“Sera Carrington livedwith Rebecca.”
The name Rebecca still did something to the air, apressure shift that didn’t show on Magnus’s face but did show in the way his fingers paused a fraction too long.Alaric didn’t give the pause oxygen.
“They shared space,” Magnus went on. “Shared routines. Shared emotional bandwidth. Even shared working at Severin’s.”
Alaric said nothing. The instinct to shut this down rose fast and sharp, areflexive urge to protect Sera before the words could impact her. He contained it without strain. Instinct was noise. Strategy required clarity. Being in charge meant allowing the argument to unfold completely, mapping it in full, before deciding where to apply pressure and how to breakit.
“They shared devices.” Magnus’s eyes stayed on the folder as if that made the words less personal. “Shared Wi-Fi. Shared physical access to each other’s lives.”
Alaric’s mouth tightened, almost imperceptibly.
Magnus continued, voice even. “Sera’s computer was used during the relevant windowwhileshe was sitting there. Given her skill set, that makes ignorance unlikely—but not impossible. We don’t know whether it matters. But we can’t pretendit doesn’t exist.”
A familiar tightening developed behind Alaric’s sternum. The place where logic lived. The place he trusted when intuition flared too hot to be useful. He was already seeing the shape of Magnus’s argument, even as every protective impulse he possessed pushed back against it. He locked those impulses down, sealed them away with everything else that didn’t belong in a decision.
“Say it,” he said.
Magnus lifted his gaze. “She’s an active breach. Adangerous one, given her skillset.”
The word landed cleanly. No accusation. No heat. Just classification. It slid into place with clinical precision, and Alaric strained to hold himself still as it did. He gave Magnus nothing. Not because it hadn’t struck, but because reaction would have been indulgence.
Magnus watched him anyway, waiting for a reaction that never came. He wasn’t hunting for weakness so much as confirming resistance, gauging how much pressure Alaric’s ongoing silence would take before it broke.
“She doesn’t have to be malicious to be useful,” Magnus said. “That’s the part people miss. Systems don’t care about intent. They care about access. Proximity. Timing. Someone can do everything right and still become the point where things break, simply by being close enough when pressureis applied.”
Alaric’s eyes narrowed slightly. “You’re careful with your language. That one was intentional.”
“It is,” Magnus said. “Because I’m not accusing her of malice. I’m saying she’s adjacent to a breach that resulted in a death. Rebecca wasn’t malicious either. She was accessible. And when she stopped being useful, she was dead.”
“Sera almost died, too.” The words tore out of Alaric harder than intended. His restraint slipped just enough to register, aflash of something violent and protective crossing his face before he locked it backdown.
“That doesn’t let her off the hook. If anything, it suggests she was also used in some capacity...” He looked up, his expression falling into hard lines. “And therefore expendable.”
Alaric’s arms unfolded. His hands went to the table, palms flat, grounding. The contact steadied him, even as Magnus’s last observation reverberated through his mind. Used. Expendable. Words that carried the echo of the stairwell, the truck, the fragile margin between survival and erasure. He didn’t sit. He didn’t pace. He didn’t give Magnus motion to interpret, because any movement now would have betrayed just how close to the edge the argumenthad drivenhim.
“What’s your solution?” The words came out cold and tight, clipped down to function. He kept his voice level only by force, every part of him straining against the discipline that held it there.
Magnus didn’t hesitate. “Containment.”
The word echoed in theroom.
Alaric held it there for a moment, letting it exist in full before he responded.”Define it,” hesaid.
“Isolation,” Magnus replied. “Restricted access. Limited movement. No system privileges beyond what’s essential. No unsupervised contact with anything that could be leveraged. No chance to be used again.”
“While you do what?”
“Verify,” Magnus replied. “I want to be certain she wasn’t used as a conduit. Or worse.”
Alaric’s eyes cooled another degree. “You think she was.”
Magnus shook his head. “I think we don’t know.”
Silence stretched again.
The house was quiet around them, the kind of quiet that came from distance and design rather than emptiness. Thick walls. Long halls. Space meant to absorb sound without advertising secrecy. Alaric wasacutely aware of it, of the fact that this room existed because difficult decisions belongedhere.
He hated that this one did,too.
