Page 235 of Broken Oath

Rook looked at him. “Another friend?”

Cutter’s mouth curved.

“I had a life before you boys took over my warehouse.”

The center monitor sounded a warning.

Fathom immediately disconnected it from the shared system.

A file had appeared inside the isolated Nightfall archive.

No sender.

No routing source.

No identifying information.

Only a title.

WADE PARKER INTERVIEW

Recorded six days earlier.

Nobody moved.

Sarah reached the workstation first.

“Open it.”

“Not yet.”

She turned toward Fathom.

“What?”

“The file appeared inside an isolated archive with no network access.”

“Then how did it get there?”

“That’s the problem.”

Fathom checked the external drives.

One of the recovered cargo drives contained a delayed-release partition. The file had remained hidden until the system encountered the Sunset Protocol search term.

“It was already on the drive,” Fathom said. “Someone programmed it to unlock when we found the connection.”

“The Silver Sword,” Sarah whispered.

“Possibly.”

“Can you open it safely?”

“I’m making a copy.”

Rook moved beside Sarah.

She stared at the file title.