The calculator clicked again. Arthur's expression didn't change, he remained concentrated, like the numbers owed him something.
Part of her wanted to laugh. Part of her wanted to ask what he was calculating. And part of her felt weirdly relieved that he wasn’t asking how she was feeling or making her perform gratitude for his protection. He was just... there. A six-foot-seven wall of consequence, doing math.
The elevator dinged. Sublevel.
Arthur tucked the calculator into his breast pocket with the same precision he’d used to operate it.
The doors slid open.
Jax
JAX’S DASHBOARD DIDN’T PING. It flared.
APRIL-FEULLER (APPLE ID)
PASSWORD RESET REQUESTED: 3
TIME WINDOW: 9 MINUTES
SOURCE: MULTIPLE
CONFIDENCE: MALICIOUS
His hands started moving before his thoughts finished loading.
“Okay,” he muttered, already pulling up the raw request logs. “Cool. Love that for us.”
He killed the reset requests at the provider side, then opened a second pane to trace where they were coming from.
CHAD-STERLING-DEVICE
RECENT NETWORK ACTIVITY: SUSPICIOUS
ASSOCIATED RESET TOKENS: MATCH
Jax stared at the trace for a second, as if it might become less disgusting.
Chad was jiggling her doorknob.
Literally.
He opened a new log entry and started documenting.
TIME: 15:07
EVENT: Unauthorized password reset attempts (April Feuller)
LIKELY ACTOR: Chad Sterling (device trace match)
ACTION: Blocked reset vectors. Flagged device. Escalated to physical verification.
He saved it.
Then saved it again.
He didn’t trust the first save. He didn’t trust anything when Chad was involved.
Jax tapped his headset. “Brandon.”
