“And the human fingerprints,” she finished. “Not who they are, but that they exist. Because no one deletes a high value packet without a reason, and reasons showup in behavior.”
Alaric’s voice went low. “So what do you see?”
Sera’s throat tightened. She didn’t want to oversell it. She didn’t want to chase certainty like a drug. Certainty made people reckless.”I see that it wasn’t automated,” she said. “If it was, it would’ve happened the second the trigger condition occurred. It didn’t. It happened inside a narrow span of time, after the death event, after the system should’ve done its job.”
Alaric’s eyes narrowed. “Meaning someone intervened.”
“Yes.”
She clicked again and expanded the window.”And I don’t see the signature of a top tier internal actor,” she added. “Not in the way I’d expect.”
Alaric’s expression didn’t change, but the air around him did. She sensed it the way you sensed weather shift.”Explain,” hesaid.
Sera didn’t glance up. If she met his eyes right now, she’d feel the explosive heat between them, the Brand’s awareness, the way proximity made everything sharper. She needed her focus clean.”A top tier internal actor would erase the residue in layers,” she said. “They’d take their time. They’d make it look like it never existed.That’s not what happened. This looks like someone who knew what they needed to do, but not how to do it perfectly. Someone who had a script, or instructions, or a pressure point.”
“So it was sloppy.”
“Not sloppy,” she corrected softly. “Constrained.”She pulled up her own work history on the same day.”This is the other part. It required proximity to my workflows. Or knowledge of my habits.”
Alaric leaned a fraction closer. Not into her space. Just enough that he stood behind her like a wall. Her skin tightened anyway.
“See these gaps?” she asked, indicating small dead zones in her activity, moments when her mouse stopped, her keystrokes paused. “That’s when I was pulled away. That’s when people spoke to me. That’s when I was in the hallway. That’s when I was distracted.”
She hated how quickly her mind supplied faces.Colleagues. Assistants. People with easy smiles and practiced timing.Someone physically near her.Someone who knew when she’d be distracted.Someone who could be pressured to commit such a horrible act.She didn’t say the last part out loud. She didn’t need to. The idea hovered betweenthem like smoke.
Alaric’s voice cut through it. “You think it happened while you were sitting there.”
Sera nodded. “Not after hours. Not in the middle of the night. It wasn’t some hacker fantasy. It was human, and it was close.”Her hands stayed steady, but her stomach turned.Close meant it wasn’t abstract.Close meant she’d been breathing the same air as the person who put a target on herback.
She opened another pane, narrowing down the access tokens issued during those windows.”This is as far as I can take it alone,” she said, more quietly now. “I can identify patterns. Ican tell you it wasn’t a clean internal wipe. Ican tell you the actor wasn’t elite. Ican tell you they needed to move inside my orbit.”
Alaric’s gaze sharpened. “But you can’t name them.”
Sera’s mouth went tight. “Not without crossing lines I can’t cross.”
And then, because she was human and because denial was a form of survival, asingle name flickered at the edge of her thoughts.
Rebecca.
It hit like a pinprick.Rebecca was always there. Rebecca knew her schedule. Rebecca knew when she was late, when she was frazzled, when she was hungry, when shewas distracted.
No. Rebecca was safe.Rebecca was familiar.Rebecca was not dangerous.Sera shut the thought down so hard it was like slamming a door.Rebecca wasn’t part of this.She was a roommate who complained about rent and watched terrible dating shows and worried about Sera in a way that made her less alone in a city full of polished predators.
Rebecca was not a variable in this equation.Sera’s fingers tightened around the edge of the desk until the pressure steadiedher.
Alaric watched her, too perceptive to miss the micro shift in her breathing.
“What?” he asked.
Sera shook her head once. “Nothing. Just… the reality of how close this had to be.”
Alaric didn’t press. He filed itaway.
Sera forced her focus back to the screen.”These tokens,” she said, voice returning to professional calm. “They tell me the access wasn’t inherent. It was obtained. Temporarily. Like borrowing a badge.”
Alaric’s hand flexed at his side. “So someone helped whoever did this.”
“Or someone was the help,” Serasaid.
