Morazin does not look at me as he speaks.
“We are experiencing minor latency in our communications relay.”
“Define minor,” I say.
“Fractional delay in outbound holonet traffic.”
“Intermittent or constant?”
“Intermittent.”
“That’s worse.”
He stops walking, just briefly, then resumes.
“You will run a diagnostic sweep. You will not access restricted encryption layers without authorization.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” I say lightly.
His gaze cuts to mine.
“See that you don’t.”
The server spine on Floor Eight greets me with a wash of cool air that smells faintly of ozone and warmed dust, the racks of hardware blinking in rhythmic patterns like a mechanical constellation. The sound here is layered and alive—the steady whir of cooling systems, the whisper of data flow through fiber lines, the low resonance of power cycling through reinforced conduits.
I sink into the console chair and slot my compad into the docking cradle. Holographic interfaces bloom outward, translucent panels casting pale blue light across my hands.
At first glance, the system presents itself as stable. Holonet handshake confirmed. Satellite uplink synchronized. Surface-to-orbit radio array cycling within acceptable parameters.
But there it is.
A slight drag in the outbound ping return, so subtle it could be dismissed as routine atmospheric interference. A fractional hitch in the signal that repeats with suspicious regularity.
I lean closer, fingers moving through the data stream, separating layers, overlaying traffic logs with timestamp analysis.
Every nine minutes, a 0.47 second dip.
Not random.
Intentional.
I expand the log window and overlay docking authorization records.
And that’s when my pulse shifts.
Because every time the signal stutters, a micro-adjustment appears in the docking clearance file, so small it would slip past casual review, so elegant in its subtlety that I almost admire it.
“Who are you talking to?” I murmur, my voice swallowed by the hum of the servers.
I initiate a deeper probe.
The encryption wall rises to meet me, tier four, polished and polite and meant to deter contractors exactly like me.
I glance toward the door, imagining Morazin somewhere above, standing still in that unnerving way of his.
“Define restricted,” I whisper, and tap the probe forward.
The barrier resists just long enough to be noticed, then parts.
