Team 7 Was Almost Cleared

Team 7 was almost cleared of all charges.

Oh Hyunju took down the presentation file.

That was because thirty seven citizens who had watched that file became new traitors.

Ma Taeho was at the back of the briefing room counting eighty boxes of celebration supplies. Bottled water, backup batteries, guides for verifying original tokens, snacks for reporters. Six hours after the official reservation signature had been confirmed, the Coordination Bureau had decided to broadcast Team 7's interim audit results live.

The words "no wrongdoing" were stuck on every box.

"Only the delivery destination is left."

As Taeho closed the last box, Hyunju's interim report came up on the front screen.

Existence of the official account token confirmed.

No major violations found in Team 7's procedures for preserving and disclosing originals.

Review to exempt Oh Hyunju from responsibility for evidence tampering underway.

The third line worked in Hyunju's favor. It could serve as grounds to restore her frozen personnel evaluation and her automatic case closure authority. Hyunju read that line once, then deleted her own name from the broadcast queue first.

"Halt distribution of my exemption item. Seal the original report and exclude it from the transmitted version."

The senior auditor slammed the table. "We're thirty seconds from broadcast. The conclusion that the team is cleared doesn't change."

"The condition of the citizens who saw that conclusion has changed."

Hyunju split the screen in two. On the left, the private test transmission from ten minutes ago. On the right, entry logs from four evacuation channels.

Forty two staff and citizens in total had seen the test transmission. Thirty seven of their terminals had picked up a new relational role.

Anyone who believed in Team 7's innocence was a faithful witness.

Anyone who doubted or held back on sharing was a traitor to rescue.

A traitor transfers evacuation priority to a faithful witness.

No emotion arose. Only the evacuation order started obeying loyalty.

On the western temporary shelter's screen, a mother and daughter had been split on either side of the entrance. The mother had pressed the official token hash to verify it. The daughter had read the sentence "author unconfirmed" and held off on sharing. The mother's wristband showed faithful witness, the daughter's showed traitor.

The door let only the mother through.

The daughter was holding her mother's bag of medicine, which was inside.

"I'm going in with her," the daughter said into the entry terminal.

Traitors do not have access to the witness protection zone.

When the mother tried to step back out, a witness departure warning went off this time. A message followed stating that a faithful witness had an obligation to persuade the traitor.

"She's right. Nobody knows who wrote it."

The security officer pressed the manual override button, but his wristband changed his role too, to accessory to betrayal. The doors in all three sections of the shelter locked at the same time.

Taeho let go of the celebration boxes.

"How many doors at the western shelter?"

Mina opened the dashboard. "Three locks. Thirty seven roles. Still climbing. That's not a sample size, that's a victim count."

"Vehicles?"

"Fourteen requests for alternate transport."

Taeho counted the eighty boxes again. Moments ago they'd been enough volume to push through a clearance announcement. Now, in front of three locked doors and thirty seven people split apart, they were just bulky.

The terminals of four alternate drivers shut off one after another. These were drivers who had received the test transmission link but hadn't tapped it because they were driving. The system classified anyone who hadn't confirmed it as a traitor, and attached a new contract clause stating that traitors could not transport Team 7's relief supplies.

The first driver called Taeho. "If not looking at the link while driving counts as betrayal, was I supposed to look at it while driving?"

"No. Not checking while driving is the correct call."

"So if I tap it now, does it clear?"

Taeho didn't answer right away. If he accepted the faithful witness role, the vehicle could move. In exchange, the driver would carry a public record saying he'd trusted Team 7.

"There's a chance it would clear. But I won't recommend tapping it. You can choose to cancel the contract, be reassigned another driver, or do manual transport unrelated to the role."

"If I do manual transport, does that stay on my license record?"

"I don't know yet. I won't send you out until we've checked."

The driver chose to cancel the contract. The second driver wanted manual transport but refused to have his role wording disclosed. The third said he'd take the rest of the day off entirely. The fourth held off on answering.

Taeho didn't lump the four vehicles together as a single "transport failure." He wrote cancellation, manual switch, rest, and hold in separate columns. Four vehicles hadn't disappeared, four drivers had made choices.

"Cancel the box delivery. Redirect the water and batteries to the shelters."

The senior auditor cut in. "This is a temporary glitch in the test transmission sample. Proceed with the scheduled broadcast and correct it after the official announcement."

Eunha zoomed in on the western shelter's medical screen. The mother's pulse was 126, the daughter's was 118. Inside the medicine bag was an inhaler that had to be used every four hours.

"Correcting it four hours from now isn't treatment. We open the doors right now."

"The interim report concluded that Team 7's procedures were lawful."

"Does that conclusion deliver the inhaler?"

The auditor didn't answer.

Hyunju didn't press delete on the test transmission file. Instead she only cut off distribution rights, and sealed the broadcast start time and the time the first role appeared as read only. If she erased the sentence that benefited her, the evidence would disappear with it. The benefit had to stop, but the original had to stay.

"Test transmission at 08:42:10. First traitor role at 08:42:13. Causation is not yet determined. We're only preserving the timeline and the harm."

Sera pulled up the field map. Because of the brace on her right arm, she turned the screen with her left hand. "If we force the western entrance open, does it back up into the other shelters?"

