Chapter 3 Wyatt
The bass from the main floor of the club wasn't just loud; it was a physical weight, vibrating right through the soles of Wyatt’s shoes.
Standing at the edge of the glass-walled VIP overlook, he could see the entire layout—the blur of motion under the dim, purple lights, the crowd packed three-deep at the main bar, and the steady movement of the security team weaving through the bottlenecks.
He liked the vantage point. It allowed him to see the whole machine working at once, every moving part operating exactly the way they had planned.
"You look like you're trying to count the ice cubes in every glass down there from sixty feet away."
The voice came from right behind his shoulder, flat and dry. Wyatt didn't shift his gaze from the floor below as Silas leaned against the sleek railing beside him, swirling an inch of amber liquid at the bottom of his glass.
"The main bar is backed up," Wyatt said, his voice easily cutting through the noise without him having to raise it. "The bartenders are over-complicating the pours. It’s slowing the entire floor down."
Silas let out a dry chuckle. "It’s Friday night, Wyatt. People expect a wait. It makes the drinks taste more expensive."
"It makes them impatient," Wyatt countered, finally looking over at him. "Where’s Zane?"
"VIP lounge," Silas said, leaning his forearms against the glass. "Zane’s cornered with some city councilmen who think their political influence buys them a discount on our security fees. Hudson’s downstairs checking the perimeter."
Silas tapped his glass against the metal railing, casting a sideways glance that took in Wyatt’s rigid, immovable posture.
"You look like you’ve been standing here for two hours.
Actually, scratch that—did you even leave your desk today?
You missed lunch in the conference room.
Vic brought in brisket from that place down by the docks, and your container is still sitting in the fridge. "
"I was busy," Wyatt said, his eyes tracking a group moving toward the main bar.
"Right. Too busy to eat," Silas muttered, taking a slow sip of his drink. "Go find something before the kitchen clears out. Running on fumes doesn't suit you, and I need my CFO sharp when we go over the quarterly projections tomorrow."
Wyatt watched him walk toward the stairs, a faint, barely visible shift in his jaw the only sign of amusement. He didn't want a full sit-down dinner. It meant dealing with people, and tonight, he didn't have the patience for it.
He took the back stairs, using the private corridors to avoid the main floor crowd entirely, and slipped behind the long, curved bar. The head bartender, Marcus, caught sight of him immediately. He dropped his shaker, his posture instantly straightening as he wiped his hands on a towel.
"Mr. Fleming," Marcus said, keeping his voice respectful and low. "The usual?"
"Just a club soda, Marcus. Lime. And whatever cured meat the kitchen has ready."
"Right away, sir."
A minute later, a small plate of thin-sliced prosciutto and a sweating glass of carbonated water were slid across the counter. Wyatt ate a single piece, the saltiness a sharp contrast to the sterile air he’d been breathing all day, his eyes tracking the frantic movement of the ice in his glass.
"Tell me you have a solution for people who talk too much."
Zane dropped heavily onto the stool next to him, unbuttoning his vest with a long, exhausted groan. He didn't wait for Marcus to ask; he just held up two fingers, and a double pour of bourbon appeared in front of him.
"The councilmen?" Wyatt asked.
"They want the network protection, but they don't want to pay the premium," Zane grunted, taking a long swallow. "One of them actually suggested a waiver."
"Tell him the waiver is fine," Wyatt said, his voice dropping into that quiet, heavy tone that usually ended arguments before they started. "Just as soon as he explains the three offshore accounts he opened last month. The ones he didn't declare on his tax forms."
Zane let out a loud, sudden laugh, shaking his head as he stared at his drink. "God, I love having you on our side. I’m going back in there to ruin his night. Thanks, man."
They sat in silence for another minute, the heavy comfort of old friends who didn't need to fill the space with words. The club was loud and frantic around them, but at the corner of the bar, it felt completely detached.
Zane finished his drink, set the glass down with a heavy thud, and stood up, adjusting his jacket. "Don't stay up all night staring at the monitors. The city isn't going to fall apart if you close your eyes for an hour."
"It stays together because I don't," Wyatt said.
Zane just smirked and walked away, disappearing into the crowd toward the VIP lounge.
Wyatt finished his water, left the rest of the food, and headed for the executive elevator. The doors closed, instantly shutting out the thrum of the music. By the time he stepped out onto the sixty-eighth floor, the silence was total.
He entered his office, the heavy door locking behind him with a sharp, clean click.
He didn't bother turning on the overhead lights; the blue and green glow from the wall of monitors was more than enough. He sat down, the leather of his chair creaking slightly under his weight, and pulled up the evening’s financial ledger.
Every transaction was balancing perfectly. To the penny.
He shifted his focus to the network diagnostics, a routine sweep he did every night before he left. He checked the server latencies, the camera feeds from Hudson’s perimeter drones, and the internal encryption logs.
Then, he opened the tab for the private trunk lines running underground toward the old industrial sector near 4th and Main.
According to the city utility reports, that entire block was supposed to be completely dark—an empty stretch of condemned buildings pulling zero power and sending zero data.
Wyatt’s eyes narrowed.
There was a tiny glitch in the line’s passive resistance log.
It was incredibly small—less than a fraction of a unit.
Any automated system would have filtered it out as a minor temperature change in the copper wires from the night air cooling the ground.
But Wyatt had designed these lines himself; they were buried too deep for the surface weather to affect them like this.
He tracked the log back over the last two weeks.
It wasn't random. Every single night, starting around eleven-thirty and cutting off just before four in the morning, the resistance dropped by that exact, identical fraction.
It was too precise to be an error. It was a pattern.
Someone was tapping into the physical shielding of his line to clear up a signal of their own.
It was a quiet, incredibly clean parasitic draw that didn't even show up on the main ledger.
"Smart," Wyatt murmured to the quiet room.
He leaned back, his thumb slowly tracing the edge of his jaw.
The immediate response—the standard protocol—was to crush it.
He could send a high-voltage pulse down that specific line with a few keystrokes, frying whatever patchwork device was hooked into his box and turning it to scrap metal.
He could lock the sector down completely.
But he didn't.
If he destroyed it now, he’d never know what it was. And Wyatt hated an unanswered question more than anything else. In a city where he already knew exactly how every politician would vote and how every competitor would move, this tiny, unexplained ripple was the only thing he hadn't planned for.
He opened a new, hidden terminal on his center screen, completely separate from the main Enigma network, and created a private file to monitor that specific junction box.
He didn't set an alarm or an automatic block; he simply instructed the system to record the exact timestamps and lengths of the draw the next time it appeared.
He was going to watch it. He was going to let whoever it was feel safe in the dark until he had enough data to see the whole picture.
He checked the time. 1:15 AM. The music downstairs would be winding down soon, the crowd thinning out into the Bridgeport streets.
Wyatt didn't feel tired. He felt that familiar, sharp focus that came whenever a puzzle finally presented itself. He took a slow sip of his water, his eyes fixed on the small, steady indicator light for the demolition sector.
He didn't know who was out there using his infrastructure, or what they were running from. But as he sat in the cool, blue-lit silence of his office, a slow, dangerous smile touched his lips.
He had a new variable to calculate. And he never got the math wrong.