Unfortunately, my brain keeps wandering.
Every time I pause to let Percy process another batch of data, my thoughts drift to a flash of bronze scales catching the light from the hologram. I don’t want to be thinking about his hands. I drag my attention back to the audit, gritting my teeth.
By the time the second hour is ending, something finally catches my eye. Something about profile 9.
The pattern is clean and predictable. Access windows open when I’d expect them to. Files are handled efficiently. There are no wasted movements, no unnecessary detours, none of the messy habits inexperienced operators tend to leave behind. Whoever this operative was, they’d been doing the job for a long time. The signature moves through the network with the kind of quiet competence that only comes from experience.
For three weeks, everything is normal.
Then it stops. There are no reduced permissions, no transition markers, no evidence of responsibilities being handed to someone else.
“Perce, flag this.”
I pull the timeline closer and study the point where Profile Nine disappears.
For three weeks, the rhythm is exactly what I’d expect from a competent operative. The activity is steady. Predictable. Then it stops.
One day the profile is active. The next, it’s gone. I trace backward through the records, following the signature’s final movements. The last activity appears during one of the windows I’ve been tracking for the mole. Not only does the timing match, it originates from the same part of the system where the suspicious traffic keeps surfacing.
A knot forms in my stomach. There are innocent explanations. I know there are. Operatives get moved. Reassigned. Retired. Networks change.
I start looking for evidence of one of those explanations and come up empty. There should be records showing what happened. Transfer notices. Administrative updates. Some indication that the profile was deliberately removed from active operations.
Instead, I find gaps. Missing entries. Sections of the timeline where information should exist and doesn’t.
I zoom in further, studying the breaks in the record. They don’t look natural. They look altered. Not carefully enough to hide the fact that something is missing, but enough to leave holes where complete records should be.
Someone deleted part of this operative’s history. Profile Nine didn’t simply disappear from the network. Someone went back afterward and tried to erase evidence that they’d ever been there.
At Helix, they did it with employee files. Security clearances. Access permissions. Whenever someone became inconvenient, records started vanishing until it looked as though they’d never existed in the first place.
But Helix was usually erasing careers.
I stare at the broken timeline on the screen and a chill works its way down my spine.
This feels different. Whatever happened to Profile Nine, I don’t think they left voluntarily. And the kind of disappearance that requires this much effort to cover up rarely ends with the missing person walking away.
Sitting back from the projection, I stare at the gap in the timeline. The longer I look at it, the less it resembles missing data and the more it resembles an outline. A shape left behind by something that used to be there.
I’ve seen records altered before. Seen files disappear. Seen access permissions revoked and employment histories rewritten until itlooked as though a person had never existed in the first place. Corporations don’t like loose ends. When someone becomes inconvenient, the paperwork changes first. At Helix, they erased people from databases long before they came after the people themselves.
A cold unease settles in my stomach as my eyes drift away from the screen and around the room. The workstation. The filtration unit humming softly in the wall. The clean air filling my lungs with every breath.
Twenty-four hours ago, this place felt like a miracle. A comfortable room. Reliable food. Air that didn’t leave a metallic taste at the back of my throat. Now I’m seeing it differently.
I’m not in the Splits anymore.
I’m not hidden in a forgotten apartment that nobody important knows exists.
I’m inside House Sethrak, digging through secrets that somebody has already gone to considerable lengths to conceal. If I’m right about Profile Nine, those efforts didn’t stop at deleting records.
Whoever erased this operative doesn’t know I exist yet. But if I can follow the trail this far, eventually they’re going to realize someone is looking. The moment that happens, the logic becomes uncomfortably simple. A person willing to erase an operative won’t hesitate to erase a contractor.
The thought should make me want to back away. Instead, it leaves me feeling trapped. Because now that I’ve seen it, I can’t unsee it.
I lean forward and study the timeline again, tracing the broken edges of the record. I came here to audit a network. Somewhere between the redacted logs and the behavioral profiles, I stumbled onto something else. Something people are hiding. Something that may already have gotten someone killed.
I need to tell Zavin, but… once I do, everything changes.