Mina overlaid the three channels. "Opening one door alone, sixty eight percent chance the traitor role transfers to the next family. Cutting the whole broadcast, eighty one percent chance current roles stay but new occurrences stop. Neither is confirmed."

"Cut the broadcast first. Open the door as a role free fire evacuation route. No manual override until the security officer's wristband is cleared."

"That kills the clearance announcement too," Hyunju said.

"I know."

Sera was about to give the order to cut the broadcast, but opened the vote board first. Halting a wide area transmission wasn't something one person on the ground should decide alone.

Hyunju raised the legal ballot. "In favor. Halt the entire transmission, including my exemption item. Preserve the original and the timecode."

Eunha raised the medical ballot. "In favor. Draw up the victim support list by treatment need and personal choice. Opposed to disclosing diagnosis names."

Before raising the logistics ballot, Taeho recalculated the eighty boxes and the number of alternate vehicles. Redirecting the celebration supplies could get water and batteries to all four shelters. But using vehicles tagged with relational roles could turn the drivers into new traitors.

"Conditional yes. Delivery vehicles are four civilian contract vehicles with no wristbands. Leave two return seats open on each. Return the reporter snacks."

Mina raised the analysis ballot. "In favor. Do not take down the public verification file. Only halt the clearance explainer broadcast. Don't bundle the token evidence and our innocence into one file."

Dojin did not raise the correction ballot. "I won't rewrite the original text of a new role without the person's confirmation. I'm abstaining from this vote."

Sera raised the field ballot. "In favor. Secure the evacuation route first, then ask again about the scope of victim disclosure."

Four functions in favor, one conditional, one abstention.

The clearance announcement was postponed.

Team 7's faces went dark on the broadcast screen.

The fire door at the western shelter opened. The mother didn't go back in alone, she stood on the same side as her daughter. Eunha asked over video call for the inhaler's name and how to administer it.

"Just give me the whole bag," the mother said. "Don't disclose my daughter's name. But let people know why the door was locked."

The daughter picked her own items separately. "Name private. Disclose the time I held off on sharing. Disclose the exact wording of the traitor role. Don't write whether I supported Team 7."

The two of them hadn't made the same choices. They rode in the support vehicle together.

Taeho stripped every tag off the boxes. Where "no wrongdoing" had been, he wrote the shelter code and the number of return seats. The first vehicle carried twenty four bottles of water, twelve batteries, two empty seats. The second carried a medical bag and a mobility ramp. Not a single celebration item was left.

"I'm canceling the delivery success."

Dojin asked, "You mean the token delivery?"

"No. What I said earlier. That zero losses meant success." Taeho put his own name on the loading manifest. "We didn't lose the original, but people got pushed out of their destination. Recalculate the success rate."

He added the four drivers' cancellation fees and waiting time to the logistics loss sheet, charged to Team 7. If a structure only paid drivers once they'd proven loyalty, then support vehicles became another role mechanism. Hyunju attached a clause stating minimum contractual compensation would be paid regardless of role confirmation, and Taeho checked first whether the remaining budget could cover it.

Even adding in the refund for the reporters' snacks, they were short by sixty four thousand won.

Dojin took out his wallet, and Taeho blocked it with his palm. "No personal advances. Don't return what you learned about the books today."

Sera put a proposal to reallocate the reserve PR budget up for a vote. Hyunju attached the grounds for the change in use, Mina attached the disclosure details. Only after three functions voted in favor was the driver compensation secured. Dojin's wallet stayed closed.

Eunha built a victim support sheet. Instead of names, it held a marker each person chose, current location, medicine or transport or contact needed, and scope of disclosure. Of the thirty seven, twenty one agreed to disclose the original text, nine chose only the time of occurrence, and seven chose only internal team support.

Hyunju attached new lines to the first page of the interim report.

The official token evidence stands.

Team 7's clearance announcement is deferred until the cause and scope of the new harm is confirmed.

The occurrence of harm and the state of support will be disclosed before the conclusion.

Mina split the public screen into three panels. Confirmed victims: 37. Currently locked zones: 0. Support vehicles: 4. Names and family relationships were all left out. Below, only the twenty one traitor role texts that the individuals had agreed to disclose were shown verbatim.

Eighteen seconds after the halt, the Coordination Bureau posted a rebuttal.

Team 7 had arbitrarily edited the exoneration evidence and delayed the announcement.

Hyunju received a separate notice saying her frozen personnel evaluation could be restored today. The condition attached was simply that the scheduled broadcast resume.

Hyunju added the notice to the evidence list and left the acceptance box blank.

Mina rewound the test transmission frame by frame. In the scene of the Team 7 provisional charter vote, exactly eight frames showing Sera's dissenting vote were missing. The editor field was blank.

"Only the dissenting vote is missing. Reason undetermined."

A notice arrived on Sera's terminal about resuming her promotion review.

No public statement permitted.

Review resumes upon accepting a private testimony.

Sera read it and didn't answer.

The words "no wrongdoing" went dark on the front screen of the briefing room.

Beneath it, alongside the mark of the first driver who had canceled his contract, the victim count climbed to thirty eight.