I went straight to the control room, finding Oscar leaning over his desk, but as he spotted me, he moved, his body practically collapsing over mine with a sigh.
“How do you do it?”
Confusion was laced in my laugh. “Do what?”
He pulled back and ran his hands over his face as we walked over to the row of computers. “Look so young and run this fucking place. One week as head, and I’m ready to check out retirement homes. I’m exhausted.”
I blew a laugh through my nose as we pulled out chairs and fired up the desktops. “Earl Grey tea helps. Try that.”
“Does it de-age you by twenty years? Because that’s what I need.”
I shrugged, logging into the system. “De-aging you twenty years would make you four, so calm down. And it’s more for de-stressing. You should try it though.”
Just the name of the tea had me thinking of her, and before I could stop it, I felt my mouth curve into a smile.
“Does it also make you smile like a fucking psychopath? You don’t smile; what’s wrong with you?”
I pushed Oscar’s shoulders as I pulled my files from my briefcase. “Shut up. I smile.”
“Since when? Remember, I’ve been with you my whole life; you don’t smile.”
I opened up the files. “Since recently then. Now shut up and look at this.”
Oscar blinked, the humour fading just a fraction. He leaned forward, flipping open the top sheet with a finger. Rows of timestamps, connection logs, anomalies, and my handwriting scrawled across the margins.
My voice cut through the air like a knife, my eyes darting between him and Nathaniel, our digital forensics genius. “This wasn’t Jamie.”
Oscar’s brows furrowed. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that this was above him,” I snapped. “It was too clean. Too exact. Jamie’s impulsive. Cocky. Reckless. This?” I jabbed a finger at the log. “This was orchestrated. Strategic. And none of us saw it coming.”
Nathaniel tried to joke this time, shrugging as his hands clasped. “Maybe the guy finally levelled up? Stranger things have happened.” He pointed at Oscar. “Remember when you filed your taxes on time?”
My head shot up, eyes burning. “This isn’t a joke.”
Both of them straightened.
“I followed the traces,” I continued, voice tight as I scrolled. “There was a hiccup in one of the packets. Just a flicker of lag. But it was off. It returned too fast for the route it claimed to be on.”
I took a breath; like saying it out loud made it more real. More terrifying.
“It pinged from London. But it wasn’t local. Some international relay or anonymous VPN. And I realised someone wanted me there. Wanted me out of New York. Away from the company. From you.”
Oscar frowned, rubbing at the back of his neck. “So it was a setup.”
“Exactly. While I was chasing ghosts across the ocean, someone was back here, moving behind us.” I stepped around the desk, yanked open a drawer, and tossed a USB drive onto the desk. “And it gets worse. I traced the MAC address from that hiccup. It was masked, sloppy sure… but I’ve seen it before. It was flagged in a breach we dismissed six months ago.”
Oscar’s smirk faded entirely. “You’re saying—?”
“I’m saying that device was inside our system. One of ours. Or someone pretending to be.” I felt my voice crack slightly, fuelled entirely by the rage bubbling in my blood the longer I was reliving all this. The longer I realised this wasn’t a nightmare I could simply wake up from.
“This isn’t about the clients. They were just the entry wound. They’re coming after the company. After us. After everything we care about.” My head fell into my hands before raking down my face as I eyed Oscar. “They’re trying to destroy us.”
Oscar blew out a breath, trying to keep things from spiralling. “Alright, look. It’s bad, yeah. But maybe this is just someone pissed off. A former contractor. One of your old hookups who figured out Python. We’ve had worse.”
I turned on him like a whip, my eyes as narrow as I could make them. “Are you fucking listening? Wake up; this isn’t funny.”
Oscar stilled. The weight behind my words seemed to suck the air out of the room. And for good measure. If they didn’t start taking this seriously, we’d be gone this time next month.
