📘 Fragment X‑2 – Reactivated Corridor

Cast

Main Characters

• Pieter Swanepoel (“The Archivist”)
  Grey‑zone fixer with a long memory and a trail of ethical compromises. Skilled in port auditing, but no longer plays for clean teams.

• Zahra Tembe
  A principled but increasingly disillusioned customs officer. Once idealistic, now driven by damage control more than hope.

Secondary Characters
None introduced in this segment.

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Location: Decommissioned Control Room, Berth 12 Complex
Time: 14:40 SAST

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The corridor to the old control room hadn’t been swept in months—perhaps years. Paint peeled off the walls in dusty curls, and the overhead lights flickered like they hadn’t decided whether to die or wake up. A broken camera dangled by its cord from the ceiling, lens pointing uselessly at the floor.

Zahra (brushing cobwebs from a switchboard): “This was deactivated when I joined. Nobody admitted it still had access.”
Pieter (dryly): “It doesn’t. Not through official networks.”

He reached behind a rusted panel and flipped a buried switch. One of the terminals hummed weakly to life—fuzzy and yellow‑toned like an old CRT monitor.

Pieter: “This system predates most digital customs platforms. It was patched to mimic log entries, but it can still read embedded RFID echoes.”

Zahra leaned in. Onscreen was a simple manifest form. It blinked:
Container ID: 010‑SGX‑D32
Timestamp: 14 July 2025 – 02:17 SAST
Declared Contents: Agricultural Inputs
Weight Declared: —
Inspector ID: DT‑1284

She stared at the final field.

Zahra: “That’s my father’s login. They didn’t even try to hide it.”

Pieter’s fingers hovered over the keyboard.

Pieter: “No physical stamp. No weighbridge data. It’s just metadata—just enough to pass.”

Zahra turned away and stared at the wall. Someone had once scrawled a checklist in permanent marker:
“Manifest – RFID – Entry Log – Weigh Certificate – Seal Verification”
All of it bypassed.

Zahra: “How does something like this move through two ports and clear customs?”
Pieter: “Same way it always did. Half the work is done by ghost entries. The other half is done by people looking the other way.”

She approached the file cabinet in the corner and forced it open. Inside were unshredded printouts—some dating back to 2012. One sheet caught her eye. She unfolded it. An old audit trail. The same container ID appeared on a list marked KHL - Dormant Corridor BETA. Handwritten next to it: “Suspect seal – flagged by O.B.”

Zahra (quietly): “Omar Bensaid…”

Pieter’s eyes narrowed.

Pieter: “That note wasn’t supposed to survive. It proves he logged it before Mauritius.”

She folded the sheet carefully and placed it in her bag.

Zahra: “It’s not just resurfacing. It was preserved. Someone was waiting for the right moment to reactivate it.”

Pieter: “Or they never really stopped. Just went quiet long enough for us to look away.”

A slow hum filled the room—the terminal now syncing briefly with a shadow feed from JAFZA.

Zahra bent over the display again. Another field had just updated.

Next Port of Call: Jebel Ali Free Zone (JAFZA)
ETA: 17 July, 01:50 GST
Declared Contents: Dried Cassava Meal (Non‑Perishable)

She stared at the mislabeling, her voice flat.

Zahra: “Cassava meal? Really?”
Pieter: “The old joke: dry goods leave dry trails. No sniffers, no rot, no questions.”

Zahra clicked off the monitor.

Zahra: “We need to talk to someone who’s seen this corridor from the other end. JAFZA. Dubai.”

Pieter raised a brow.

Pieter: “I might still have a contact. But she won’t talk unless she sees the entire log. And she doesn’t trust anyone with a badge.”

Zahra: “Then you go first. I’ll follow—off‑record.”

Pieter: “It’ll be off‑everything.”

They stood in the silence that followed. The wind outside rattled a loose shutter. A container ship’s horn cut through the quiet.

Whatever corridor they were following—it was moving again. And they were already running behind.