This record collects theories. Nothing here is confirmed canon; future chapters may prove any of it wrong.
Every cache the C-9 opens looks the same: a sealed Directorate crate with standard stencils and lot numbers, holding ammunition, repairs, energy or parts. Some were placed by Asterion’s scheduled supply drops. The rest are a mystery the Directorate prefers not to discuss.
# What is known
- In 2216 a survey platform recorded three sealed caches at intervals no vehicle had reached.
- Their lot numbers belong to batches still on Asterion’s shelves, seals intact.
- A forklift scratch on one original crate appears on its copy in the shaft.
- Since the blackout, the C-9 has found caches in every sector, including sectors the Directorate cannot reach.
# Explanations
The council publicly denies placing caches beyond the mapped route, which is true, and declines to speculate about who did. Commander Graf’s memorandum rejects theft, faked footage and hoaxes, and does not reject the theory that the shaft is copying what Asterion sends down. The U-3 “Foreman” sighting adds a fourth possibility: that something in the shaft is stocking them on purpose.
Why a system that attacks the carrier on every floor would also keep it supplied is the part nobody can answer. Ilyan Venn’s notebook offers an uncomfortable suggestion: an immune system that wants to learn an intruder’s shape needs the intruder to keep going.
Related articles
RECOVERED DOCUMENTDirectorate memorandum on cachesAn internal memo from Commander Graf to the Directorate council, 2216, on supply caches nobody admits to placing.ARCHIVE RECORDCredits and supply cachesThe salvage ledger that pays for everything, and the sealed caches along the route where credits become ammunition, repairs and new weapons.
UNVERIFIED REPORTUnconfirmed sightingsThree machines seen once each, on damaged footage, by single instruments. The archive keeps their records open.
WORKING THEORYExpedition theoriesThe immune response, the archive, the builders and the Heart: four ways of explaining the Rift, and the evidence for and against each.