Chương 13
"Tomorrow?"
"We'll see."
He groaned.
"That's adult maybe."
"Pretty much."
Sam's laptop chimed.
He looked down.
The humor left his face.
"What?"
Nathan asked.
Sam turned the screen toward us.
He had been monitoring the X9's network requests since the previous day.
A new connection attempt had just appeared.
The unit was still powered down.
"How can it connect if it's off?"
Nathan asked.
"Standby controller."
"StrideCore?"
"Destination matches their cloud environment."
Sam opened the packet metadata.
The request had failed because Nathan had changed the router credentials.
Then another appeared.
And another.
Three attempts within thirty seconds.
"Is that normal?"
I asked.
"Could be retry behavior."
Nathan stared at him.
Sam lifted both hands.
"I know."
Then the X9 made a sound from the rehabilitation room.
One bright electronic chirp.
Owen flinched.
We all turned.
Nobody had touched the machine.
A second chirp followed.
Then a tiny status light appeared near the left knee.
Sam moved first.
"Don't touch it."
Nathan stopped in the doorway.
"What is it doing?"
Sam stared at the network monitor.
The unit was trying to establish a cellular connection.
Not Wi-Fi.
Cellular.
"Did we know it had that?"
I asked.
"No."
Nathan's face hardened.
"Can StrideCore reach it?"
Sam checked the device image.
"Apparently."
Danielle stepped backward.
Her face had gone pale.
"What?"
I asked.
She looked at the glowing status light.
"That's the sound Caleb's machine made the night before the technician came to our house."
Nobody moved.
Sam turned toward her.
"Are you sure?"
She closed her eyes.
"Yes."
The light blinked again.
On Sam's screen, the cellular session connected.
He reached for the network capture device.
Then the X9's local event history refreshed.
One line disappeared.
Nathan saw it happen.
"So did I."
Sam's hands froze above the keyboard.
The fourth lock event was gone.
Sam moved so fast his chair struck the cabinet behind him.
"Nobody touch the X9."
Nathan stopped with one foot over the rehabilitation room threshold.
"The event just vanished."
"I saw it."
"Can they delete more?"
"I don't know."
Nathan turned on him.
"Then stop saying nobody touch it and do something."
Sam grabbed the network capture interface and began saving the active session.
"I am doing something."
The status light blinked again.
Owen backed his wheelchair away from the doorway.
Danielle noticed and moved with him.
Nathan saw that too.
His face changed.
He stepped away from the machine.
"Can you cut the cellular connection?"
Sam shook his head.
"Not without knowing whether killing power destroys volatile data."
"So we just let them erase it?"
"We preserve the traffic first."
Miriam's voice came sharply from Nathan's phone.
"Sam, document everything in real time."
"I'm recording screen state."
"Lauren, write down exactly what you observed."
I reached for my notebook.
My hand was shaking badly enough that the first line slanted down the page.
At 11:38 a.m., X9 powered-down unit emitted two audible status tones.
I checked the wall clock.
Then Sam's system clock.
They differed by forty-three seconds.
I wrote both.
The machine chirped again.
A second event vanished.
Nathan swore.
Sam said, "Which one?"
"The third lock."
"You're sure?"
"Yes."
I checked the local export we had preserved.
The original events were still there.
On the live system, only two remained.
"Sam."
"I see it."
He opened a command log.
A service process had initiated through the cellular modem.
The credentials were tokenized.
"Can you tell who is doing it?"
Nathan asked.
"Not yet."
"Can you stop them?"
"Maybe if I isolate the modem physically."
"Then do it."
"If I open the housing now, their counsel will say we altered the system during the session."
Nathan stared at him.
"They're altering it during the session."
"Exactly."
That answer stopped him.
Sam pointed at the screen.
"If I leave this untouched while we capture remote commands, we may have better evidence of what is happening than if I interrupt it."
Nathan looked toward Owen.
"Better evidence while they rewrite my son's machine."
Owen said, "Dad."
Nathan turned.
"Don't yell."
"I'm not yelling at you."
"You're still yelling."
Nathan's mouth closed.
Danielle lowered her voice.
"Caleb used to hide when my husband got like this."
Nathan looked at her.
She did not apologize.
The machine chirped a fourth time.
Another line disappeared.
Only the newest unresolved event remained.
Sam leaned closer.
"Wait."
"What?"
I asked.
"The deletion sequence isn't random."
He pulled the captured commands into another window.
"They're not deleting raw sensor blocks."
Nathan frowned.
"What are they deleting?"
"Clinical event references and service-state links."
"English."
"The underlying telemetry may still exist."
My pulse jumped.
"So they're removing the index."
"Possibly."
"You mean the data is still buried somewhere?"
"Maybe."
Nathan made a sound under his breath.
Sam ignored it.
"Think of it like tearing labels off evidence boxes without destroying the boxes."
Miriam said, "That distinction could matter."
Nathan looked at the phone.
"Could?"
"Yes."
He laughed once without humor.
"Everybody's favorite word."
Sam's screen changed.
The cellular session ended.
The X9's status light went dark.
Nobody moved for several seconds.
Then Owen said, "Is it done?"
Sam looked at the logs.
"For now."
Nathan stepped into the rehabilitation room.
This time Sam did not stop him.
He crouched beside the X9 but did not touch it.
The machine looked harmless again.
Polished composite.
Rounded joints.
Soft straps.
A product brochure made physical.
Nathan stared at it like it had betrayed him personally.
"Four events."
I said nothing.
"Three marked resolved before."
His voice was quiet now.
"Then we block remote access and suddenly the fourth one gets erased over cellular."
Sam corrected him gently.
"Removed from the visible local event table."
Nathan looked at him.
"Are you really doing that right now?"
"Yes."
Nathan stood.
Sam continued.
"Because if we say deleted and later recover the underlying telemetry, StrideCore will attack the language instead of answering why the references disappeared."
Nathan rubbed both hands over his face.
May you like
"Fine."
Danielle said, "That's exactly how they beat us."
