“The Courier,” I say.
The guards don’t move, but the room tightens. The word lands and stays.
I open the directory on my screen. Logs. Camera feeds. Short internal notes. Most labels are stripped. The structure is clumsy at first glance, then neat once I follow the pattern.
“You brought me copies,” I say. “Not live access.”
“You haven’t earned live access,” he says.
“Yet,” I say.
His gaze snaps back to my face. Sharp. Interested.
“You’re quick,” he says.
“You didn’t bring me here because I’m slow.”
He huffs out a short sound. It might be a laugh. Might not.
“Tell me something I don’t already know,” he says. “Start with the Kaliningrad archive.”
I click open the folder tagged with the port name. A list fills the screen. Coordinates. Dates. Photos. Brief notes. Each line ends with the same word.
COURIER.
“You used to own him,” I say.
His eyes narrow a fraction.
“He worked for your structure in the old warehouse wars,” I continue. “You sent him to remove problems quietly, send proof, then vanish. He did that well.”
“You can see that from a list?” he asks.
“From the gaps around the list,” I say.
I sort the entries by date.
“His jobs line up with your biggest pushes,” I say. “Every time you moved on a corner or a dock, he cleared something first. A witness. A rival. A leak. Whatever it was, it kept your name clean.”
He stands very still.
“Until?” he asks.
“Until the pattern breaks,” I say. “The last six entries don’t match your moves. Same method. Same tag. Different targets. No clear benefit to you.”
I scroll.
“No payment trail, either,” I add. “Whatever he got for those, it didn’t pass through your usual routes.”
“You’re sure?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say.
“How?” he asks.
“Because I spent the last week in a cafe basement pulling what I could from open records and rumors,” I say. “Then your runner handed me this drive and it matched too well. You built a ghost, and now it walks on its own.”
The room holds its breath. He watches me, heavy and thoughtful.
