His reply comes within seconds:
Noted. Filing complaint.
My mouth twitches. I go back to the code.
The message arrives sometime around eight, or close to it. I've stopped tracking the clock because the clock is irrelevant when the code is moving.
It comes through the compromised network, routed through the command-and-control infrastructure that Garrick's handler has been using for months. My monitoring framework flags the incoming packet automatically, red and pulsing in the corner of my screen, and I divert my attention to examine it.
The message is addressed to my workstation by its network identifier, not the generic identifier assigned to the comm building terminal but the specific one I configured when I set up my monitoring framework. The one that only exists because I created it, which means whoever sent this has been inside my infrastructure, watching my tools, reading my configurations.
The text is short.
Ms. Bradshaw. Your work is impressive, but your position is exposed. The converted warehouse on the waterfront belongs to Lt. Holland. So do you, apparently. The next device will not be a warning. Step back, or step into the blast radius. Your choice.
My hands go still on the keyboard.
The loft address isn't new. We knew Garrick's handler had it from the intercepted message that sent Griff driving across base at three in the morning. I processed that threat, adjusted the security posture, and kept working. The address is old intelligence.
What isn't old is the rest of it.
The intercepted message referenced "the analyst" by role. This one uses my name. The intercepted message traveled between Garrick and his handler, a communication I overheard. This one is addressed to my workstation, a communication aimed at me.
The line about belonging to Lt. Holland is the part that turns my stomach. That's not information you pull from motorpool records or contractor access logs. That's information you get from watching closely, long enough to see what changed between the woman who arrived at Tidewater alone and the woman who leaves the comm building every night in a truck that isn't hers.
They've been inside my monitoring framework. The workstation identifier I'm staring at is custom, buried in infrastructure I built myself. Finding it means someone mapped my tools, read my configurations, and studied my architecture with enough patience to understand not just what I built but how I think.
The threat to my safety is a problem I've solved before. The threat to my infrastructure is a different category, because if they can see my tools, they can see the counterstrike, and if they can see the counterstrike, they can build around it.
I should tell Griff. The calculus is clear: withholding threat intelligence from the person responsible for physical security is a liability. Rivera would say the same thing. Hartwell would order it. The last time a message referenced the loft, I picked up the phone and called him before the adrenaline finished hitting my bloodstream, because that was intercepted intelligence, a communication between Garrick and his handler that required a tactical response. This message is different. This message is addressed to me. Telling Griff about it wouldn't be a security briefing. It would be a confession.
My fingers move to my phone, and they stop.
The counterstrike is barely started. The exercise launches tomorrow morning. If I tell Griff, Griff tells Hartwell, and Hartwell pulls me from the comm building and assigns a security detail that turns my workstation into a fishbowl. Everything I've built stops where it is, and when the exercise goes live, the malware fires into an undefended infrastructure.
Every radio on Tidewater goes silent. Every encrypted channel drops. Every operator in the field loses contact with command, and the blackout window opens for whatever Garrick's handler has planned on the physical side.
That's the mission reason. The counterstrike isn't close to finished. I can't build it from behind a security cordon.
It's clean and logical and defensible, and it isn't the real reason.
The real reason is that telling Griff means sayingI'm scared, and sayingI'm scaredmeans admitting that the woman who flew across an ocean at eighteen to prove she didn't need anyone has spent the last several weeks rearranging her entire operating system around a man with steady hands and a Texas drawl, and that rearrangement has created a vulnerability she doesn't know how to patch.
I save the message. I log it in the monitoring framework. I begin tracing the routing path, working backward through the C2 infrastructure to determine whether the message originated from inside the base network or was relayed in from the handler's external position. The packet headers suggest an internal origin, routed through the C2 chain to obscure the source, but the anonymizing layers make a definitive answer impossible without more time.
If Garrick sent this from a terminal on base, the internal routing hops will narrow his physical location. If the handler sent it from outside, the external relay pattern will confirm a different threat posture.
I don't pick up the phone.
The hours between the message and the briefing disappear into the code, and by the time the comm building watch changes and the daylight through the windows shifts from gray to full morning, the progress has climbed past the halfway mark.
The briefing is at eleven, in Hartwell's conference room, with the full task force assembled. I present the counterstrike architecture, walking the room through the interception protocol and the deployment sequence with the precision I've used in every briefing since I arrived at Tidewater. I need another night, minimum.
Rivera is the one who gives me away.
She doesn't mean to. She's presenting her update on the physical search for Garrick, the gate camera footage, the patrol sweeps, the NCIS team combing the base. Then she pulls up the overnight monitoring log, the one my framework generates automatically and feeds to her secure terminal, and she says, "The monitoring framework flagged a threat communication at oh-eight-hundred. Ms. Bradshaw, have you updated Lieutenant Holland on the specifics? We need to coordinate the physical security response."
The room is quiet for a beat. Then Griff's head turns.
