“You sleep okay?” I ask.
Her shoulders twitch.
“Yeah.”
She drinks the water as if she’s buying time.
“I was thinking,” I say, tone easy, “we should check the feeds today. Do a sweep. I want to reroute the encryption. Just in case.”
That makes her pause.
Just for a breath.
But she recovers fast.
“Sure,” she says. “That’s probably smart.”
I smile.
Keep it casual.
But inside, I’m already rearranging the board.
If she doesn’t show me the note, I’ll know she’s afraid.
If she does, I’ll know she’s testing me.
Either way—this changes everything.
Because someone got close enough to reach her.
Close enough to leave a message on my floor.
Inside my walls.
Without ever leaving a trace.
And if I didn’t see it…
What else have I missed?
She disappears into the bathroom again after breakfast. Says she needs a shower.
I don’t argue.
I wait for the water to start—steam to rise under the door—before I move.
The laptop’s already open before I’ve made it back to the desk. I bypass the main dashboard entirely and go into the manual backups, the analog redundancies no one’s supposed to know about. The ones I installed before Raven moved in. Before I ever touched her. Before I told myself I was here to protect her.
They’ve been untouched for months. They’re air-gapped. Offline. Pure.
Which is exactly why I go there.
The system clock ticks back forty-five minutes. I replay the hallway footage—frame by frame.
There’s no entry.
No shadow.
