Chapter 59
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Chapter 59
By midmorning, Emma and Nathan called me into a private debrief in a side conference room. The moment I stepped in, I knew it wasn’t a casual meeting. Nathan’s jaw was tight. Emma was already mid–sentence about procedural integrity.
“We’ve had more incidents,” Emma said. “Internal files accessed remotely. Notes moved. A proposal flagged as ‘reviewed‘ that no one on our team touched.”
I sat straighter. “Are we thinking inside leak?”
Nathan didn’t nod, but his face was confirmation enough.
“We’re not ruling anything out,” he said. “But until we isolate the breach, we need tighter protocol. No unencrypted uploads. No unsupervised archive access.‘
Emma’s eyes flicked toward me. “That includes you, by the way.”
I nodded. “Understood.”
Then, as the conversation shifted to general patching procedures, I turned it.
“Has anyone re–evaluated the old chain–of–command files? The military records from Sector Delta?”
Nathan raised a brow. “Why?”
“There’s language in some of the older briefs that doesn’t match current formatting. Could mean old hands tampered with updates.”
Nathan leaned back, visibly intrigued. Emma didn’t say anything, but she was watching me closely. I noted her silence. She always spoke when she had nothing to hide.
The next rumor hit me sideways. I caught it in the hallway between forum meetings–two aides whispering near the coffee urn. Something about me aiming to ‘lock in power‘. I stopped walking. They fell silent.
Emma found me half an hour later and closed the door behind her.
“Jenny’s been running her mouth,” she said.
“About me and Richard?”
Emma didn’t answer right away,
“She told one of the junior clerks that you were making a play. That you were planning to use this position to become his co–leader.”
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I stared at her.
“I’m sorry,” Emma said. “I should’ve shut it down earlier.”
I swallowed the sharp taste in my mouth. “What did she think would happen?”
Emma glanced at the door. “I already spoke to her. Told her to cut the shit.”
“And?”
“She laughed. Said, ‘If Amelia wants to play Queen, she better learn how to protect her crown.
My hands clenched under the table. “She doesn’t care if she burns the whole thing down as long as I’m standing in the ashes.”
Emma didn’t argue.
Later, after dinner, I lingered in my suite, rereading the same lines of my notes without really absorbing them. My fingertips hovered over the pins on my investigation board, connecting names that had started to feel more like ghosts than people. Something in my gut tugged, low and insistent.
A thread I hadn’t followed yet.
I messaged Emma: Can I get clearance to Sublevel 3 again? I know it’s a risk.
Her reply came five minutes later: You’ve got thirty minutes. Log your entry. Be fast.
The air in the sublevel felt colder than usual as I made my way back down. Every fluorescent flicker
felt more ominous than before. I followed a trail of cross–referenced file codes and found what I was
looking for: a folder mislabeled under a transit code used during the final year of the war.
Inside were encrypted personnel records.
I decrypted the first one–and stopped breathing.
It was a name I’d seen before. One I’d never spoken aloud. It had been scribbled beside the faded photograph buried in the anonymous folder–the one I couldn’t stop thinking about. A part of me had already guessed. Already feared. But I hadn’t let myself say it, not even internally. Because if I said it–if I admitted what that name might mean–it would become real.
Her name appeared on a transport manifest marked with a Clearwater seal. There was a medical clearance signed by no listed physician. No destination. No follow–up.
Everything else had been scrubbed.
My stomach twisted. This wasn’t just a connection. This was evidence of something being erased.
Before I could finish copying the data, I heard footsteps.
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“Looking for ghosts?”
I turned.
Adam stood in the doorway, his eyes darker than I’d ever seen them.
“You think you’re the only one with secrets?” he asked. “You’re not special. You’re just late.”
“Adam-”
“You walk around here like you own the place. Like you’re the answer. But you’re just the last one in
the room.”
I took a breath. “If you’re trying to scare me-”
“I’m trying to warn you,” he hissed. “Stop digging.”
He stepped closer.
“I know what you think you’re uncovering. But you don’t know what it costs.”
I held his gaze. “And you
do?”
He smiled, sharp and bitter. “I’ve already paid.”
I backed toward the emergency wing–one of the few places with auto–locks and panic latches. As I stepped over the threshold, I tapped my comm.
“Emma. I need security in the archive sublevel. Now.”
Adam didn’t follow. But he didn’t retreat either.
We stared at each other until the doors closed between us.
That night, I sat in Richard’s office with a map spread out between us.
The room was dim except for the soft desk lamp, the kind of light that made everything feel closer, quieter. We hadn’t spoken much since I arrived. He’d gestured for me to sit, and I had, rolling the map out between us in practiced silence.
My pulse hadn’t slowed since the confrontation with Adam, but now, sitting across from Richard, I felt a different kind of weight in my chest–one threaded with urgency, with the awareness that whatever I showed him tonight could change everything.
“If Red Fang was real–and he operated in these sectors–then someone buried him on purpose.”
Richard didn’t respond at first. He leaned forward, fingers tracing one of the loops of thread between two connected cities. His eyes lingered on a date scrawled in the corner.
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“I know this operation,” he said softly. “It wasn’t called Delta in our briefings. It was internal–off- books. That’s why we never found the records.”
My throat went dry. “You think he was real?”
“I think someone used that name to hide a lot of very dangerous things.”
“And now?”
He looked at me. Really looked at me.
“Now we stop pretending not to see it.”
He turned back to the map, drew a short line with his finger between two redacted pins.
“Then let’s dig,” he said.
“Is that what you always do?” I asked softly. “When something terrifies you? Dig anyway?”
His gaze lifted. “Terrified is dramatic.”
I folded my arms. “You didn’t answer the question.”
He smiled faintly, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Maybe I just keep moving so I don’t have to feel it.”
I leaned in. “And what if standing still is the only way forward?”
His smile faded. “Then maybe I’ll finally have to admit I’m scared too.”
I exhaled slowly. “Because I am. Scared of what we’ll find. Of what it will change.”
Richard didn’t break eye contact. “It’ll change everything. But it already has.”
He came around the desk, not hurried, just certain. His presence settled beside me like gravity.
“You think I don’t say things,” he murmured. “But you don’t hear what I don’t let myself say.”
I looked up at him. “Then say it.”
His voice was quiet. “I came to your room last night because I couldn’t sleep knowing you were alone. I left because… I didn’t trust myself not to cross a line.”
My throat tightened. “Then maybe next time… don’t leave.”
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