6. Chapter Six #2
Zavin doesn’t answer right away. The heat-sensing pits along his jaw are angled toward me, and I know he’s reading things I can’t hide. A spike in my pulse. The frustration warming my skin. Every physical reaction my body insists on broadcasting.
His expression doesn’t change. His eyes give away even less. Sitting across from him feels like playing cards with someone who can see my hand while keeping his own hidden under the table.
“You’re a contractor who’s been inside my network for less than forty-eight hours.” The tone stays calm, but the decision is already made. “Operative identities remain classified. Work with what you have.”
I stare at him. “I’m working with an incomplete data set.”
“Then work around it.”
I hold his gaze for a few seconds, looking for any sign that pushing harder will accomplish something.
The easy charm from last night is gone. No amused half-smile. No warmth. No casual conversation in the corridor. This is the man who runs an intelligence network spread across half a planet, and that version of him isn’t interested in negotiating.
I pull the redacted logs into Percy’s analysis framework and start building a pattern-isolation algorithm around the missing data.
“I’ll work with what you’ve given me. When the redactions become a problem, you’ll hear about it.”
“I’d expect nothing less.” I pretend not to hear the amusement in his voice and keep working.
His tone is still easy, but not in quite the same way as before. The attention he turns on me feels more focused somehow. More personal. I can’t point to anything specific. Not a word. Not an expression. If someone asked me what changed, I wouldn’t have an answer.
The feeling is familiar. It lands like a pattern anomaly does when I’m working. Nothing concrete. Nothing I can prove. Just the sense that something no longer fits where it should.
“Show me what you’ve found so far.” The warmth is still there when he says it. In his voice. In the way he leans toward the workstation. Like my analysis is suddenly the most interesting thing in the room.
Maybe it’s deliberate. Maybe it isn’t. Either way, I’m not interested in pulling on that thread.
I rotate Percy’s projection so he can see the full network render. Amber annotations glow across the blue framework of his architecture.
“The substrate vulnerability runs through every junction in the network. We confirmed that when we inspected the hardware yesterday.” I enlarge the eastern cluster and highlight the affected nodes. “What I’ve been working on this morning is the traffic analysis.”
The anomaly spreads across the screen.
“These junctions are carrying more traffic than they should. The increase doesn’t match anything happening in the cells above them. If your mole is using the substrate to move between cells, they’re coming through one of these nodes. The excess traffic is the only trace they’re leaving behind.”
He’s quiet beside me while I walk him through it. Without thinking, I start simplifying the explanation. Breaking it down the way I would for a client who understands the outcome but not the mechanics.
Then I stop. His attention isn’t wandering. He’s following the data. Not politely. Actually following it. His gaze moves along the route I’ve highlighted, tracking the same trail.
“The excess traffic narrows to three junction points in the eastern cluster.” Zavin’s finger traces the path across the render. “If the mole is entering through one of these nodes, the access window is limited by the processing cycle. You’re looking for traffic appearing during the handoff gaps.”
I blink. Because that’s exactly where I was going next.
He isn’t a systems analyst. He doesn’t spend his days buried in code and network architecture. Yet somehow he’d looked at the same pattern I was looking at and jumped straight to the right conclusion.
The scales and the amber eyes are one thing. I’ve already filed those under problems I have no intention of engaging with. The trouble is that every time I think I’ve worked him out, he does something unexpected.
He’s approaching the problem from an entirely different direction and still arriving at the same conclusions I am. Not because he understands the technology, but because he understands patterns. The logic underneath them. The shape they make when you step back far enough to see the whole picture.
“That’s correct.” My voice sounds steadier than I feel. “The handoff gaps are where the monitoring drops below threshold. If I can isolate traffic that only appears during those windows, I can separate the mole’s activity from the legitimate movements moving through the same junctions.”
My explanation trails off as he picks up the thread.
“You can identify which traffic belongs there and which doesn’t.”
I drag my gaze back to the screen. “You’re keeping up.”
The corner of his mouth lifts. “You sound surprised.”
“Most people need translation. System architecture isn’t exactly casual breakfast discussion. Usually I spend half my time explaining the concepts before I can explain the problem.”
The amusement deepens. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“It’s an observation.”
“With you, I suspect there’s not much difference.”
I take a sip of my tea. It’s gone cold. “I need to run the traffic isolation through Percy’s analysis framework.
It’ll take a few hours. If the handoff-window theory is right, I should be able to narrow the mole’s access point to a specific junction and a specific time window.
After that, it’s just a matter of matching the window against your operational schedule. ”
“Which is why you need the unredacted logs.” He picks up the data chip and turns it between his fingers while he thinks. I watch the movement longer than I should before catching myself and looking back at the screen.
“Run the analysis,” he says at last. “Show me what the partial data gives you. If the results support your theory, we’ll discuss expanding your access.”
I snort. “We’ll discuss it?”
His eyebrow lifts. “I’ll listen to your case.”
I point at him with my tea mug. “And then you decide whether you’ve seen enough to change your mind? That’s not a discussion.”
He crosses his arms over his chest, his massive biceps stretching the material of his jacket. “You’re very direct.”
I set my mug down. “If everyone around you tells you what you want to hear, that’s your problem.”
For a second he just looks at me. Then he sets the data chip back on the desk and unfolds to his full height. Suddenly the workstation feels smaller. Warmer, too. Heat radiates from him strongly enough that I notice the difference when he steps away, which is irritating.
“I’ll be back this afternoon for a progress report.”
He crosses toward the door with the same controlled confidence he brings into every room. Nothing rushed. Nothing wasted. Just before he reaches the threshold, he pauses. “I’ve put the atmospheric allocation on a standing reorder,” he says. “You won’t run out.”
The words land somewhere beneath my ribs, and I recognize the feeling before I can stop it. Gratitude. Again. Still unwelcome. Still there.
The door slides shut behind him, leaving only the hum of the filtration system and Percy’s processors. The problem isn’t that he’s attractive.
The problem is that he understood the handoff-gap theory almost immediately.
I’ve worked with engineers who would have needed an hour-long presentation to get there. People at Helix who helped design systems like this.
Zavin looked at the data for five minutes, and understood.
“He’s smarter than he lets on, Perce.” I pull the redacted logs into the analysis framework. “That’s not reassuring.”