Witnesses? Criminals? Government agents? She had no way of knowing. Just names floating in the dark, waiting for meaning.
Sometimes he gave her numbers that looked like bank accounts. Sometimes strings of letters that might be passwords or might be code phrases. Once, a sequence of whatsounded like call signs—“Raven,” “Blackwood,” “Compass”—followed by phone numbers.
“You don’t need to understand,” Randall said, watching her absorb it all. “Filing cabinets don’t ask questions.”
So, she didn’t. She memorized coordinates without knowing what she’d find there. Dates without knowing what would happen. Names without knowing if she was helping to save them or condemn them.
Hour after hour after hour, the data continued. Endlessly. The Federal Reserve caught on first that something was a little off. Soon, they were locked out of that. The DEA next. But the other systems hadn’t figured it out, so there was still plenty of information.
She wasn’t sure exactly when she realized something was going wrong in her head.
Between memorizing number and name, she tried to recall her apartment. The converted barn outside Whitefish. The bookshelves she’d built herself. The reading chair by the window.
The image came back blurred. Indistinct. Like looking through frosted glass.
She tried harder. Ms. Delacroix—the woman who’d taught her everything, who’d given her the only real guidance she’d ever known. Morgan summoned her face and found it fuzzy. The shape was there, but the details had softened. The precise color of her eyes. The exact pattern of wrinkles at the corners of her smile.
Even Binary’s messages seemed distant. She could recall the words, but the feeling that had accompanied them—that warmth in her chest when his responses appeared—felt like something that had happened to someone else.
For the first time in her life, the things she wanted to remember were slipping. None of the data was, but would it start? Had she met her capacity?
One by one, the systems locked them out. But not before Morgan had absorbed way more data than they’d ever dreamed could be taken without being noticed.
As that data came slightly slower, she had more time to study the screens. Her blood froze as she saw some of the hackers’ keystrokes.
The access logs they were deliberately leaving showed her IP address. Her keystrokes.
They were leaving a trail of digital breadcrumbs leading directly to her.
“You’re framing me.”
“Insurance.” Randall adjusted his cuffs, unconcerned. “Every hack has your fingerprints on it. If federal investigators find reason to look, which they won’t, they’ll have evidence of a rogue librarian who orchestrated the largest cyberattack in US history.”
Her hands went cold. “No one will believe that.”
“Won’t they?” That small, terrible smile. “A woman with perfect memory, working alone, no family to vouch for her character. You’re already a ghost. We’re just giving that ghost a criminal record. Right at the top of the FBI’s most wanted list, if we’ve done our job right.”
She stared at the screen. She wasn’t just their filing cabinet; she was their patsy. Even if she escaped, even if she somehow got free—the evidence would be waiting. Her digital fingerprints on every corrupted file, every breached database, every stolen secret.
The understanding landed like a blade between her ribs.
She was drowning in data she didn’t understand. Thousands of names and numbers and codes locked in her memory with no key to decode them. And the only people who knew what any of it meant were the people who’d made her the fall guy for all of it.
She was complicit. Permanently, indelibly complicit. And she didn’t even know what she was complicit in.
“No. I’m not going to do this. I can’t?—”
Her head slammed against the desk. Stars exploded behind her eyes. Blood began to drip from her nose, spattering the keyboard in red drops. Randall’s hand remained on the back of her skull for a moment—not pressing, just resting there. A reminder of how easily he could do it again.
“I find repetition tedious, Miss Reece.I can’tis not a phrase I want to hear twice. Get back to work.”
She worked. Blood dripping. Hands shaking. More data flooding in. More puzzle pieces without a picture. More names and numbers and coordinates that meant nothing to her and everything to Randall.
Later—hours, maybe, time had lost all meaning—Randall’s voice carried through the wall.
Morgan went still at her keyboard, straining to hear. He was on the phone, pacing the corridor outside, and he didn’t know how well sound traveled in this place.
“Yes, she’s everything we hoped. Better, actually. The retention rate is remarkable.”
