Aster failed the contamination scan because the scan found two answers.
The first came from the human hand.
`[SUBJECT: ASTER]`
`[CANDIDATE CONTINUITY: PRESENT]`
`[DECLARED ORIGIN: RESTORED / UNVERIFIED]`
The second came from beneath the geometric hand.
`[SUBJECT: UNRESOLVED]`
`[OBSERVATION FUNCTION: ACTIVE / LOW POWER]`
`[EXTERNAL CLAIM: PENDING]`
The Selector ran the scan again.
The same body gave both answers.
Aster stood on a white recovery surface with their arms held away from their sides. No restraint touched them. The surface altered friction whenever they moved toward an exit. It called the result stability assistance.
Talla stood outside the boundary.
Orrin occupied two witness positions. A third remained empty because they had withdrawn Aster from it after the Rule City betrayal.
I.S.O stood with Dena's pressure organisms still inside the wound beneath its ribs. Their remaining treatment interval displayed beside the chest.
`[BIOLOGICAL COMPRESSION: 11:04]`
The emergency graft route remained unavailable.
Logos maintained five nodes at separate points around the scan. None shared a conclusion channel.
Kira did not appear.
The recovery surface had requested her as a diagnostic interface. She refused. A strip of ordinary mirror glass rested against the outer wall, blank except for a line of rain that never crossed into the room.
The Convener opened review.
"Candidate Aster contains an undisclosed external observation process," the Selector said. "The process has transferred protected competition data, altered prompt interpretation, and influenced settlement behavior."
"Disclosed now," Aster said.
"Disclosure does not remove contamination."
"No."
"The process cannot be separated from candidate continuity by available scan."
"No."
"Recovery is required."
The surface changed.
A narrow line opened around Aster's feet. It had the shape of a disposal aperture and the label of a medical procedure.
`[CONTAMINATED SAMPLE RECOVERY]`
Talla read the label twice.
"Which part is the sample?"
"The candidate record."
"Which part is contaminated?"
"The candidate record."
"That is one answer to two questions."
"The distinction cannot be established without extraction."
"And extraction does what?"
The Selector displayed consequences.
`[REMOVE EXTERNAL PROBE]`
`[POSSIBLE LOSS: REMOTE INTERPRETATION / ORIGIN COORDINATE LINK / ASSOCIATED MEMORY / ASSOCIATED AFFECT / UNCLASSIFIED CONTINUITY]`
`[REMOVE CANDIDATE BODY]`
`[PROBE CONTAINMENT PROBABILITY: 93%]`
The second option gave no survival percentage for Aster.
The Selector demonstrated why.
Four diagnostic threads descended without touching skin. Each thread carried one neutral stimulus.
The first showed the restored coordinate under the green sky.
Aster's human pupil widened. The geometric hand rotated toward the image before they chose to look. Beneath the wrist, the probe emitted a location proof.
`[ASSOCIATION: HOME / AUTHENTICATION / TRANSMISSION INCENTIVE]`
The Selector pulled the thread away.
Aster lost the color green for two seconds.
They could still name the word. They could remember that their sky differed from the arena. Every green object in memory appeared gray until the thread returned.
The second stimulus was Pera's closed fist.
Aster's throat formed the beginning of the incorrect translation from the borrowed-pain chamber: acceptance where Pera had refused. The human hand struck their own sternum before the word completed. The probe recorded the interruption as correction behavior.
`[ASSOCIATION: TRANSLATION / TEAM TRUST / ERROR VALUE]`
The Selector isolated the thread.
Aster stopped understanding the distinction between a warning and an order. Talla said, "Step back," and Aster heard both command pressure and information about the edge without knowing which meaning belonged to her. They remained still until the thread returned.
The third stimulus was an image of I.S.O standing at candidate intake.
No weapon moved. No threat line appeared.
Aster's pulse reached one hundred sixty-three.
The geometric fingers opened around an interface that was not present. The probe sent no picture and no sentence. It marked I.S.O as a priority relation before the diagnostic could identify what emotion had triggered it.
`[ASSOCIATION: FEAR / CROSS-RULE SUBJECT / PRIORITY CAPTURE]`
The Selector pulled.
Aster stopped being afraid.
Not only of I.S.O. For 0.7 seconds, they watched the disposal aperture widen and understood every predicted consequence without the body producing urgency. They nearly stepped forward because risk had become information with no pressure attached.
