The comment from her YouSplash channel stream remains pinned to the corner of my main display.Do you remember,Sunflower? I do. I remember the way you ignored my screams to help them out of the dark.
My chest tightens with every glance at those words. This goes beyond simple trolling. It strikes a history we spent a decade scrubbing. We changed our names and buried our records. We built this building to serve as an island. No one should know the name Sunflower. We bought silence from officials and erased the digital footprints of the fire that scattered us fifteen years ago.
I check the biometric feed for Unit 1301. Zora’s heart rate holds at a steady sixty-five beats per minute. She sits at the island in her kitchen, moving with a focused energy as she types away. The session with Dameon provided the reset she needed. I watch her through the 4K feed. The clarity captures the way she chews her lip while she works.
The door to the hub slides open with a nearly silent hiss. Reid carries a specific kind of silence. I catch his reflection in the screens of the inactive monitors surrounding my main workspace. He wears a fresh charcoal pinstripe suit today. A white shirt buttoned to the throat completes the look. He looks like a man who hasn’t slept.
“Tell me you found an address for the commenter.”
I keep my eyes on the scroll of data. “They’re a ghost. The IP for the comment on her stream routed through a decentralized network in Iceland. It used a triple-layer hop to scrub the source. They used YouSplash anonymity tools against us. It looks professional, Reid. They know how to vanish.”
He moves into my peripheral vision and leans against a server rack with his arms crossed over his chest. He stares at the main monitor, his jaw tight. “Micah said she had a reaction to the robot in the clinic.”
My fingers hover over the keys. The memories from the Cross-Sterling Home feel like a dull ache. “She saw the toy she gavehim at the home, right before the fire. Seeing it threw her into a spiral.”
Reid looks at the monitor showing the internal apartment feeds. “Micah has kept that toy since the day we left the shelter. It is the only thing he has from our childhood. But if someone is using that specific memory to bait her, then they were watching her closer than we realized. They were in that shelter with us.”
I pull up the encrypted records for the fourth time this morning. I searched for anyone transferred out after the fire. “I have checked the foster intake records and the medical triage logs from that week. Most of the other kids moved to state facilities across the coast. We lost track of everyone when we fled to stay together. I am looking for anyone who might have held a grudge.”
Reid shakes his head, his gaze hardening as he watches the screens. “Someone targeted her on YouSplash. This means they know exactly where she lives now. I want a total security boost for every entrance and exit of the building. Start a re-vetting process for every guard on the payroll. From now on, we only hire former military with clean backgrounds.”
I open a new window to run a packet trace on the metadata from her YouSplash channel, searching for anomalies in the logs. “I have already increased the filters. Anything hitting her DMs or her business email has to pass through my terminal first. I am scrubbing every character. I am looking for patterns that might suggest a local origin.”
I reach for my coffee. The bitter sludge keeps my hands from shaking. “What about Dameon?”
Reid’s eyes narrow as he watches a smaller monitor showing the lobby. Dameon patrols the exterior sidewalk. “He is on the exterior feeds. Dameon is still coming down from the session. He is doing a perimeter check on the sidewalk now.” He taps the comms link on the wall. “Dameon, report.”
A low rumble comes through the speakers. “Nothing on the street. No Alphas loitering. The perimeter is secure. I am heading back to the lobby.”
I return to the trace. The code scrolls in a steady green waterfall across my center monitor. I dig into the packet headers of the YouSplash comment, looking for a digital fingerprint. Most trolls leave a messy trail of browser cookies or location data, but Cinder_99 left nothing. The account vanished the moment the comment posted.
Reid leans over my shoulder. His scent sharpens, a mix of cold cedar and brewing aggression. “Tell me you have a location.”
“I have a dead end.” I tap a key to isolate a specific string of numbers. “They used a one-time encryption key. But look at the timestamp on the metadata. This person didn’t just find her stream yesterday.”
Reid’s jaw sets. He stares at the screen where Zora continues her work. “I want a full sweep of her phone and laptop. They didn’t need the stream to find her address. If they have been pinging her for ninety days, they have been watching her long before we brought her into this building. We built her a fortress, but she might have carried the bug in with her.”
I nod and start the remote diagnostic. “I’ll mirror her local drive and scrub it. If there is someone in her hardware, I will find them.”
The hunt feels different now. We built The Nest to serve as a fortress, but the digital thread of our past just proved that walls do not matter if the hunter already lives in the machine. I focus on the screen, my hands moving with a new, frantic purpose. We finally got her here, and I will tear the internet apart before I let anyone take her.
The marble lobby catches the morning sun, creating bright patches across the polished floor. I stand near the auxiliary IT terminal tucked behind the reception desk; a space designed to look like a high-end concierge station rather than a server hub. A diagnostic panel on my screen tracks the scent emitter calibration while I watch the scene unfold twenty feet away.
Jules moves around Zora with a phone mounted to a tripod. Her neon pink hair stands out against the white stone as she adjusts the angle for a wide shot. They film footage for the “Official Tour” video.
Zora moves through the space with the practiced ease of a professional. She gestures toward the curved walls of the lounge; the light catching the warmth of her light-brown skin. Two golden-blonde afro puffs sit high on her head, catching every stray beam of sunlight. I track her movements. I notice the way she shifts her weight when the tripod comes too close, her instincts still tuned to a world that doesn’t respect her boundaries.
Reid stands near the elevators. He watches the production with a calculating eye. He maintains his role as the professional building manager, but his fingers twitch against his thigh in a rhythmic, restless pattern. He looks ready to step in and clear the room at the first sign of a distraction so she can work in total silence.
“Okay, let’s get a shot of the desk.” Jules directs the camera toward my station. “Zo, walk toward Ethan. We want to show the ‘tech support’ side of things.”
Zora turns and heads in my direction. My heart rate kicks up as she approaches, the rhythmic tapping of her sandals against the marble sounding like a countdown. She wears a soft, cream-colored knit dress that moves around her knees, the fabric contrasting beautifully with her skin and the golden-blonde of her hair. She leans on the tall front desk that separates us. Her deep brown eyes find mine. The intensity of her gaze makes the air in my lungs feel thin. Her scent of honey and vanilla wafts toward me. She smells better than every other Omega I’ve passed by.
“Ethan, do you have a second?”
I look up from the diagnostic screen, forcing a polite, boyish grin that hides the frantic thoughts running through my head. “For you, Miss Zora? Always. What can I help you with?”
Zora bites her lip. Her brow furrows in a way that makes me want to reach out and smooth the line with my thumb. “I tried to set up my editing rig this morning. I have a lot of 4K footage to upload and edit, but I cannot get it to connect with the Quantum Fiber. It keeps saying it can’t connect even though I set the password myself and I know it’s not wrong.”
