Off Limits
Jeremy said.
His voice didn't carry the standard professional cadence of a corporate attorney. It was low, gravelly, and vibrating with an ancient, tectonic rage that seemed to rise directly from the concrete foundations of the building.
"You utilized a legacy administrative override," I replied, my voice maintaining its flat, mechanical cadence through sheer force of cognitive will. My internal diagnostics were screaming at me to implement defensive posturing, to recalibrate the distance, to identify escape vectors. I suppressed them all. "The code was 'ORACLE_9_LEGACY'. You only deploy that signature when you intend to force a direct system confrontation."