Chương 5
Rourke shook his head.
“That is not the whole reason.”
Hale looked tired again.
“No.”
Helen waited.
After several seconds, Hale said, “The archive also contains the Amaranth correction history.”
Mara stared at him.
“You knew that drive held it.”
“Yes.”
“You knew destroying it would erase it.”
“The drive is not the only copy.”
Rourke laughed.
“Wasn’t.”
Hale turned sharply.
Rourke nodded toward the disconnected relay.
“The purge wasn’t targeting the drive, Grant. It was targeting every synchronized copy.”
Silence.
Something passed over Hale’s face that Mara could not read.
Not surprise exactly.
Maybe the surprise of discovering that a disaster you helped create had grown beyond your understanding.
“You said remote purge was yours,” Mara told Rourke.
“It used my credentials.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
He lowered his voice.
“I initiated a deletion request.”
Helen stared at him.
Rourke raised his cuffed hands slightly.
“After Hale told me the archive was compromised.”
Mara said, “So you did arm it.”
“Yes.”
“Why deny it?”
“Because being found with a purge running under my credentials while holding the drive is not a situation that rewards nuance.”
“You said I framed you.”
“I panicked.”
That, at least, sounded human.
Ugly.
Small.
Believable.
Helen folded her arms. “Walk us through it.”
Rourke leaned against the table.
Hale had contacted him after the unauthorized JANUS query. Rourke knew the old system better than most current staff because he had supervised its compliance migration four years earlier. Hale told him they might have an active compromise. Rourke was to locate the J-7 authority drive, physically destroy it, and initiate a remote purge of an older continuity mirror.
“You were willing to erase an archive because one man told you it was compromised?” Owen asked.
“One admiral responsible for the program.”
“That is not better.”
Rourke’s face hardened.
“You’re twenty-seven.”
Owen went quiet.
Mara looked at Rourke. “Finish.”
Rourke had found the drive inside a sealed evidence packet among materials brought into the bunker for Helen Mercer’s classified review.
Helen turned toward Hale.
“You knew it would be here.”
“I knew your review had requested historical continuity records.”
“You knew enough to tell him where to look.”
“Yes.”
Rourke said he authenticated the purge through his secure credentials.
Then the system asked for JANUS hardware authority.
He inserted the drive briefly into a portable reader.
Hale’s head snapped up.
“You did what?”
Rourke looked at him.
“It wouldn’t execute without validation.”
“You authenticated the drive?”
“For three seconds.”
Hale closed his eyes.
Owen stared at the disconnected relay.
“That’s why secondary woke up.”
Nobody corrected him.
Rourke had removed the drive immediately after the purge began. When the remote command stalled, he tried to break the hardware token, believing that would stop further authentication.
That was the moment Mara saw him.
“Why were you watching him?” Helen asked her.
Mara glanced at Rourke.
She had not told anyone yet.
“I wasn’t.”
Rourke frowned.
“I was watching Hale.”
The admiral looked up.
Mara nodded toward the central table.
“Twenty minutes before Rourke moved, you shifted three folders from the east side to the center. You told Owen they were too close to a leaking vent.”
Owen glanced at the ceiling.
There was no leak.
“I checked after you walked away,” Mara said. “The JANUS packet was underneath them.”
Hale said nothing.
“You weren’t hiding it,” she continued. “You were putting it where Rourke could reach it without opening Mercer’s locked case.”
Rourke looked at Hale.
“That was you?”
Hale’s expression gave away almost nothing.
Almost.
Mara said, “You planned the handoff.”
“I planned to prevent an uncontrolled exposure.”
“You could have told Mercer.”
“I did not know who on her team was compromised.”
Helen’s voice chilled. “Including me?”
“Including everyone.”
“You trusted Rourke.”
“I trusted his knowledge of the system.”
“Not the same thing,” Rourke said.
“No,” Hale replied. “It is not.”
Owen sat back at the terminal.
“Something still doesn’t fit.”
Mara turned.
He was staring at Rourke’s phone.
“The unauthorized query happened at 2214?”
Hale nodded.
“The purge was armed at 2241.”
“Yes.”
“Twenty-seven minutes.”
Rourke frowned. “So?”
“If someone already had enough access to query JANUS, why wait around for you to purge it?”
No one answered.
Owen looked at the disconnected relay, then at the black drive.
“Unless the query wasn’t trying to steal data.”
Mara felt the shape of the problem change.
“What was it trying to do?”
Owen tapped the screen with the back of one fingernail.
“Wake up the people who would panic.”
Helen said, “A test.”
“Or bait.”
Rourke’s gaze moved to Hale.
Hale stared at the table.
Mara said, “Someone wanted you to react.”
“Yes,” Owen said. “And you did exactly what they expected. Hale moved the drive. Rourke authenticated it. Purge triggered. Remote route failed because of the storm. Secondary came alive locally.”
Helen looked toward the dark server room.
“Meaning whoever started this may have wanted the secondary protocol.”
Owen’s face tightened.
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
Mara glanced at the timer, now suspended.
“What does secondary create?”
“A continuity package.”
“That’s what Hale said.”
“I mean what does it actually create now?”
No one knew.
That became the next problem.
They documented Rourke’s restraints, the location of every device, the drive, the disconnected relay, and the state of the screens. Owen took photographs using a bunker-approved evidence camera. Mara dictated times. Helen witnessed.
Hale sat apart from them.
Nobody formally called him a suspect.
Nobody needed to.
At 2310, the secure satellite uplink returned for nineteen seconds.
Owen transmitted an emergency authentication request to an external defense operations center and received acknowledgment before the connection failed again.
At 2326, a message returned through the low-bandwidth channel.
Maintain isolation.
Preserve all devices.
External investigative and cyber teams would move once weather permitted.
No one was to reconnect JANUS.
Rourke read the message over Owen’s shoulder.
“Congratulations. We now get to sit in a locked bunker with a live system nobody understands.”
May you like
Owen turned.
“You were the one who tried to delete it.”
