"That wasn't the probe," he says. His voice is tight. "The probe was network-layer. This hit the power grid. Physical infrastructure."
"A secondary attack."
"Running simultaneously with the network probe. Using it as cover." His hands fly across the keyboard, pulling diagnostics from the power management system. "Someone piggy-backed a physical infrastructure attack onto the digital probe. The power grid runs on a separate control system from the network, air-gapped, independent. But the environmental controls that regulate the air-gap aren't independent. They're connected to the same monitoring layer the probe just tested."
The implication settles. "They used the network probe to map the connection between your monitoring layer and the physical infrastructure controls."
"And then they hit the physical grid through the gap." His jaw is working. "Three seconds. That's how long the backup generator took to spin up. Three seconds where the ventilation was offline, the blast doors were unsecured, and the biometric locks on every entrance in this facility were running on battery with no network verification."
Three seconds. Long enough for a door to open. Long enough for a lock to fail. Long enough for anyone positioned at a physical entrance to walk through.
Kane's voice on the comm: "All stations, report."
The check-in runs. Dylan at the armory. Stryker at the vehicle bay. Sarah at the signals suite. Each position reports secure, and each report releases a fraction of the tension that accumulated in the three seconds of dark.
But the fraction is small, because the point of the three seconds wasn't what happened during them. The point was proving they could be created. The Committee just demonstrated that their weapon isn't limited to the digitaldomain. They can reach the physical infrastructure of Echo Base through the digital channels, and the next time they create those three seconds, they'll have assets in position to use them.
The overheads stabilize. The amber reverts to white. The hum recovers its full frequency.
Tommy is staring at his power grid diagnostic with the expression of a man who just discovered a room in his house he didn't build.
"I need to air-gap the physical infrastructure controls," he says. His voice is quiet. Devastated in the specific way that Tommy gets devastated: not with grief but with the recognition that something he built has a flaw he should have seen. "Completely. No connection to any networked system. Hardware isolation."
"That's a twelve-hour rebuild.”
“I’ve set the system to do it automatically."
"Then it’s a good thing you started it now."
The screens settle. Green replaces red. The server hum steadies.
"Your offensive routing gets sloppy when you're angry." Tommy's voice is rough from the adrenaline, but the observation is precise.
"Your containment protocols get conservative when you're scared."
"I wasn't scared. I was managing risk."
"You were scared. Your keystroke rate dropped in the second wave."
"You were monitoring my keystroke rate during an active cyberattack."
"I monitor everything. It's a character flaw."
The silence that follows carries the faintest edge of something that might be a shared almost-laugh, if either of us were the type.
I'm breathing hard. The adrenaline has nowhere to go, cycling through my system with the insistence of a current that has lost its ground.
The workspace is dark and his face is close and the combined residue of the argument and the combat is pressing against the inside of my chest with a force I can't contain.
"We should talk about this." My voice comes out steadier than I feel, clinical and direct, the way I handle every conversation that carries weight. "If this is going to happen."
"If."
"When." The correction is an admission. "I have an IUD. I was tested after my last partner. Clean."
"Same. Clean, and it's been a while."
"Define a while."
