6. Chapter Six
Chapter Six
MIRO
Percy’s display throws amber light across the workstation in shifting patterns, and the audit data scrolling beneath my fingers is the most complicated architecture I’ve touched since Helix Corp.
I’ve been at this since the lights shifted from the Warrens’ night cycle into morning.
Sleep didn’t happen. It rarely does in unfamiliar places.
New environments come with unfamiliar sounds, unfamiliar routines, too many unknowns for my brain to ignore.
By the time I’d identified every noise in the ventilation system and mapped the quickest route from the apartment to the nearest emergency exit, the lights were changing and there seemed little point pretending I was going to rest.
The bed behind me is better than anything I ever had in the Splits.
Real linens. Actual woven fabric instead of synthetic blends designed to survive industrial laundering.
I stared at the luminous ceiling panels, listening to the filtration unit and trying not to think about how good the air tasted.
Clean air. Real food still settling in my stomach from last night.
A workstation with integrated displays that make my jury-rigged setup back home look primitive.
Helix gave me those things too, once. The office with a view. The expensive chair designed to support twelve-hour workdays. Coffee that didn’t taste like burnt chemicals. A salary that meant my parents stopped checking their account balances before buying groceries.
I pull my attention back to the hologram before the memory can settle. Comfort has a purpose. It always does. Give people enough of it and they stop looking too closely at the systems providing it. The nicer the cage, the easier it becomes to forget it’s a cage at all.
“Talk to me, Perce.” I tap his casing twice and lean closer. “What are we looking at in the eastern cell junctions?”
He chirps and the projection expands between us. The network substrate unfolds in layers, amber annotations glowing against the blue framework of Zavin’s original architecture.
It’s beautiful.
Which is annoying, because it’s also a disaster.
The vulnerability runs through every junction point in the system. Yesterday I saw the physical hardware for myself, the connection nodes hidden beneath all the compartmentalization, and the infrastructure matches what Percy and I pulled from the schematics.
The hardware is old. Older than most of the network layered over the top of it.
Each junction node still maintains its own local buffer, keeping a physical record of every handoff that passes through.
These logs sit on storage that was never connected to the central monitoring systems, a relic from an earlier generation of infrastructure.
By modern standards, they’re effectively invisible. Nobody uses them. Nobody needs to. The live network reports activity in real time, and the local buffers just keep quietly recording in the background. As far as House Sethrak’s systems are concerned, they’re little more than forgotten redundancy.
Every cell shares the same routing layer. Buried deep enough that most people would never know it’s there. Deep enough that whoever designed the system probably forgot about it years ago.
Whoever is bleeding his network isn’t fighting the architecture. They’re using it.
The substrate layer sits so far beneath the operational systems it may as well be invisible.
Whoever is doing this knows exactly where to walk and exactly where nobody is looking.
They’re moving through the network the same way I move through unsecured systems. Quietly. Leaving nothing obvious behind.
“We’re going to need the junction access logs.” I highlight a cluster of anomalies in the eastern cells and flick the data toward Percy. “The handoff records between cells four through nine.”
Percy chirps.
“Yes, I’m sure.”
I zoom in on the traffic patterns. The discrepancy jumps out immediately. Once I noticed it, I couldn’t stop seeing it.
“Look at the load distribution. The western junctions are balanced. Every cell is producing roughly what you’d expect and the traffic evens out across the network.” My fingertip traces the eastern nodes. “These aren’t.”
The heavier traffic forms a faint signature across the projection. Not enough to trigger alerts. But enough to matter.
I expand the routing data and study what’s spreading in front of me.
The more I look at it, the less I like it.
The excess traffic is real. It’s not a reporting error and it’s not an operational anomaly.
Something is moving through the network that shouldn’t be there, slipping beneath the monitoring systems entirely.
“That’s how they’re doing it.”
Percy’s hologram shifts as he processes the conclusion.
The substrate layer sits underneath everything else, buried so deep most operators would never think to look at it.