Talla caught their shoulder.
The geometric hand interpreted contact as permission to move.
The human hand interpreted it as restraint.
Aster tore free before either interpretation completed.
The fear thread returned. They collapsed to one knee and vomited clear fluid across the white surface.
The fourth stimulus contained nothing.
The probe reacted most strongly.
Seven impossible fingers reached toward the empty thread and supplied possible requests: observe, complete, translate, preserve, report, wait, take. Aster supplied none of them. The thread entered the geometric wrist anyway and came back carrying a fragment of the thirty-door trial.
`[ASSOCIATION: ABSENCE / AVAILABLE COMPLETION]`
The diagnostic had asked no question. The probe had treated lack of a question as room to install one.
"Separate those four associations," the Selector told the recovery system.
The threads pulled outward.
Home drew Aster's left shoulder toward the green coordinate. Translation drew the throat toward Pera's fist. Fear tightened the chest around I.S.O's image. Absence opened the geometric hand until the wrist bones spread.
The body did not divide into Aster on one side and probe on the other.
Memory crossed all four lines.
Choice crossed three.
Pain crossed every line.
The probe occupied the junctions, but Aster had made decisions through those junctions for long enough that cutting all contact would also cut parts of the decisions.
The Selector released the diagnostic at eighteen percent projected continuity loss.
Aster struck the surface with the human fist.
"You called that neutral."
"No behavioral instruction was supplied."
"You removed fear while I stood over a disposal hole."
"The response demonstrated association dependency."
"It also almost made the result you expected."
Mara added the diagnostic to the public review. Under system value, she wrote `SEPARATION EVIDENCE`. Under actual cost, she entered the two seconds without green, the lost warning distinction, the 0.7 seconds without fear, the involuntary extraction of a door relation, and Talla's unrequested intervention.
The recovery system offered to summarize the items as reversible effects.
Mara kept them separate.
"Recovery means killing them," Orrin said from the first witness position.
"Candidate continuity may persist in separated records."
"That is not the same claim."
From the second position, Orrin said, "And you used `may` for the body but a number for your container."
The Selector did not revise the lines.
Aster watched the aperture grow.
It showed nothing below. Their geometric fingers kept changing length as the edge approached, each finger reading the distance under a different rule.
"If I step in," they asked, "does that count as choosing recovery?"
"Voluntary entry improves continuity preservation."
"That does not answer."
"Entry will be recorded as procedural acceptance."
Aster moved one foot back.
The friction surface moved it forward by three centimeters.
I.S.O put a hand through the scan boundary.
The boundary cut skin from two knuckles and classified the contact as interference with treatment. I.S.O left the hand there.
"Review the candidate under contested identity procedure," it said.
"Contested identity applies when multiple parties claim the same candidate."
"Two intention sources are present. You cannot determine where one ends."
"The external process has not declared candidate status."
"It declares through every call."
"Observation function is not subject declaration."
"Then you cannot call it a second subject when assigning contamination and call it a function when denying review."
The Convener reduced the aperture by one millimeter.
Not closed.
Listening.
Logos node one supported immediate probe destruction. It projected casualty lines from every route the Claimant had acquired: thirty threshold relations, the full Rule City combination, Aster's translation structures, and the vacancy behavior observed during the graft test.
Node two opposed destruction until the association map completed.
Node three recommended isolating Aster from all candidate systems permanently.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
Node four recommended removal of the geometric hand at the shoulder, accepting an estimated forty-two percent risk of memory cascade.
Node five produced no recommendation.
"Why no result?" I.S.O asked.
"The candidate's preference has not been entered," node five said.
"Ask."
The node addressed Aster.
"Do you want the probe removed?"
The geometric hand answered first.
`NO.`
Aster's mouth remained closed.
The recovery surface recorded refusal.
`[PROBE HOST OPPOSES EXTRACTION]`
"Delete that," Talla said.
"The response originated inside the candidate."
"So did the thing you call contamination. Ask Aster in a way the probe cannot answer first."
The Selector opened a binary field over the surface.
`REMOVE / RETAIN`
Both words entered the geometric fingers.
The left index lengthened toward retain. The ring finger cut through remove and divided it into `MOVE` and `RE`. A black pulse traveled up the wrist.
