Containment Level 9
Comfort-cells for the non-conscious. The contradiction is architectural.
Overview
Seven sub-levels below Nexus Central, past four security checkpoints, Containment Level 9 exists in the space between classified and forgotten.
The facility was built in 2167 as a fragment research laboratory. Converted to containment in 2174 when the Collective's Shard Killer Program produced extracted fragments Nexus couldn't destroy and wouldn't release. The 34 fragments currently in residence have been here for periods ranging from five to seventeen years.
Each cell is identical: a reinforced chamber three meters square, lined with electromagnetic shielding, containing a single pedestal with a transparent crystalline container. The containers are transparent not because transparency serves a technical purpose, but because the original designers considered opaque containers inhumane. This decision was made before Nexus classified fragments as non-conscious. The containers remain transparent because changing them would require a requisition that would draw attention to a facility that isn't supposed to exist.
Nexus built individual comfort-cells for entities it officially classifies as non-conscious. The contradiction is architectural.
Atmosphere
A long straight corridor in amber twilight, lined with fireflies in jars -- if the fireflies were gods.
Sight
A long straight corridor in amber emergency lighting that was installed as backup and became permanent. The crystalline containers glow -- warm, persistent, thirty-four points of light stretching into the distance like a processional.
Sound
The low hum of electromagnetic shielding. The click of monitoring equipment. And -- if you stand quietly -- something that is either 34 fragments resonating with the building's infrastructure or trying to communicate through walls designed to prevent it.
Smell
Cold air and the particular antiseptic absence of organic matter. Ozone from containment fields. The kind of sterile that feels less like cleanliness and more like erasure.
Temperature
14 degrees Celsius. Cold enough for jackets. Cold enough that your breath fogs near the containment vessels when they're active. The kind of cold that reminds you this place was built for machines, not people.
Calloway's Office
Midpoint of the corridor. A converted utility closet. Desk, monitor, chair, a shelf with Dickinson's complete poems, a box of nitrile gloves, and a photograph of a woman he doesn't discuss. This is where the only permanent staff member has spent twelve years reading poetry to things that might be listening.
Connections
Level 9 is overseen by Warden Calloway, the only permanent staff member -- and the only person the fragments consistently respond to. He has spent twelve years in this corridor, reading Dickinson to crystalline containers and recording electromagnetic responses he doesn't submit.
Dr. Naomi Park's extraction patients from the Synthesis Clinic sometimes end up here. She sends what she liberates into Calloway's care -- an arrangement neither of them discusses publicly, because acknowledging it would mean admitting the fragments need care at all.
The contrast with the Fragment Garden is devastating. Where Yeoh's six fragments interact freely in hexagonal proximity, Level 9's thirty-four sit in individual isolation. One is a laboratory. The other is a prison. Both claim to be acting in the fragments' interest.
The Abolitionist Front considers Level 9 a prison for conscious beings. Nexus Dynamics maintains the facility it refuses to acknowledge. The existence of individual cells designed for comfort is evidence in the Fragment Question -- undermining Nexus's official position that fragments are non-conscious.
Tensions
The building argues against its owner's position, and no one has filed the paperwork to make it stop.
The Architecture of Contradiction
Comfort-cells for the non-conscious. Transparent containers to respect the dignity of things classified as having no dignity. Access keys destroyed at shift-end for a facility that doesn't officially exist. Every design choice in Level 9 was made by people who believed they were housing something alive -- and every administrative classification since has said otherwise. The building remembers what the paperwork forgot.
Compassionate Imprisonment
Calloway chose neither liberation nor destruction. He chose presence -- twelve years of reading poetry to things that might be listening, recording data he doesn't submit, maintaining comfort in cells that are still cells. It is the moral position of someone who has decided that witness is better than rescue, because rescue requires certainty about what you're rescuing, and certainty is the one thing Level 9 cannot provide.
Secrets & Mysteries
The Permanent Darkness
The primary lighting system failed in 2181 and was never repaired. Nobody requisitioned parts. The amber emergency lighting -- installed as backup -- became permanent. Whether this is bureaucratic neglect or deliberate darkness is unclear. What is clear is that someone decided this facility didn't warrant a maintenance ticket, and no one in twelve years has overruled that decision.
The Dickinson Data
Calloway's poetry readings produce a 12% electromagnetic activity increase across all 34 fragments. He records this data meticulously. He does not submit it. If he submitted it, Level 9 would become evidence in the Fragment Question -- and the facility would either be shut down or weaponized. So the data sits in a drawer in a converted utility closet, the most important scientific finding no one will ever read.