Anyone monitoring the standard systems would see exactly what they’re expected to see: routine operations, normal traffic, nothing worth investigating.
Meanwhile, something else is moving through the architecture unnoticed, hidden in a place the network itself has forgotten exists.
I lean back in my chair and rub at my eyes.
The filtration unit hums softly behind me.
Every breath fills my lungs without the metallic bite that’s been part of the air for as long as I can remember.
I’ve been here less than a day and my body has already noticed the difference.
The headache that followed me through the Splits for weeks has faded to a dull shadow.
My thoughts are moving faster. Cleaner. I’ve spent the entire morning working through audit data without losing my place once.
The realization leaves an unpleasant taste in my mouth.
I like feeling better, breathing air that doesn’t hurt.
And the second I admit that, my brain starts trying to connect the improvement to the man who brought me here.
The gratitude trying to take root under my ribs sets every warning instinct I have on edge. He gave me this for a reason. I’ve spent too much of my life watching powerful people buy loyalty with things that should never have been luxuries in the first place.
The door opens behind me without a knock. The temperature in the room shifts.
I don’t turn.
Instead, I track him by sound. His footsteps are already familiar, which is irritating in ways I don’t want to examine too closely.
There’s nothing hurried about the way he moves.
No hesitation. No need to announce himself.
The air shifts before he reaches me, warmth rolling ahead of him until I can feel it against the back of my neck and along my bare arms.
Sethrai run hot.
I know the biological explanation. Knowing it doesn’t make it any less distracting.
“You’re early,” I say, keeping my attention on the screen.
“You’re already working.”
Footsteps stop beside the workstation. A moment later something clicks softly against the desk.
“The access logs you requested.”
That gets my attention.
I turn and immediately spot the data chip sitting beside Percy’s casing.
Zavin’s hand rests next to it for a second before he pulls away.
My gaze catches on the scales across the back of his fingers, iridescent bronze beneath the amber glow.
The light breaks across them in flashes of gold and copper.
I look away before the observation can become something else.
The chip slides into Percy’s reader with a click.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet.”
He pulls a chair alongside the workstation and sits. I’ve seen him do this before. The posture looks relaxed at first glance, but there’s calculation underneath it. He’s careful about the space he takes up. Careful about the impression he leaves.
The problem becomes obvious the moment the files load.
Names are gone. Identifying markers stripped out. The timestamps are intact, along with the traffic volumes and routing data, but anything that connects the records to an actual operative has been scrubbed clean.
I scroll through the files, already spotting the gaps.
“I can still map the substrate activity from this.” I highlight a section of the log.
“Traffic volumes. Routing paths. Junction throughput.” My finger taps an empty section where a movement record should be.
“But if someone’s moving through the substrate, they’re crossing paths with legitimate traffic.
I need to know which movements belong to your people and which don’t. ”
“You don’t.”
I look up.
“The redactions protect operative identities.” He leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. The movement brings him closer, heat radiating from him strongly enough that I feel it along my side. “You don’t have clearance for that information.”
My shoulders tighten before I can stop them. The reaction arrives first. Recognition follows a heartbeat later. The words aren’t the same. The feeling is.
You don’t need to see that file, Miro. It’s above your clearance level.
Amir Okoro’s face across the conference table, his smile settling over the room like a lid dropping onto a pot.
Yuki stood by the door with her tablet clutched against her chest, smiling too widely.
A bruise flashed on her wrist when her sleeve slipped, gone again the moment she noticed and tugged it back down.
I exhale slowly and force my breathing to steady.
The memory loosens its grip. Clean air fills my lungs. The workstation glows in front of me. Percy hums softly beside my hand. Piece by piece, the room comes back into focus, familiar enough that I can anchor myself in it.
“I understand why the redactions are there.” I gesture at the data. “I’m just telling you they’re hiding the same thing your mole is hiding.”
I zoom in on the routing data. “Somebody’s moving through the spaces between your cells. That’s where the traffic is. That’s where the signature is.” I glance at him. “If I can’t see who’s supposed to be there, I can’t tell who’s not.”