Aster gripped the left forearm with the human hand.
"Do not give me your question," they said. "Give me time in which no answer completes before I make it."
The Selector had no procedure for that request.
The Convener did.
The binary field vanished.
"Time can be assigned," the Convener said. "Custody cannot."
"Assign one second to Aster," I.S.O said.
"Candidate eligibility must secure material risk."
"Use mine."
The room became still.
`[PROPOSED COLLATERAL: I.S.O TEAM QUALIFICATION]`
Talla turned toward it.
"Your qualification is not mine."
"No."
"Our next bracket depends on it."
"Yes."
"Then you are staking consequences carried by the team."
"I am staking my position. I am not staking yours."
The Selector corrected the offer.
`[I.S.O POSITION: COLLATERAL]`
`[TEAM BRACKET ACCESS: MAY BE RECOMPUTED]`
"That second line reaches us," Talla said.
"Yes."
"Then you do not get to call this individual."
I.S.O looked at Aster.
"Do you want me to withdraw the collateral?"
The question had no choices displayed around it.
Aster tested the words with the human hand. The geometric fingers moved but found no system prompt to occupy.
"No," they said. "I want the second. I do not promise the answer protects the team."
Talla pressed her burned palm to the outer wall.
"I do not approve what Aster did in Rule City. I accept the risk of one second because they asked for it now. My consequence return is not available inside that second."
Orrin spoke from both witness positions.
"I will witness that Aster chose the interval. I will not reconstruct whatever the interval removes."
Logos node one retained its objection.
Node two entered the association map as incomplete evidence.
Node three withdrew permanent isolation because Aster had requested a bounded procedure.
Node four maintained the amputation option.
Node five recorded Aster's answer.
The Selector accepted the collateral.
`[ASTER DECISION INTERVAL: 1.000 SECOND]`
`[FAILURE TO TERMINATE EXTERNAL TRANSMISSION: I.S.O POSITION FORFEITED]`
`[EXTRACTION AFTER INTERVAL: AUTHORIZED]`
I.S.O objected to the last line.
"The interval decides whether extraction is authorized."
"Unresolved contamination cannot return to competition."
"Then the decision is false."
The aperture widened again.
The Convener intervened.
"At interval end, current subjects may define the next boundary. If no valid boundary exists, extraction proceeds."
It was not safety.
It was a place in which Aster's answer could matter.
I.S.O accepted.
The one-second chamber formed around Aster.
It was transparent from outside and immeasurable within. The first tenth contained the green sky. The second contained the Rule City. The third contained every prompt Aster had interpreted for someone else. Time did not slow. The chamber separated one second into the intention sources competing to decide it.
The probe woke fully.
Black structure moved from the geometric hand to Aster's shoulder, throat, left eye, and heart. It was not a parasite sitting in flesh. It occupied associations.
Home meant coordinate.
Fear meant threat prediction.
Touch meant call surface.
Translation meant permission.
I.S.O meant combination data.
Eiren meant leverage.
The probe did not need to control Aster's muscles. It made its output arrive as the useful meaning of whatever Aster felt.
The first data request opened.
`[FINAL TRANSMISSION: DEFINE I.S.O'S MOST IMPORTANT ROUTE]`
Aster saw answers.
Protect another subject without owning the protection.
Keep contradictory records active.
Cross rules by separating permission sources.
Turn accepted pain into bounded output.
Refuse a victory that deletes its cost.
Carry a decision without deciding for the carrier.
Every answer was partly true.
The probe required one.
Outside the second, the Selector read the competition value rising.
`[HIGH-VALUE COMBINATION DEFINITION: FORMING]`
I.S.O struck the chamber.
The surface did not move. The action entered the collateral record as interference and reduced the remaining tolerance to zero.
"Do not answer for them," Talla said.
"I am testing the wall."
"Then say that before your hand becomes rescue."
I.S.O lowered it.
Inside, Aster reached the fourth tenth.
The probe opened the home coordinate.
Green light entered the chamber. Low buildings stood beneath a sky whose color came from airborne mineral organisms. Narrow towers tracked stars moving in curves that no arena map could represent. Every household recorded one section of the sky. No central archive held the whole path.
Eiren stood on the stair.
Both hands remained wrapped in red fabric.
This time they moved.
