"It is absolutely a you problem. You are the problem. You in my shirt is the problem."
The corner of her mouth twitches. "I'll give it back."
"Don't you dare."
She does look up then, and the flatness in her expression cracks just enough to let something warm through. The warmth aimed at me from behind her carefully maintained defenses hits me harder than a full unguarded smile from anyone else would.
I turn back to my screen. The grin I'm suppressing is the kind that would tell her everything I haven't said, so I keep my face angled toward the monitor until I can get it under control.
The morning passes. We work. The workspace hums with the server frequency underneath it all.
Every time she reaches for her Mountain Dew, the sleeve of my t-shirt rides up on her wrist beneath the hoodie cuff, and the sight of Dar in my clothes is doing something to my concentration that no amount of caffeine can counteract.
Victoria's encrypted brief arrives late morning.
I read it once. I read it again. Then I read it a third time with the particular attention I reserve for intelligence that changes operational calculus, because this brief doesn't shift the calculus.
It detonates it.
The Committee's cyber architect has been identified. Victoria's European contacts, working backward from the weapon's design signatures, have matched the coding fingerprints to a specific individual: a former GCHQ contractor with high-level clearance and access to the Cyber Operations Division's classified frameworks.
Someone who worked inside the same institutional structure that Dar worked inside, during the same operational period, with access to the vulnerability data that was supposed to be sealed when Dar was pushed out.
Someone who saw what Dar saw and knew what Dar knew, and who instead of leaving or fighting chose to stay inside the system long enough to extract everything valuable before selling it to the Committee.
I sit back in my chair. The glasses feel heavy on my face.
The weapon targeting Echo Base was designed by someone trained in the same program that trained Dar, someone who had access to the reports she filed, the institutional knowledge that was supposed to die when her career did.
The Committee didn't just exploit GCHQ's weakness. They recruited the person who understood it.
I forward the brief to Kane with a request for immediate meeting. I don't forward it to Dar. The implications need to settle before I bring them to someone whose entire history is tangled in this revelation.
Kane meets me in his office shortly after. The room is spare, functional.
Kane sits behind the desk with the stillness of a man whose authority doesn't require movement, and he reads the brief on his screen while I stand and try to control the frequency of my breathing.
"Sit down, Tommy."
I sit. The chair is uncomfortable. Kane's office chairs have always been uncomfortable.
"You've read this thoroughly?"
"Multiple times."
"And your assessment?"
"The identification is solid. Victoria's contacts sourced the coding signature through independent analytical frameworks. The probability of a false match is negligible."
Kane nods. Sets the brief aside. Folds his hands on the desk in the manner of a man preparing to ask a question he already knows the answer to.
"Could Dar be connected to the architect?"
The question lands like a grenade with the pin already pulled. I have seconds to decide between professional detachment and personal honesty.
"No."
"That was fast."
