“You’ve rerouted the audit into an isolated environment.”
His gaze flicks across the code. I feel it like an inquisitive pressure.
“It’s cleaner this way,” I say.
“It’s unusual.”
“It’s efficient.”
He pauses. It’s long enough that my spine tightens, long enough that I feel the tilt of his attention like the temperature changing.
Then, with unsettling softness, he asks, “Are you finding what you expected?”
The question is light on the surface, but the undertow is strong enough to pull me under. My breath sits high in my chest, stubborn and sharp.
I force myself to answer evenly.
“Truth hides in data. If it’s there, I’ll find it.”
The corner of his mouth lifts in something resembling a smile, but not quite.
“Then be careful whose truth you uncover.”
The words slide across my nerves like ice water.
A warning carved from neutrality, which makes it infinitely more dangerous.
He straightens, stepping back. The air warms in the space where he stood close, and I hate how my body notices the loss.
He gives a short nod and walks away, the soft sound of his shoes fading toward his office. The moment the door closes behind him, I exhale a breath I didn’t realize I was holding.
My heartbeat is too loud. My hands hover above the keyboard, steady to the eye, trembling beneath the skin.
His remark echoes in the hollow of my ribs long after silence settles:
Be careful whose truth you uncover.
I look back at the screen—the lines of code that mimic his signature, the financial anomalies buried in the offshore networks—the truth I’m hunting might have Damian’s fingerprints on it.
No.Focus.
I pull my chair closer, fingers diving into the code. Every instinct is a live wire; every keystroke feels like defiance.
I lean closer to my screen, squinting at the encrypted segment pulsing like a heartbeat behind layers of Ignatov firewalls.
It shouldn’t be here. Not in this archive. Not in this century-old graveyard of dead code and digital ghosts.
“Come on,” I whisper, brushing a fingertip over the trackpad as if coaxing it will help.
The file stares back, stubborn and sealed.
IGNATOV—RECORD_ Δ—OLD REGIME (LOCKED)
No date, no metadata, not even an origin tag.
That alone is wrong.
Every Ignatov archive is tagged—cousin, branch, era, authority, purpose. This one is draped in anonymity, the way only someone with old power and older secrets would hide something.