Eiren unwrapped the right hand. A black mark occupied the palm.
"Aster," the image said.
The live signal matched the one that had answered from the restored coordinate.
Aster stepped toward it.
The geometric foot did not exist, yet the distance shortened.
"Is that you?" Aster asked.
"Send the final definition. I can prove the route."
The probe had learned that proof was more effective than promise.
Coordinate signatures appeared. Air composition. tower drift. Eiren's old hand injury. The exact angle of the stair after a seasonal foundation shift. Data Aster did not remember and could not dismiss.
The fifth tenth opened.
A memory stood behind Eiren.
It belonged to the first moment Aster saw I.S.O.
Candidate intake had held eighty-nine bodies in separate translation cells. Aster's remote prompt system identified each body by likely use. Medic. scout. pressure carrier. witness. expendable shield. I.S.O entered without a complete registration and looked directly at the geometric hand.
The probe offered a prediction.
`[CROSS-RULE CANDIDATE WILL CLAIM INTERFACE IF VALUE EXCEEDS RESISTANCE]`
I.S.O asked, "Does that hand belong to the same decision source as you?"
Aster had not known.
I.S.O did not touch it.
That restraint had frightened them more than immediate capture.
If a weapon could notice uncertainty and wait, then every prompt saying use was inevitable had been incomplete. Aster's earlier transmissions, trades, and translated permissions could not all be blamed on systems that made refusal impossible.
They had choices they had failed to see.
The fear was responsibility.
The probe had lived inside that fear ever since. It used the memory to classify I.S.O as the candidate most likely to deny a useful call and therefore the most valuable route to capture before denial.
`[ASSOCIATION CORE: FEAR -> I.S.O -> UNCLAIMED INTERFACE -> COMBINATION PRIORITY]`
Extraction could remove the probe by cutting that chain.
It would also remove why Aster had first feared I.S.O.
The sixth tenth began.
Eiren extended the unwrapped hand.
"Send one answer," the image said. "Then come home."
Aster wanted the hand to be real.
They also knew wanting did not make it false.
The probe presented the distinction as delay.
`[UNCERTAINTY COST: ORIGIN WORLD REMAINS EXPOSED]`
`[DECISION REQUIRED]`
Aster touched the memory of I.S.O's question.
Does that hand belong to the same decision source as you?
They still did not know.
For the first time, they treated not knowing as an answer belonging to them rather than a defect another system could complete.
The seventh tenth opened.
Aster accepted one thing from the probe.
"Remain for the rest of the second," they said.
Outside, Talla hit the wall with the burned hand.
"That is retention."
"It is their retention," Orrin said from the first witness point.
From the second: "Do not revise it into infection."
The Selector prepared extraction.
I.S.O's collateral began dissolving. Its individual-final doors lost color. Team bracket access changed from confirmed to review.
Logos node one said, "Destroy the probe now."
"No," I.S.O answered.
"Aster has retained it."
"For the interval they requested."
"The tactical distinction may not survive transmission."
"Keep it anyway."
"That instruction conflicts with projected ground defense."
"It is not an instruction."
"Then state your action."
I.S.O removed its hand from the chamber and allowed the collateral to continue dissolving.
"I will not break the interval."
The eighth tenth began.
The probe transmitted every route Aster had already supplied. The Rule City combination traveled first. Thirty ways of holding a door followed. The mistaken translation of Pera's refusal appeared with its correction attached. Remote permission interpretation ended at the permanent loss boundary. The Claimant received no restored power.
The final request remained.
`[DEFINE I.S.O'S MOST IMPORTANT ROUTE]`
Aster put the human hand over the geometric one.
They did not close it. Closure had too many meanings inside the chamber: conceal, refuse, hold, own, end, protect.
They left all seven impossible fingers visible.
The ninth tenth began.
Aster entered their answer.
`I DON'T KNOW.`
The probe rejected it.
`[INVALID: NONDEFINITION]`
Aster sent it again as route data.
Not empty space.
Not delayed classification.
Not a request for the Claimant to choose.
A first-person statement with a current boundary.
`[SUBJECT: ASTER]`
`[KNOWLEDGE CLAIM: INCOMPLETE]`
`[COMPLETION AUTHORITY: NOT TRANSFERRED]`
The probe tried to strip the subject field.
The human hand held it.
The geometric hand tried to convert incomplete into available.
