LOGINChapter 75I knew it was a trap before I took the second step into the east corridor.I went in anyway.The corridor was too quiet in the specific way that spaces went quiet when someone had cleared them deliberately rather than because nothing was happening. No ambient noise from other parts of the building is bleeding through. No distant voices or footsteps or the hum of the ventilation system doing its ordinary work. Just the particular silence of a space that had been prepared.I slowed my pace but didn't stop.If the internal source had been watching my responses to threats against my father, they were building a profile. What I did when afraid. What I did when angry. How I moved under pressure.The way to disrupt a profile was to do something unexpected.So instead of retreating or calling Dante, I kept walking. Slowly. With the deliberate patience of someone who had decided they were going to understand the shape of what was in front of them before reacting to it.The lights o
Chapter 74Morning came with a different quality of light.Not softer. Harder. The kind of clarity that arrived after a decision had been made while most people were sleeping and the world hadn't caught up yet.I noticed the changes before I'd had coffee. Two additional guards at the corridor junction near my room. A camera repositioned to cover the blind spot near the service entrance that I'd noted three weeks ago. Doors that had operated on a casual open-door policy now closed with the particular firmness of things that had been given a purpose.The estate had reorganised itself overnight.At the centre of it, as always, was Matthias.He was behind his desk when I came in. Jacket on. Files open. The version of him that belonged to seven in the morning and large problems."How bad is it?" I said.He looked up. "Sit down.""I'd rather stand.""I know." He set down the file. "Sit down anyway."I sat.He came around the desk and took the chair across from me rather than retreating to t
Chapter 73I was moving before I'd decided to move.The photo was still on my screen. My father, walking alone in the maintenance corridor, the timestamp reading recent enough to matter. And below it the message that had turned something cold and deliberate in my chest into something that didn't calculate anymore.Next time, we won't miss him.I was through my door and into the hallway before the rational part of my brain caught up with my legs to tell me this was probably what they wanted. I already knew that. I went anyway because knowing a thing was a trap and being able to stop yourself walking into it were two completely different skills and I had apparently reached the limit of the second one.Down the stairs. The past two security staff who said my name. Through the corridor that connected the main house to the service wing.The maintenance section was louder than it should have been at this hour. Multiple people working, metal on metal, voices overlapping.I stood in the entra
Chapter 72The main house felt like a held breath.Too quiet. Too many people moving too carefully around me. Guards positioned at intervals that were designed to look natural, but didn't quite manage it. The whole building was doing its best impression of normal while everyone in it understood that normal had left sometime in the last forty-eight hours.I sat on the edge of the bed with my phone in my hand and the screen dark and tried to remember the last time I'd felt genuinely ahead of something rather than half a step behind it.The silence stretched.No new messages. Which should have been a relief and wasn't, because silence from this particular direction meant patience. Meant someone comfortable enough with the timeline that they didn't need to apply pressure constantly. Just periodically. Just enough to keep me reacting.I hated that it was working.A knock at the door. One sharp tap, the way Dante knocked. But when I said come in and the door opened, it was Matthias.He cam
Chapter 71I knew it was a trap before I took the first step.I went anyway.The message was still on my screen when I moved. *You're running out of time.* The photograph of my father's section of the maintenance wing. And underneath both of those things, the weight of what I knew from my first life. What happened when I waited? What it looked like when I did nothing and believed the people around me would handle it.My parents' jobs are gone. Their savings burned through. A mountain road in the dark.I was through the door to the lower levels before rational thought had a chance to catch up with my legs.The maintenance wing was wrong immediately.Too quiet. Half the overhead lighting was off in a section that was always fully lit during evening hours. No staff movement, no sound from the equipment storage rooms, no low hum of anyone working late.I slowed down.Every instinct I had was telling me to stop. To call Dante. To go back and do this properly.I kept moving because I hadn'
Chapter 70By the third night, I had stopped expecting sleep to happen.I sat at the desk with the laptop open and the files arranged across the screen and worked through the same material from a different angle. Not looking for patterns this time. Looking for mistakes. Because no matter how carefully something was built, the person who built it had to touch it. Had to leave some trace of how they thought.I zoomed in on the access timestamps again.External clearance. Unregistered. Repeated across six weeks in the maintenance logs.I pulled the legitimate override records and laid them side by side.And there it was.Every single unauthorized external access fell within a four-minute window of a legitimate high-level override. Not after. Within. The external access was piggybacking on the legitimate one, using the brief window when the system's verification layer was engaged elsewhere to slip through without triggering an alert.This wasn't a breach in the traditional sense.Someone







