Page 86 of Fractured Loyalties
“Put a proximity alert on her office,” I say. “Anyone comes within six feet after dark, I want it logged and flagged.”
Lydia doesn’t argue. “Already done.”
She’s quiet for a beat, then adds, “You know what this means, right?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s not about following anymore.”
“No. It’s an audition.”
Someone’s testing boundaries.
Trying to see how close they can get without touching.
Trying to see what I’ll let them take before I react.
“Should I escalate?” she asks.
“Not yet. But prep the file.”
“Which file?”
“The contingency. In case the line between watching and acting breaks.”
The silence on the other end deepens. Then: “Copy.”
The line goes dead.
I sit there for a long time, Mara’s mug still warm in my hand.
They’re not just watching her.
They’re baiting me.
And sooner or later, someone’s going to find out what happens when you do that.
I lean forward and open the client portal again, dragging Mara’s mug close, thumb tracing the chipped rim while the terminal finishes syncing updates. The job Lydia flagged is still queued. But I skip past it and instead run a deeper sweep across the network for low-frequency chatter.
A few lines hit.
Encrypted names. Partial match.
My jaw tightens when I see it. Same user that pinged our Belgium shell company two months ago. Not the target from the job Lydia just mentioned—this is something else. Older. I’d marked it for deletion.
But now it's crawling again.
I flag it and initiate a trace.
The map populates slowly. Brussels. Then Lyon. Now? Stateside. Just outside Detroit.
And the most recent packet they opened—one of my burner identity strings. Alias I retired three years ago.
Someone’s digging.
I bring up the nested feed of user cross-interactions.
Three names.
