Holding my breath, I ease into the lobby, hurry past the woman and her hyped-up charges and into a waiting elevator.

Please don’t let all this be for nothing, I think as I wave Isaac’s security ID in front of the scanner and hit the button for the eighth floor. The doors close. After what seems like an eternity, the elevator starts to rise.

The eighth floor is as still as a tomb as I step off the elevator and hurry to the door marked “ARCHIVES.” Isaac’s badge works its magic on the door lock there, too. A small red light next to the scanner turns from red to green. As I open the door, I can’t help but wonder—does the security guard downstairs get an alert when this door is opened? If so, I have to move fast.

After setting the alarm on my phone for five—no, ten minutes to search, I hit the light switch and step inside.

The room is filled with large metal cabinets that all appear to be marked with the status of City Pride Department Projects: “Current,” “Future,” “Completed,” and “Unexplored.” I pull open the drawer closest to me, one marked “Completed,” and find . . . paper.

Lots and lots of paper.

All grouped in individual folders marked by the project’s address.

All my life, I’ve heard that the government cares about the environment and that using paper was selfish—unpatriotic—bordering on treasonous. The government claimed to have electronically stored all records before recycling every scrap of paper in their possession. And yet, here this is.

Renu said paper records are impossible to hack. Looking at this room, I have to think that is the reason the city government has these documents stored here. To keep their secrets from people like the Stewards and now me.

I count the dozens of cabinets in this room, then throw open drawer after drawer. Every single one of them is crammed full. My mother came in here to search for something. I could search for hours and still not find it.

Feeling the seconds I’ve allowed myself ticking away, I slide out the first file in the front of the drawer and flip it open to examine the papers inside.

Blueprints for an apartment building. Color schemes and design concepts. Budgets and itemized lists of supplies and costs. None of it seems important until I get to a page with the names of the people who lived in the building being worked on. Next to most of the names was the word “returned.” A few were marked as “resettled.” But there was one followed by the word “transitioned.”

Transitioned? What did that mean?

I locate another apartment building project in the drawer and find four names with the “transitioned” distinction. And another with three. None explain what the term means, but a sick feeling grows as I pull out a file with blueprints for an abandoned building that was, according to surveys, too hard to repair. The site was turned into a park. I am about to put the folder back, since an abandoned building wouldn’t have a resident list, when I see a note at the bottom of the final page.