The accuracy of every word lands like a hammer strike, and I have no defense against it because every fact he's citing is true and every fact he's citing is something I chose to do, and thedistance between what I chose and what I'm willing to admit choosing is where this argument lives.
"This conversation is unproductive," I say, and I hear how clinical it sounds, and I hate it, and I say it anyway because clinical is the only register I have left when the alternative is honest.
Griff looks at me for a long count. Then he nods, once, and the nod is worse than any argument because it says he heard what I meant, not what I said, and what I meant isI'm not ready, and what he heard isyou might not be enough, and both of those things are wrong but I don't have the words to explain why because the words would cost me something I'm not sure I can pay back.
He turns and walks out. The door closes behind him with a soft click that sounds louder than any slam.
The conference room is empty. The projector hums. My hands are steady on the table, and my chest is tight, and the counterstrike isn't close to finished, and the man who just walked out of this room is the reason I care whether Tidewater survives tomorrow, and I just let him leave thinking I don't need him.
I go back to the comm building. The code is waiting. The monitors are where I left them, cold and blue and patient, and Griff's texts have stopped coming.
He's on patrol. Rivera's security updates route through my monitoring framework, and his call sign appears in the movement logs as he works through a sweep pattern covering the eastern perimeter, the power hub, the waterfront infrastructure. He's doing the job, walking the base with his sidearm and his radio, checking sightlines and junction boxes, hunting a threat while I sit in this chair and build the only defense Tidewater has. We're on opposite sides of the same base,working opposite ends of the same problem, and the silence between us is the silence I chose.
The counterstrike climbs. Past seventy. Past eighty. The interception protocols pass simulation testing, the deployment sequences fire in the correct order, and the clean-restore modules bring each compromised system back online within the acceptable window.
It's working. It's elegant, and it's the best code I've ever written, and the person I want to tell is walking a perimeter on the other side of the water, not texting me.
At ninety-two percent, it hits a wall.
The three anomalous nodes I flagged this morning. The ones with the latency I couldn't explain, the fractional delay in their handshake cycles that I tagged and deprioritized because the bulk of the architecture needed building first. Now I'm here, and the anomaly isn't a quirk. It's a design feature.
The final nodes in Garrick's malware use a handshake protocol that requires input from a hardware device, something physical plugged into the network at a specific junction point. The latency I noticed was the gap between the digital trigger and the hardware response, the fraction of a second where the code reaches out for a signal that doesn't originate from a server. It originates from a device.
My code can intercept every digital component, but these last nodes won't fire without a physical signal I can't replicate or intercept because the source isn't software. It's something wired into the infrastructure, sitting in a junction box or a maintenance corridor, waiting for the activation cascade to reach it.
The relay device we found during the initial sweep was one piece. These are others, planted in locations the initial sweep didn't reach, and they're the linchpin of the entire architecture.Without them, the malware's final cascade stalls. With them, no amount of code I write will complete the interception.
I need someone who understands physical devices. Someone who can identify the hardware components, locate them in the network infrastructure, and either remove them or modify them so the counterstrike can bypass the handshake.
I stare at the screen. The cursor blinks. The bay is dark through the windows, and my phone sits on the desk with no new messages, and the last eight percent requires the one person I told I didn't need.
13
GRIFF
She calls at 0347.
I finished the sweep hours ago and didn't leave the base. The EOD bay has a couch in the back office that smells like coffee grounds and solvent, and I've been on it since midnight with the tablet cycling through camera feeds and the argument sitting right where I left it. Miles of perimeter checks didn't burn it off. Nothing's going to burn it off. The screen shows her name, and I answer on the first ring because answering on the first ring is what I do, and if she reads anything into the speed of it, that's her problem.
"I need your hands."
She gives me four words that carry no sarcasm, no deflection, no British precision wrapped around something she'd rather not say, just the raw request of a woman who hit a wall she can't code her way through.
"Where."
"The counterstrike is stuck. The last nodes in the malware use a hardware handshake, a physical device wired into the network that my code can't reach. I flagged the anomaly this morning and deprioritized it, and now it's the only thing standing between the counterstrike and completion." Shepauses, and the silence has a texture to it that tells me what the next part costs. "I need someone who can identify the hardware, find it in the infrastructure, and either pull it or modify it so the interception protocol can bypass the handshake. I need an EOD specialist."
"You need me."
The pause stretches. "Yes."
I'm on my feet and reaching for my vest before the word finishes landing. "Send me the node locations. I'll have my team prepped by first light."
"Griff." She says my name the way she saidhomeon the balcony, quiet and deliberate and carrying more weight than the syllable was built for. "About yesterday."
"We'll talk after."
"That's not what I was going to say."
