Bit gathered all the data, uploaded the information to the firm’s software program, and returned to his remaining burger and fries. By the time there were only a few bites left to polish off, a sharp chime from his second computer system prevented him from finishing.
The peal wasn’t the standard notification tone of his primary setup. It was a distinctive alert he'd programmed for a veryspecific kind of monitoring. The separate system occupied the far corner of his workspace, deliberately positioned away from his main configuration. He'd built it with a singular purpose. The computer ran data feeds, pattern-recognition algorithms, and facial-recognition matches tied to every surveillance system he could legally—and sometimes less legally—access.
He glanced in Brook’s direction, noting that she had set aside her chili and was still reading from her laptop screen. He suddenly found his mouth uncomfortably dry, despite the greasy food. He slowly rolled his chair toward the second system, hoping his gradual movements appeared casual rather than urgent. The wheels caught momentarily on a cable, causing him to jerk forward more abruptly than intended.
When he reached the lone screen off to the side, an alert still flashed on the monitor. The pulsing red notification was above a grainy image captured from what appeared to be a street camera. Bit leaned closer, studying the photograph as best he could, given the lack of clarity. The timestamp indicated it had been captured less than an hour ago in Dupont Circle.
Washington D.C.
The facial recognition algorithm had flagged the individual with a seventy-one percent match probability. He clicked through to the detailed analysis. The pixelated image displayed a man in profile, his collar turned up against the cold.
“Is it him?”
Bit flinched when he realized he hadn’t gotten away with anything. He glanced Brook’s way to find her gaze steady, not an ounce of fear. He swore she could read every thought that crossed his mind without him uttering a word.
“Um.” Bit cleared his throat as he formed a response in his mind. “Well, I don’t think so. See, I loosened the parameters last week. I expanded the recognition tolerance and added more transit hub cameras. It's probably nothing—the match is onlyseventy-one percent, which is barely above the threshold I set. It could be anyone with similar features caught at the right angle, or someone wearing a hat that cast shadows that fooled the system, or?—”
“Forward me the photo.” Brook's voice betrayed nothing of what she might be thinking or feeling. Her ability to maintain such composure had always impressed and slightly unnerved him. No matter the crisis, her external demeanor rarely cracked. “Please.”
“Okay. I'll route it through the secure channels.”
He began the complex process he'd established to share sensitive information about Jacob Walsh with her. It was a procedure far more elaborate than their standard communication protocols. First, he encrypted the image file with a 256-bit algorithm, then routed it through a series of offshore servers, bouncing it from Iceland to Singapore to Brazil. Each hop added another layer of anonymization, stripping away metadata and replacing it with false information that would lead any potential tracker down rabbit holes of dead ends.
Basically, Bit needed to avoid every—and all—alphabet agencies.
The file passed through encrypted VPNs, temporary cloud storage that would automatically wipe itself after twenty minutes, until it finally landed in a secure email account that Brook could access through a series of proxies. The entire network was designed to be untraceable, making it impossible to connect back to either of them or to S&E Investigations.
“Sent,” Bit confirmed, observing the final confirmation appear on his screen. “It should be accessible through the usual channels.”
“Are you ready to head out?”
Bit stared at her for a moment, searching for any hint of what might be happening behind that carefully composed expression.
Was she concerned?
Alarmed?
Did she believe the match was legitimate?
The possibility of Jacob being in D.C., where they all lived and worked, sent an involuntary shiver of fear down his spine. He reminded himself that a seventy-one percent match meant the system was almost as confident it wasn't Jacob as it was that it could be him. False positives happened regularly—men with similar builds, comparable facial structures, the same mannerisms of moving through a crowd. The recognition software was sophisticated but far from infallible.
Seventy-one percent.
Barely better than a coin flip.
22
Brooklyn Sloane
January 2026
Friday – 2:58pm
The clown's smile stretched unnaturally wide across its painted face, contrasting sharply with the single tear that trailed down its white-powdered cheek. The oil painting hung behind Principal Watkins's desk. Other than the steady tick of an outdated wall clock and Bit's constant fidgeting in the chair beside her, the only sounds were muffled voices drifting in through the open door from the main area.
Brook’s thoughts drifted to the photo Bit had sent her earlier. While the grainy street camera captured an individual who matched Jacob to about seventy-one percent, she'd dismissed it almost immediately, noting the imbalance in the man's shoulders that Jacob didn't share. Bit had wanted to cover more of the population with his facial recognition program, but a low threshold meant vetting too many so-called matches. She’d already requested that it be reset to the original parameters.
“What does it mean when a grown man has an affinity for clowns?” Bit's question pulled Brook from her mental wandering. He had twisted in his seat to check that the hallway remained empty before voicing the question. “It’s got to mean something, right?”
