“Coffee delivery for the genius who refuses to sleep,” her twin announced, sliding a paper cup across the desk like a bartender. “Before you say anything—yes, it’s from the break room. Yes, it’s terrible. No, I didn’t spit in it. This time.”
Daphne caught the cup. The coffee was lukewarm and smelled like it had been brewed sometime during the previous administration. She drank it anyway, because caffeine was caffeine and her body had stopped caring about quality around hour twelve.
Celeste perched on the edge of the desk—the one clear spot between a keyboard and a stack of external drives—and her eyes did the thing they always did, the quick sweep that looked casual but was actually a thorough assessment of her sister’s state.
They were mirror images in almost every way except the ones that mattered. Same dark brown hair, except Celeste’s currently had electric-blue streaks and was twisted into an elaborate configuration that defied physics. Same hazel eyes, same height, same build. But where Daphne was stillness and shadow, Celeste was voltage and color. Where Daphne retreated into code, Celeste charged into the field. Two versions of the same blueprint, optimized for completely different operating environments.
Right now, though, they were both scared. Daphne could see it in the way Celeste’s fingers wouldn’t stay still. She picked at the cardboard sleeve on her own coffee cup, peeling it in thin strips.
“Anything?” Celeste asked.
“Nothing.”
“Shit.”
Yeah. That about covered it.
Celeste was quiet for a moment—which, for Celeste, constituted a minor miracle. Then she rallied, because that’s what Celeste did.
“So.” She leaned forward conspiratorially. “Have you heard from your mystery man?”
Daphne closed her eyes. “We are in the middle of a crisis.”
“Which is exactly why you need a distraction. Has he messaged? Is he being all broody and philosophical? Tell me he sent you something devastatingly witty.”
“I’m going to regret telling you about him for the rest of my natural life.”
“Probably.” Celeste grinned, but it didn’t quite chase away the worry in her eyes. “But seriously. You’ve been staring at those screens for eighteen hours. You need something that isn’t code and doom.”
She opened her mouth to respond, but a soft ping stopped her. It hadn’t come from the six monitors, but from the seventh device on her workstation, the one that wasn’t connected to Wilde Security’s network.
Her personal laptop. The machine she used for exactly one thing.
The notification icon glowed on the dark screen. A single message, routed through three proxy servers and encrypted end-to-end with a cipher that would take the NSA approximately eleven years to brute-force.
The username:Titan.
Daphne’s muscles loosened by a fraction of a degree, and she exhaled for what felt like the first time in days.
She opened the message.
Titan: You’ve been quiet tonight. Everything okay?
It was the digital equivalent of someone leaning against a doorframe and asking about your day. He always did this. Had done it for almost a year now—appeared in her inbox at odd hours, always when she needed it, as if he had some sixth sense for when the walls were closing in.
It had started with a chess match. An anonymous online tournament where she’d been playing under a disposable alias, killing time between projects, and she’d encountered a player whose strategy was unlike anything she’d seen. He was elegant, ruthless, and three moves ahead of everyone. He’d beaten her. The first person to beat her in years.
She’d messaged him afterward. He’d messaged back. And somehow, impossibly, they’d never stopped.
Late-night debates about encryption theory and the ethics of surveillance. Arguments about whether Asimov or Clarke better predicted the future. Challenges he’d throw at her—puzzles wrapped in code, complex enough to keep her engaged and creative enough to make her laugh. He’d send her a cipher at midnight; she’d crack it by two AM and send one back. He’d solve it by dawn.
She didn’t know his name. His age. Where he lived. What he looked like. She knew his mind, and for Daphne, that had always been enough. More than enough. It was everything.
She stared at the cursor blinking in the reply field. Her fingers hovered. The rational part of her brain—the part that had built her career, that protected Wilde Security’s entire digital infrastructure, that understood better than almost anyone alive how dangerous it was to share personal information with an unverified contact—screamed at her to type something neutral. Something safe.
She typed the truth instead.
Lovelace: My cousin was abducted last night. I’ve been trying to find him for eighteen hours. I’m terrified.
