“I see it. There’s an override prompt.”
“Then enter the code.”
I stared at the screen. The cursor blinked, waiting.
“I don’t know it,” I said.
Silence on the line. Then: “Torek said the right person would know.”
“I’m not the right person.”
“You’re the only person we have.”
The pressure readings climbed. Fifteen seconds to critical, maybe less.
I typed: ACCESS OVERRIDE.
AUTHORIZATION DENIED.
EMERGENCY PROTOCOL.
AUTHORIZATION DENIED.
“Kallum, the readings.” Her voice tight. “We’re almost out of time.”
“I know.”
I stared at the blinking cursor. Tried to think. Torek had built this system. Torek had set the code. Torek had said the right person would know.
What did that mean?
I thought about him. The way he’d looked at me across training yards and briefing rooms and the one time, the only time, he’d invited me to his quarters for a drink. The patience he’d shown when I was young and arrogant and convinced I knew everything.
Patience.
The word surfaced like a stone dropping into still water.
I was seventeen. New to the ghost corps. Faster than everyone else and convinced that speed was everything.
Torek had set up a stalking drill. Simple enough. Cross forty meters of open ground without being detected. The target was a sensor array, programmed to trigger if I moved too fast, breathed too loud, disturbed any of the tripwires he’d hidden in the grass.
I failed seven times in a row.
Each time, I’d moved too soon. Pushed too fast. Thought I could beat the sensor if I was just quick enough.
Each time, the alarm had sounded and Torek had been standing there, arms crossed, waiting for me to figure it out.
The eighth time, I stopped in the middle of the field. Stood completely still while the other trainees watched. Let a full minute pass, then another, then five. I watched the grass move. Watched the shadows shift. Watched the sensor’s sweep pattern until I understood it the way I understood my own heartbeat.
Then I moved.
Slow. Patient. Each step placed where the sensor couldn’t see.
I made it across in twenty-three minutes. The record was four.
Torek had smiled. Actually smiled, which he almost never did.
“You see?” he’d said. “Patience costs nothing and gains everything.”
