Chapter Text
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK — SIX MONTHS EARLIER
Rich had three monitors going and zero pants on. Boston had given up arguing about the pants thing years ago and was stretched out on the couch with a bag of chips and a crossword that looked more like a crime scene than a puzzle.
“Okay,” Rich said, keeping his voice low like the screen could hear him, “this is basically Pokémon Go for people who pay taxes with burner wallets.”
Boston didn’t look up. “Uh-huh.”
Rich chased a thread across a couple of onion sites and a forgotten university sandbox. Someone years ago had left a debug panel alive behind a login prompt that pretended to be dead. The panel spat raw headers in ugly, staccato bursts. He muttered to himself as he clicked.
“Nothing, nothing, phishing kit, bored grad student, ooh, hello… hello, you spicy little checksum.”
The checksum wasn’t a checksum. It was a string that resolved if you fed it the right salt. Rich had never met a salt he didn’t collect. The string flipped into numbers that could only be one thing. Coordinates.
“Boston,” Rich said, already up and halfway into the bedroom. “Shoes.”
Boston blinked. “It’s midnight.”
“Midnight is when the nerds hide treasure.”
“You are the nerds.”
Rich reappeared in jeans and a sweatshirt that read I VOID WARRANTIES. He was grinning, which meant this was going to be stupid and he was going to love it.
“Field trip,” he said. “High-tech geocache. Come on. Upsy-daisy. We’ll be back before your chips go stale.”
“They're already stale,” Boston protested.
“Perfect,” Rich replied. “You won’t even notice then.”
***
The coordinates led them to a block in Brooklyn that still smelled like ash years after the fire. Half the copy shop was boarded over, glass teeth still in the window frames, soot etched into the brick. The alley beside it was narrow and slick, runoff cutting little rivers through the debris.
“This is how people get tetanus,” Boston said, eyeing the debris warily with his hands in his jacket pockets.
“Tetanus is a brand-new startup. They deliver artisanal lockjaw.”
Rich’s phone light skimmed along the wall until it found what he was looking for: an old cable drop box warped from heat, the plastic casing cracked. He pried it open with a flathead he absolutely did not carry everywhere, and his breath hitched.
Inside, taped under the router carcass, was a black USB drive wrapped in foil like a burrito for a very small, very paranoid person.
“Come to papa,” Rich whispered.
He cracked the capsule open. Inside lay a black USB drive with a strip of tape on one side. Someone had scrawled a single character on the tape. It might have been an A. It might have been not wanting to commit to a full letter in a burned-out alley.
Boston leaned in.
“We are not plugging that in at home.”
“I would never,” Rich said, already hugging the foil packet like a prize. His tone said he absolutely wouldn’t risk his home machine with a random USB drive, but they both knew that was the only thing on his mind. “This is a ‘stick it in the junk drawer and pretend it doesn’t exist’ situation.”
“Great. Give it to Agent Granny Panties.”
“That’s former Agent Granny Panties,” Rich corrected absently.
He tucked the drive inside a Mylar sleeve, sealed it, then closed the box again, brushing the dust off the casing with his sleeve.
“High-tech geocaching,” he said, unable to help himself. “Finders keepers.”
“Losers deep-clean their hands.”
“Way ahead of you.”
***
YONKERS, NEW YORK — PRESENT DAY
“Put it down.”
Patterson didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t have to. The fans in the server cage did the shouting for her, and the rest of her anger had settled into the hollows under her eyes.
Rich set the drive on a silicone mat next to her console with the care of a man placing a raw egg on a minefield. The mat was new. So was the antistatic wrist strap coiled next to it and the Faraday pouch that had a sibling pouch inside it, like nesting dolls for people who trusted nothing.
Cross leaned over her shoulder, too close, gesturing at the screen.
“You should hash the index against an old build first. Cuts the noise before you start. Saves time.”
Patterson turned her head slowly, irritation barely masked.
“You want to run hash comparisons on corrupted data?”
“It worked when I was pulling logs for Devlin,” Cross shot back, bristling. “Kept things clean enough.”
“This isn’t ‘clean enough,’” Patterson snapped, sharper than she meant to. “It’s a live wire that eats your face if you touch it wrong. You want to run that comparison? Be my guest. See how fast Echo pushes you higher.”
The room went still. Cross’s jaw worked, caught between arguing and swallowing it.
Finally he shook his head and muttered, “I’m not gonna sit here and wait to get fried because she won’t listen.” He grabbed his jacket.
Patterson spun on him, voice climbing before she could stop it.
“Because I won’t—because I won’t listen? Are you freaking kidding me, dude? I’ve been the only one keeping this place from lighting up like Times Square while you—”
“Patterson.” Jane’s voice cut across hers, firm enough to pull her back a step.
Weller’s glare tracked Cross to the door.
“Then go.”
Mick lifted a hand, steady, not defensive.
“It’s not forever. He’s right about one thing — too many targets in one room. If Echo’s listening, this place already hums like a beacon. We’ll find a spot, stay low. You know how to reach me.”
Tasha’s mouth tightened, but she didn’t push further. The look she gave him was enough: don’t make me regret letting you walk out.
Cross shot Patterson a last glance—irritated, distrustful—and followed Devlin out.
When the door shut, the air felt heavier but clearer.
“It’s not my fault destiny keeps arriving in thumb-size,” Rich said quickly, breaking the tension. He tapped the drive he’d brought like it was a magic trick. “Exhibit A, spicy burned-copy-shop special. Exhibit B, Jane’s gift from our mysterious benefactor. Exhibit C, a purloined souvenir from courtesy of Hoodie Guy.”
Jane’s mouth twitched. “Your labeling system is extremely helpful.”
“I can make a slideshow.”
“No,” Patterson said.
“Animated transitions?”
“Still no.”
Weller set his coffee down. He eyed Rich carefully.
“Does Cross know you grabbed his drive?”
Rich clutched a hand to his heart and feigned shock.
“Grabbed? I would never!” he mock protested. “And what did he think was gonna happen? He just left this beauty sitting out where any reformed hacker could accidentally pick it up…” He trailed off.
“We’ve been sitting on them,” Jane said.
No one argued. The servers hummed. Somewhere below the floor, a transformer kicked on. The sound had the weight of a sigh.
“We were trying not to light ourselves up,” Patterson said, words clipped. “Every time we touch something new, the index moves. Every time the index moves, people get hurt.”
Tasha’s eyes flicked up. “People are already getting hurt.”
Patterson stood, the chair legs scuffing the concrete, and walked the perimeter of the console like the room might slide if she didn’t hold it in place.
“We should have done this weeks ago,” Jane said. “We didn’t. That’s on all of us. But ignoring them isn’t helping.”
Weller worked his jaw. “We handle this carefully. We don’t do cowboy.”
Rich raised both hands. “I left my hat at the copy shop.”
Patterson didn’t smile. She drew a breath that sounded like she was stealing it from somewhere else.
“If we crack them,” she said, quiet now, “we do it my way. Offline. Layered isolation. We assume any one of them is a live wire, and we backstop every step.”
Jane nodded. “Then we start there.”
No one moved yet. The drives sat in their little constellation on the mat, black plastic and everything they had avoided looking at for fear it would look back. Patterson reached for a fresh Faraday pouch with steady hands that didn’t feel steady at all.
“Okay,” she said, more to herself than anyone. “Let’s stop pretending these aren’t in the room.”
No one reached for the drives. The mat stayed untouched, three black shapes daring them to make the first move. The servers hummed. The weight of it pressed until even Patterson didn’t push forward.