good is a hash?" Mirae asked.

"A hash only works if the photo exists." Dohyeon said. "Right now two photos are gone. A hash alone is just the name of something that no longer exists."

"So it's useless?" Mirae asked.

"One thing works." Dohyeon said. "If the Bureau later claims no such photo existed, this stands as proof we handed Eunchae the hash of that photo yesterday. You can't write a hash in advance for something that never existed."

"How do you prove the time you handed over the hash?" Mirae asked.

"Handwriting on paper can't prove a time." Dohyeon said. "Three people saw that paper yesterday."

"All three are us."

Dohyeon paused for three seconds.

"Then it's weak." he said. "I won't write a weak thing as if it were strong."

Eunchae took the point. It was the same problem Mirae had raised at the warehouse yesterday. If all three locations were the team's own hands, it was the same as one location.

"I'll send it to the lab today." she said. "Just the hash. That way today's date gets stamped outside the team."

"The network is down."

"Then I'll go myself."

Eunchae retraced the logic. The hash couldn't bring the photo back. It could only bring back the fact that the photo had existed.

"Then the deletion becomes the evidence." she said.

7:20 AM. The network went down.

Not the hospital's wireless network, Eunchae's own line. A maintenance notice from the service provider had gone up, an unscheduled one.

Mirae tried connecting on her own line. The storage page opened. Only Eunchae's account was blocked.

"We go by paper." Eunchae said.

She pulled envelopes out of her bag. She'd bought them yesterday, five of them.

She'd learned the method of switching a procedure over to paper five years ago and never used it once.

She put the physical card in the first envelope. She sealed it and wrote three lines on the outside. Contents, time, name of the person handing it over.

She put a sheet with the seven lines of hashes copied onto it into the second envelope. She didn't put in the original notebook.

"Why not put in the original?" Mirae asked.

"The envelope goes to someone else." Eunchae said. "What goes to someone else has to be a copy."

Into the third envelope she put the deletion activity log and the login history captures.

She left the fourth envelope empty. It was meant to be the copy for the bereaved families' group, but there was no way to remake the deleted copy.

Even on the empty envelope Eunchae wrote on the outside. No contents, reason: deleted, time.

"Why send an empty envelope?" Saebyeok asked.

"So the receiving side knows we kept our promise." Eunchae said. "If an empty envelope arrives, they know on their end too that the copy was deleted. If we don't send it, it becomes as if we never sent anything."

Into the fifth envelope Eunchae put a statement she wrote out by hand. It had three items. The time of the deletion, the unregistered access device, and the fact that she herself had left the court system logged in since yesterday.

When she was writing the third item, Mirae asked.

"That's your own fault, Eunchae."

"It is my fault."

"You could leave it out. No one would know."

"Writing it weakens my statement." Eunchae said. "Not writing it makes my statement a lie."

She wrote the third item through to the end.

She handed over the five envelopes. The recipient was Saebyeok. Saebyeok wrote her own name and the time of receipt on each envelope.

"Is this a manual handover?" Saebyeok asked.

"That's right. From today the chain goes by paper."

"It's slow."

"It's slow. But it can't be deleted remotely."

Saebyeok tucked the five envelopes into the inner pocket of her bag. The spot where she'd held the physical card all night.

"How far am I carrying this?" she asked.

"To the lab."

"I can't leave the hospital room."

The two of them stopped at the same moment. The person to move the envelopes and the person to hold the hospital room were the same person.

"I'll go." Mirae said.

"If the record keeper moves the material, that's still inside our own hands."

"Then who goes?"

Eunchae looked over the list. Three people could move today, and all three were parties to this case.

There was a sound at the hospital room door. It was Gyeongmin. A load strap hung over his shoulder, and a transport slip was in his hand.

"Transport is my job." he said.

"You're a party to this too, Gyeongmin." Eunchae said.

"I'm a party, but my job is transport." Gyeongmin held out the slip. "This is an official slip. Grade one, so the rate is low. But it leaves a record. Who moved what, when, and where."

Eunchae looked at the slip. A transport record was a third party record, not inside the team's own hands.

"I hadn't thought of that." she said.

"What you said yesterday, record keeper. That we needed something outside our own hands." Gyeongmin took the envelopes. "I'm outside our own hands. By contract, anyway."

9:04 AM. Mirae cross checked the camera originals against the four photos on the card. File size, time taken, and hash.

All three items matched on all four. Twelve comparisons, twelve matches.

"They match." she said. "The camera originals and the card are the same files."

"Then four survived." Dohyeon said. "Two are gone, and that they're gone is proven."

Eunchae looked back over the deletion time one last time. 3:12.

Something about that number caught on her. She flipped back through her own case record.

The collapsed corridor on the day of the return, the time the ability use ended.

In Mirae's record that time had been kept down to the second. The moment Igyeol had lowered her hand, after counting to fourteen.

3:12 AM.

"Mirae." Eunchae said. "Is this a coincidence?"

Mirae worked out the probability. A day has one thousand four hundred forty minutes, so the chance of the same minute overlapping was one in one thousand four hundred forty.

"Dohyeon." she asked. "How do we use this number?"

"You can't." Dohyeon said. "One overlap is a coincidence. I don't work off a single sample."

"Then why did you ask?"

"I asked about the seconds." Dohyeon said. "Minutes overlapping is common. If the seconds overlap too, that's a different story."

Mirae flipped to the front of her notebook. The entry for August 14 had that time.

"It's the same." she said. "Down to the minute."

Dohyeon went quiet for a long time on the terminal. Then he asked.

"What about the seconds?"

Mirae looked for the seconds. There were none in her record. That day she'd only written down the minute.

4:03 AM. The two digits after it were blank.

"When did you start the habit of writing down seconds?" Dohyeon asked.

"Since yesterday." Mirae said.

The reason she'd started writing them down yesterday was because Dohyeon had called out the sequence at the warehouse. A day's difference meant that second didn't exist.

"Then we find the seconds somewhere else." Dohyeon said. "The time the ability ended is on my instrument too. That day my hearing was cut off, but the instrument was on."

"Where is that instrument now?" Eunchae asked.

"Item nine on the seizure list."

Mirae flipped through her own copy of the list. Item nine of seventeen, one instrument. The column for who removed it was filled in.

Eunchae wrote down the number. The scheduled processing date for the seizure request was three days out, and item nine wasn't among the items requested.

"I'll file an additional request." she said. "Today."

"Then we have to write down why we want that instrument." Dohyeon said.

"I'll write it."

"If you write it, they'll see those seconds too."

Eunchae's hand stopped. If she filed the request, the other side would check the record first. If she didn't file it, there was no way to access the record at all.

"I'll file it anyway." she said. "If we don't, we lose those seconds forever. If we do, at least the time they erased it gets recorded."

Yura woke up just then. Saturation ninety two, the seventh tank had a third left, and no one had brought out the eighth yet.

She reached out a hand from the bed and picked up the fifth envelope. The one holding Eunchae's statement.

"I'll give this one." she said.

Gyeongmin took it with both hands. Yura wrote her own name on the outside of the envelope. It was the handover column, and it was the first time the name of someone with unconfirmed identity had been written there as the one handing it over.