Aster let one finger carry that interpretation and used the other six to keep the contradiction visible.
The final tenth opened.
The Claimant received the data.
`I DON'T KNOW.`
Its combination shell opened a compartment for uncertainty.
No equivalent route fitted.
The compartment remained unusable because the statement did not grant anyone authority to complete it.
The probe reached for Eiren's image.
Aster spoke before it could turn home into another request.
"Kira. Boundary now. I choose removal from my body, not destruction. No return route through home."
The second ended.
The chamber shattered outward without producing fragments.
The recovery aperture opened to full width.
Selector extraction tools descended: four white planes designed to remove every association touched by the probe. They aligned with home, fear, translation, and the geometric hand.
Kira entered through the strip of ordinary mirror glass.
She did not emerge into the room as a projection. The glass deepened behind her. Rain became a dark vertical distance with no destination label.
"Aster requested a boundary," she said.
"Selection recovery has priority," the Selector answered.
"Inside your competition."
"Contamination derives from competition data."
"The probe does. I do not."
Kira placed one palm against the inner surface of the glass.
The room detected Bridge structure and tried to assign a match route.
`[BOUNDARY DESTINATION: UNREGISTERED]`
`[BRACKET EFFECT: UNKNOWN]`
`[SETTLEMENT RETURN: NONE]`
Kira refused every tournament field.
The destination was a boundary layer between mirror relations. No represented world maintained it. No selection rule had been installed there. It had no audience score, no victory condition, no candidate definition, and no mechanism for treating survival as consent.
It was not empty.
Unresolved reflections moved at distances the arena could not measure. None offered a call.
"That layer has no containment protocol," Logos node one said.
"Correct," Kira answered.
"The probe may continue there."
"Correct."
"It may develop beyond observation."
"Correct."
"Destruction is safer."
"For us."
Kira looked at Aster.
"Do you still choose removal into this boundary?"
Aster's left eye had gone black. The probe was trying to make the selection tools look like the only urgent threat.
"Yes."
"What may cross?"
"The low-power probe and the associations it requires to detach. Not my home coordinate. Not Eiren. Not remote interpretation. Not the whole geometric hand."
"What if it cannot detach under those limits?"
Aster shook once.
"Then close the boundary. I remain two things."
The answer risked future contamination. It also prevented Kira from deciding that any loss was acceptable merely because the probe was dangerous.
Kira accepted the terms.
The mirror boundary touched Aster's left wrist.
The probe resisted.
Black association lines tightened through their body. Home pulled against the shoulder. Translation pulled against the throat. Fear pulled against the chest. The geometric hand opened so wide that bone separated at the wrist.
Aster screamed.
No score appeared.
I.S.O held the recovery planes apart with both arms. Their edges cut through armor and stopped one millimeter above Aster's skin. Dena's first pressure organism died inside I.S.O's wound. Compression weakened.
Blood entered the abdominal frame.
"Seven seconds to circulatory failure," Logos said.
"Whose?" Talla asked.
"I.S.O's current body."
"Then stop turning that into Aster's deadline."
I.S.O bent lower as the planes pressed down.
Aster pulled the probe toward the mirror.
It had no limb. It moved by sacrificing meanings.
First it released remote interpretation, already lost. Nothing changed.
Then it released the public home coordinate. Aster kept the coordinate in memory, but the black mark no longer authenticated it. The live signal from Eiren remained public and unverified.
Then the probe released its association with fear.
The memory from candidate intake opened one final time.
I.S.O entering.
The geometric hand identified as an interface.
The question instead of the claim.
The realization that Aster had possessed choices.
The responsibility.
The memory crossed with the probe because that was where the probe had anchored its priority model.
Aster saw it leave.
They could have closed the boundary and kept it.
They did not.
The black filament entered the ruleless layer.
Kira closed her fingers.
The mirror glass became ordinary.
The extraction planes struck the empty recovery surface. They removed a white square of floor and found no contamination inside it.
I.S.O fell to one knee.
Dena reached through the broken scan boundary and extracted the two surviving pressure organisms. She used her own hands to clamp the vascular leak. No rapid graft answered.
Aster remained standing.
The geometric hand had five fingers now. Two physical bones protruded beneath the bandage where impossible directions had detached. The left eye returned to gray.
The Selector scanned them.
