I can see him in the code. The GCHQ training, the methodical layering, the defensive protocols inverted for offense. But underneath the familiar framework, something new. The creative deviation Tommy identified. Marsh learned to improvise after I left, and the improvisation is woven through the GCHQ fundamentals like a second language acquired late, fluent enough to function but carrying an accent I can read.
"He's running a diversionary protocol on the primary firewall," I call out. My voice is flat. Loud enough to carry, stripped of everything that isn't information. "Ignore the volume. The real penetration vector is in the biometric relay. He's trying to clone access credentials."
"I see it." Tommy's voice matches mine in register. Low, fast, precise. "He's using the framing signature to authenticate. If it matches against my baseline, the system will read the intrusion as internal traffic."
"Then change the baseline."
Tommy's fingers pause. A fraction of a second. A lifetime in code.
"If I rewrite my own authentication signature during an active attack, every system in this facility that relies on my credentials will flag me as an intruder."
"Every system that relies on the old signature. Rotate to a new one and push it to the critical nodes before the weapon catches up."
"That gives us a window of about ninety seconds where the base runs on trust instead of verification."
"Then we'd better be fast."
He looks at me. Without the humor, without the glasses-adjustment stalling mechanism, without any of the layered defenses he maintains between himself and the world, Tommy's face in crisis is controlled intensity that makes something tighten low in my belly. Which is wildly inappropriate given the circumstances, and I file it under later and focus.
"On three?" he says.
"I'm already on five. Keep up."
His fingers move. Mine move. The workspace fills with the sound of two keyboards running in tandem, and the synchronization we built through days of collaboration becomes operational for the first time under live fire.
I run offensive countermeasures against the biometric relay intrusion, dismantling Marsh's access vectors as fast as he deploys them. His attack patterns carry the GCHQ signature like a fingerprint, and every time he launches a new vector I feel the ghost of the division we shared, the training that lives in both of us like muscle memory. I know how he thinks because I learned from the same manuals, and the intimacy of fighting someone whose code you can read is a specific kind of violence that leaves no marks and draws no blood but strips you bare just the same.
Tommy rebuilds his authentication signature in real time, a coding sprint that requires rewriting the credentials that every critical system in Echo Base recognizes as belonging to the man who built them.
It's the digital equivalent of changing the locks on your house while someone is trying to pick the front door, and Tommy does it with a precision that would make me jealous if I weren't too busy to feel anything except the focused heat of combat through code.
Kane's voice comes through the internal comm. "Status."
"Active intrusion," Tommy responds without pausing his keystrokes. "Multi-vector attack on firewall, comms, andbiometric access. We're containing. Estimate twelve minutes to initial stabilization."
"Do we have compromised systems?"
"Not yet. Working on keeping it that way."
The comm clicks. Kane issues orders I only half register.
Stryker and Mercer deploying to physical perimeter positions. Dylan on internal security. Sarah rerouting signals traffic through backup channels. Victoria feeding intelligence from contacts who are monitoring Committee communication chatter for indicators of secondary operations.
The team moves around us like a system responding to a threat alert. Each component activating its designated function. Each person doing the thing they were built for.
I’m doing the thing I was built for.
The realization settles into my body between keystrokes. I'm not running this fight from a loft with flat Mountain Dew and no one to hear me curse when a system fails.
I'm running it beside Tommy, inside his mountain, surrounded by people who are counting on us to keep the walls standing. The team isn't abstract. The stakes aren't theoretical.
Khalid passes through the workspace carrying cable. He's pale, his eyes too wide, but his hands are steady and the cable goes where it needs to go.
Tommy's mentoring, paid forward in a crisis. Something twists behind my ribs, and I file the sensation and keep typing.
"He's adapting," I say. The weapon's secondary layer activates as Marsh realizes his biometric intrusion is being countered. New vectors open against the communications infrastructure, probing for the backup channels Sarah just activated. "He saw the reroute. He's targeting the backup comm relays."
"How fast?"
