Discovery of the evidence-room records tampering

The discovery of the evidence-room records tampering turns an ordinary security check into a break in the investigation of Simon Illyan’s damaged neurochip. While examining a record that falsely places him inside the ImpSec evidence room, Miles Vorkosigan finds a second, manipulated log and then an overlooked biological sample whose history connects it to Ser Galen’s Komarran network. The finding gives the investigation a concrete trail, but not yet a complete account of who altered the records or why.

The Access Check Becomes an Investigation

Miles begins by asking the duty sergeant to sit back while he takes over the desk and is given a tour. The sergeant’s access panel turns red: General Haroche’s order still lists Miles as not cleared. Miles recognizes the restriction as outdated, from a few weeks earlier, and tells the sergeant to seek authorization from Haroche’s office if necessary. The secretary sends approval with an apology once the problem is understood. This initial obstruction is a stale order, not the later falsification, but it places Miles at a desk where the system’s records are available to inspect.

The projected readout lists dates and times for Miles’s visits over nearly a decade, along with codes for items carried in and out. Its breadth makes the anomalous entry legible against a long routine history. Among the older transactions, Miles recognizes a safely lobotomized zvegan smart bomb and Cetagandan genetic samples, which he suspects are now under further investigation by Dr. Weddell. Then he notices a visit attributed to himself twelve weeks earlier. The record is not a vague mismatch: it assigns him to the evidence room on the day he returned from his last Dendarii mission.

Two Records, One False Timeline

The date matters because it was also the day Simon Illyan was away. The evidence-room system places Miles’s visit just after he reported to and left Illyan’s office, at a time when Miles recalls that he was walking home. The entry-desk log upstairs has been altered as well, extending his recorded departure from the building by half an hour. By contrast, the security records at Vorkosigan House preserve the actual time of his arrival there. Those accounts leave only a short interval in which the supposed visit could fit—and Miles knows he walked home rather than taking a groundcar.

The records therefore do not simply disagree: the upstairs log has been adjusted to support the evidence-room entry, while a separate record at Vorkosigan House preserves the conflicting timeline. Miles recognizes that someone has made his movements appear to match a visit that did not occur as recorded. His response to Ivan Vorpatril is that the ImpSec internal security system is lying to him. He also warns, in his own assessment, that the discrepancy might be either a crucial lead or a trap. The discovery establishes deliberate-looking coordination between records, but the evidence presented here does not identify who made the changes.

The Item Hidden in the Inventory

Miles’s attention shifts from the false visit to the evidence room’s contents. In the room’s inventory, buried among tens of thousands of items, he finds the record of a bioengineered apoptotic prokaryote. It is not a virus; as Miles explains to Ivan, it is a microorganism that consumes particular proteins, including proteins in neurochips. This identifies the item as the kind of agent that could damage Illyan’s neurochip and gives a physical object to the investigation that had previously centered on Illyan’s condition and the compromised records.

The inventory locates it precisely in Bin Twenty-Seven, Shelf Nine. The sample had remained there for nearly five years, since an officer from Komarran Affairs delivered it to the evidence room. It had been picked up by Imperial Counterintelligence in Vorbarr Sultana during an arrest sweep of Komarran terrorist cells associated with Ser Galen. Galen, by then dead, had been killed on Earth while attempting his final plot against the Barrayaran Imperium and in support of Komarran independence. The evidence thus connects the biological agent’s documented custody to an older counterintelligence operation; Miles calls the evidence-room inventory the place it came from last, carefully distinguishing its last recorded location from its original creation or use.

A Lead, Not a Complete Answer

The discovery changes the scale of the inquiry. A false record has made it appear that Miles entered the room on the day Illyan was away, and a related log has been adjusted to sustain that appearance. In the same room, an old sample with a plausible capacity to damage a neurochip appears in the inventory. Together, the records and the sample connect the current investigation to both the security system’s integrity and a prior case involving Komarran terrorist cells.

Miles does not treat the connection as proof of every suspected link. Ivan asks whether Mark, Miles’s clone brother, could be involved. Miles corrects Ivan’s use of the word clone to brother and says he does not see how Mark could be responsible, since Mark has been on Beta Colony for almost half a year and Miles’s Betan grandmother can confirm it. That exchange shows the lead immediately raising a possible personal connection without establishing one. What the discovery does establish is narrower and consequential: a neurochip-targeting prokaryote was held in ImpSec’s evidence room, its custody traced to the Ser Galen-related arrest sweep, and records now falsely associate Miles with the room on a critical day. The trail is concrete; responsibility for the tampering remains unresolved.