Page 66

“Always.”
She didn’t call him on it. Some lies were just softer shields.
She swiped her badge and entered her credentials. The door released with a muted hiss, the sound dampened by air pressure and intent. Nash followed her in without a word.
The moment the seal engaged behind them, she felt it. The temperature shift. Subtle. But real. Colder than last time. Not the kind of chill that touched skin, but the kind that brushed something deeper. The air was too still. Not dead, but aware.
The lights above hummed softly, steady and too white. Not warm. Not welcoming. Just calculated. The console blinked to life in the center of the room, already powered. Waiting.
That wasn’t normal.
Nash didn’t say anything, but she heard the shift in his stance. Not tension exactly. Just...notice.
Grace stepped forward. Logged in without hesitation. If she paused now, she might lose the nerve. Might let her instincts start whispering in a way that would stop her from pushing farther. The system accepted her clearance. “Dual-access initiated,” the screen announced in its usual toneless voice. She waited.
Nash stepped in close, and the air shifted again. He smelled like wind and leather and something deeper, something darker, spice and smoke, all him. Her skin prickled beneath her clothes, and for a second, she wished she hadn’t pulled her sleeves down. Just to feel the brush of his heat.
He pressed his thumb to the pad. No words. No movement beyond that. But she could feel him breathing. Feel the rhythm line up with hers for just a second. In. Out. Stillness. Then he stepped back, and the system responded.
Access granted.
The terminal bloomed open, data ready, cursor blinking like it had been waiting for her. Not passively. Like itknewshe’d come back. She stepped forward. Fingers poised above the keyboard. Then paused. There it was again. Not a sound. Not a shadow. But the feeling. That flicker of something watching. Not a camera. Not security. Something deeper. Quieter like the room had lungs. She swallowed once. The back of her neck tingled. She started typing anyway.
As her fingers moved faster, her eyes flicked across the code strings appearing on the terminal. The data wasn’t just old, it wasdirty. Layered. Masked in ways that didn’t match the OrdoTech standards from even two months ago. Someone had gone back into the shell structure and rewritten the permissions.
But not all of them. That was the mistake. The pattern wasn’t a full override. It wasorganic.Evolving. The access trail looped, but the logic wasn’t recursive. It was responsive. Her pulse ticked harder in her throat. The system wasn’t just processing information. It was reacting.
She felt Nash move behind her, heard the soft creak of the bench as he adjusted his weight. Not anxious. Just aware. She was used to the silence between them now, the way his body spoke in absence. No need to fill the space. Just the warmth of him there. Not holding her up but having her back.
“Something’s wrong,” she murmured.
“What is it?” His taut response was filled with coiled readiness.
She didn’t answer. Not right away. The cursor flicked. Just once. A blink. Then the screen flashed, subtle and immediate, so fast it might’ve been a glitch. The string scrolled by too quickly to capture, but she caught one word embedded in the middle of a hashed code block.
Harlan.
Her breath hitched. That wasn’t a file path. That was amessage. The lights above dimmed. Just a flicker. Then dropped again, slower this time. She turned her head. Nash was already standing. “I didn’t touch anything,” she said.
“I know,” he replied.
The console vibrated, a pressure change, the sound of air shifting wrong. She looked up at the ceiling vent. A hiss. Her mind snapped into focus.Displacement.
She’d read about inert gas flooding systems used in secure labs, nitrogen, argon, deployed to suppress fire or protect data. They didn’t suffocate you by sealing the room. They forced the oxygen out. Fast. Quiet. Lethal.
“Oh, shit—” she began. The door behind them slid shut, then locked. A red light pulsed over the keypad. No audio warning. No error code. Justsealed. The rush of alarm was so intense that for an instant she thought her heart would stop altogether.
Nash was already moving, checking the seams, testing the manual override. His jaw was tight. The air thickened, invisible and instant. A shift that pulled at her lungs. Her breath snagged on the inhale. “I think…” she whispered. “I think it’s cutting the oxygen.”Grace backed up a step. Then another. “No,” she said, voice thin. “It’s replacing it. It’s inert gas… it’s displacing the breathable air.”
Nash turned to her, fast. “Slow your breath. Shallow pulls. You understand me? What can you do? Override it?”
Feeling trapped and frantic, Grace turned toward his calm, controlled voice, needing that solidness to cling to. She nodded, but her chest was already tight. Her fingers hovered uselessly above the terminal. She needed to type something. Do something. If she could just access the override string, maybe she could?—
“I can fix it,” she rasped as panic and adrenaline rushed through her. “I just need?—”
“Grace.” Nash’s voice cut through the air like a blade. “Keep steady. Focus the best you can.”
That voice, she needed it like she needed air. “It’s a system default. It just has to recalibrate. Reset,” she said it like she wanted to believe it, like this wasn’t out of her reality, delving into something…advanced…not human. Panicking wasn’t going to help as she set her hands on the keyboard and typed fast, trying to force some rationality past the terror. Their lives depended on her. But the system just froze. Locked down. Not a fault. Not even close. For a moment, the keyboard seemed alive, the code pulsing with a heartbeat that throbbed through the plastic and glass. It stared at her like it was trying to make her understand.What?