Micah barked out a laugh while Black’s mouth twitched around the rim of his coffee mug. Memphis slapped the table once, shaking his head.
Ramsey turned toward the counter. “You weren’t even there.”
Sage scrolled through a line of code, unfazed.
“Exactly. Evidence required.”
More laughter rolled through the room.
Sage’s fingers kept moving, flipping through system diagnostics and archived reports while the noise washed around him. One window froze, and he reset it without looking before returning to the screen.
Most people heard chaos.
Sage heard patterns.
Which was why the name on the report made him pause.
His fingers slowed.
Adrian Vale.
That wasn’t unusual on its own—Adrian had been the reason half the team had driven back from California before sunrise—but the reference tag attached to the name didn’t match the rest of the file structure.
Sage tilted his head slightly.
“Huh.”
He scrolled back.
Then forward again.
A second database link appeared.
Older.
Much older.
Now, that was interesting.
He leaned forward on the counter, curls falling across his brow as he opened the connection thread. File trees bloomed across the screen in layered columns.
The tag attached to Adrian’s name wasn’t Genesis.
It was buried deeper in the archive.
Sage clicked into the record, curiosity already taking hold as he began pulling associated names.
A quiet spiral of connections began to form.
“Okay,” he muttered under his breath. “That’s weird.”
Behind him, Cookie set another mug of coffee down on the counter with a clink.
“Everything’s weird with you people,” Cookie said.
Sage barely heard him.
Movement sounded in the hallway.