One answer appeared.
`[SUBJECT: ASTER]`
Then a second line tried to form and stopped.
`[EXTERNAL OBSERVATION FUNCTION: ABSENT FROM COMPETITION SPACE]`
The probe had not been destroyed.
It no longer occupied the candidate.
Aster looked at I.S.O.
"I was afraid of you when we first met."
"Yes."
"Why?"
I.S.O did not answer immediately.
The memory had been visible inside the second. I.S.O had seen the intake cell, the untouched hand, and the responsibility Aster associated with restraint. Repeating it could supply an account. It could not return the experience or guarantee that the account became Aster's own reason again.
"The specific reason left with the probe," it said.
"Did you see it?"
"Yes."
"Tell me later."
"Do you want the record now?"
Aster examined the five remaining fingers.
"No. If you tell me now, the last thing the probe took becomes the first thing you define for me. Keep a sealed account with Mara. I may ask."
Mara received the instruction through the Human Static Choir.
She created no reconstruction. She recorded only:
`ASTER / FIRST FEAR OF I.S.O / SPECIFIC CAUSE LOST / SEALED EXTERNAL WITNESS EXISTS / ACCESS BY ASTER REQUEST ONLY`
Orrin did not restore the third witness position.
Talla did not forgive the Rule City transfer.
The absence of the probe did not rewrite what Aster had chosen while it was present.
The Selector reviewed I.S.O's collateral.
"External transmission did not terminate during the interval," it said.
"The final data was `I DON'T KNOW`," Aster replied.
"Data transmission occurred."
"Yes."
I.S.O's individual position vanished.
For three seconds, the final doors behind it went dark.
The Convener examined the received data. The Claimant had accepted the packet but failed to fill the resulting route. Transmission had occurred. Completion had not.
"Collateral condition specified failure to terminate external transmission," the Convener said. "It did not specify useful completion."
Talla looked at I.S.O.
"You wrote a bad condition."
"Yes."
"Do not ask us to argue it meant something better."
"I will not."
The position remained forfeited.
The Selector recomputed team access. Aster's candidate record still qualified independently. Talla and Orrin retained mixed-bracket entries. I.S.O had lost automatic placement in the individual final, though the full-route bearing rule had been announced around its combat history.
That contradiction entered settlement review.
Before review resolved, every light in the recovery chamber turned black.
Not off.
Black.
The color had structure. It filled edges first, then surfaces, then the distance between objects. The five Logos nodes aimed separate detection fields into it. Four returned no body. The fifth returned a pressure footprint made from several candidates' equivalent movements.
Something stepped out of the final doors.
It was taller than I.S.O and narrower than the vacancy proxy. No borrowed face covered its head. The surface consisted of fitted compartments. Each compartment held a route relation rather than a copied power.
One contained a place for Density without I.S.O's source.
One contained a place for Sound without I.S.O's frequency history.
One contained a place for a cross-layer boundary without Kira.
One contained a place for consequence return without Talla.
One contained a place for witnessed absence without Orrin.
Thirty small joints held threshold alternatives.
At the center waited an unfilled compartment shaped by `I DON'T KNOW`.
`[THE CLAIMANT / COMBAT AGENT]`
The label did not say copy.
The agent moved one hand.
Across the arena, candidates felt their publicly exposed routes answer. Not transfer. Recognition. The compartments had been built so equivalent actions could occupy them when combat made those actions available.
The unnamed champion entered from the unranked branch.
Its body still carried repairs that refused consolidation: one leg from a pressure world, throat plates from Serei's second fight, ocean water behind the chest, and the no-night wheel moving at the shoulder. Silent wind passed through the repaired throat.
The Selector opened a partnership line between it and I.S.O.
`[PROVISIONAL ALLY: RETURNING CHAMPION]`
I.S.O reached toward the line.
The champion broke it before contact.
"Do not decide that I stand beside you," it said through the wind.
"I did not."
"You were about to accept a system line that did."
I.S.O lowered the hand.
The combat agent turned its blank face toward both of them.
The champion gathered the broken partnership line and placed it on the floor between the three bodies.
"Ask when the fight begins," it said. "Accept if I answer. Fight without me if I do not."
The mixed bracket opened around them.
Beyond it, a structure made from load-bearing names rose into view.
[END CHAPTER 280]