"Because the answer is clear. Dar spent years dismantling the Committee's infrastructure from the outside. She sent us a warning at the cost of her own anonymity. She's been working beside me to neutralize this weapon with a level of commitment and capability that I would stake my professional reputation on."
Kane watches me with the steady gaze of a man who has been reading people for longer than I've been alive.
The silence stretches, and I realize he's not evaluating my argument. He's evaluating me.
"Tommy." His voice carries the particular weight of a commander who is also, in the spaces between missions and briefings, something closer to a father than either of us would ever name. "I trust your technical judgment more than almost anyone's. What I'm asking is whether the speed of that answer came from analysis or from somewhere else."
My jaw works. "Both. The analysis supports the conclusion. And yes, my personal feelings about Dar make the analysis faster because I've been paying closer attention to her behavior, her motivations, and her work than I would to a colleague I wasn't sleeping with."
The admission lands in the room like a server crash, loud and final.
"The involvement makes me more informed. Whether it makes me less objective is a question I'm asking myself every hour. I haven't liked the answer yet."
Kane's mouth curves with recognition, respect, and something that might be the faintest trace of amusement at watching his tech specialist twist in exactly the same wind that every other member of this team has eventually faced.
"Then make sure she's the weapon we point at them," he says, "not the other way around."
I nod. Stand. Move toward the door.
"Tommy."
I stop.
"I've watched you build every system in this mountain." His voice is quiet, stripped of command, just a man talking to the person who helped him construct a refuge from the ground up. "I know what those systems cost you. And I know the difference between someone who threatens what you've built and someone who makes it stronger."
I leave his office with my jaw tight and my hands steady and the weight of his trust alongside the weight of everything else.
The workspace is empty when I pass through. Dar's station is dark, her laptop closed, a Mountain Dew can still sweating on the desk beside the wrapper of a piece of candy she stole from my drawer.
The small evidences of her presence in my space hit differently now, with a name in my head and the knowledge that I'm about to carry it to her like a blade I didn't sharpen but am responsible for delivering.
I know where she is. I know her patterns the way I know network traffic, and Dar goes to the overlook when the corridorsfeel too close and the workspace feels too small and the weight of the mountain needs an opening in the rock to press against.
The walk takes longer than the distance warrants because my feet are dragging against what's coming.
I woke up this morning with her warmth against my ribs and my hand reaching for her instead of my phone, and now I'm carrying a name that's going to hurt her in a way I can't buffer or patch or fix with code.
I find her at the overlook, standing at the gap in the rock where Montana opens up into sky and distance. The wind pushes through the opening, carrying the mineral scent of rock and pine and altitude. Dar stands at the edge with her hands in her hoodie pockets and her rainbow hair bright against the gray stone.
The wind plasters the fabric against her back, and the outline of her shoulder blades is visible through the material. My hands remember those shoulder blades from the server room, and the memory is vivid enough that my fingers flex involuntarily at my sides.
She doesn't turn when she hears my footsteps. She identified my gait pattern almost immediately.
"We've identified the Committee's cyber architect," I say.
She goes still. The absolute, instantaneous freeze of a system hitting a critical error.
"Former GCHQ contractor. Cyber Operations Division. Victoria's contacts matched the coding signature through multiple independent analyses."
Her hands are in her pockets, her fingers hidden from me. The tell I've learned to read is invisible.
But her shoulders have gone rigid, and the line of her spine has changed from relaxed to locked, and every part of me wants to close the distance between us and put my hands on her and hold her together through whatever this is about to become.
I don't. Because this information is a detonation, and standing too close to someone while their world rearranges is a form of trespass even when your intentions are good.
She needs space to process. I can give her that, even if the effort of standing near Dar while she's in pain and keeping my hands at my sides is costing me something I'll feel for days.
"The name," she says. Her voice is flat. Controlled. Quieter than usual.
