Chapter 19 – The Hidden Thread
Morning sunlight filtered through the dusty windows of Midtown Gotham High, cutting across the rows of desks and half-asleep students. The smell of chalk and cheap coffee filled the room — normal, ordinary, and boring.
At least, it should've been.
Gwen sat near the window, tapping her pencil against her notebook while pretending to listen to Mr. Harris go on about chemical bonding. Her phone vibrated quietly under the desk — once, then twice. She glanced down.
A faint blue symbol flashed on the corner of her screen — the same fractal pattern she'd seen inside the Cadmus lab.
Her chest tightened. Weaver?
> "Energy fluctuation detected," the AI whispered softly in her earpiece. "Encrypted signal within fifteen meters."
Her eyes flicked up. Fifteen meters.
That meant… someone in this classroom.
She scanned the room — Harris at the board, kids texting, doodling, daydreaming — and then her eyes landed on the new substitute technician standing near the projector. A tall man, mid-thirties, brown coat, adjusting a portable server device connected to the smartboard.
Her HUD lens flickered faintly inside her contact — picking up traces of low-level data traffic from his equipment.
Weaver's voice again:
> "Signal matches partial Weaver-12 encryption string. Probability of correlation: eighty-nine percent."
Gwen kept her face neutral. Great. My high school just turned into a crime scene.
"Miss Stacy?" Mr. Harris's voice snapped her back.
"Huh?" she blinked. "Oh. Ionic bonds. They're… uh… strong friends?"
A few students laughed. Harris sighed. "Try again after class."
"Right. Totally," Gwen said, forcing a grin.
The bell rang mercifully, and everyone began shoving books into bags. Gwen stayed behind, pretending to tie her shoe while her HUD synced quietly with the technician's portable server.
> "Data capture initiated," Weaver murmured. "Source is… protected."
"Protected how?" she whispered.
> "Adaptive firewall. Familiar structure. Weaver-based."
Her pulse jumped. So someone's using my tech.
The man finished packing up and exited the room. Gwen followed a few steps behind, keeping her distance as students filled the hallway. He moved fast, heading toward the staff wing.
Weaver's tone sharpened.
> "Signal interference rising. Recommend caution."
"Yeah, no kidding."
---
Following the Trail
The man slipped through a door marked "Maintenance Access – Authorized Only."
Gwen checked over her shoulder — empty — and slipped in right after.
Inside, the air was colder. Pipes hissed along the ceiling, and the sound of distant machinery echoed through the narrow hallway.
She switched her lenses into stealth-scan mode. Lines of code drifted faintly over the floor — digital footprints of the same fractal signal. Whoever this guy was, he wasn't careful.
> "He's heading toward the old server basement," Weaver confirmed. "The one disconnected from the school grid five years ago."
"Because Cadmus used it as a testing ground," Gwen muttered. "I remember that case file."
> "Affirmative."
She crept closer, sticking to the shadows. Through a half-open door, she could see the man kneeling beside an old network console. He plugged in a sleek silver device — the same kind of tech she'd seen in the hidden Cadmus lab.
Gwen tapped her wrist, recording everything.
Then she saw it — the logo etched on the device:
"W-01 ARCHIVE NODE."
Her heart stopped. Weaver-01.
> "Signal synchronization achieved," Weaver said quietly. "Host system… acknowledging presence."
"What?" Gwen whispered.
The device blinked twice — and then a small holographic web spread outward, forming in the air. It wasn't just reading her; it was reacting to her.
The man froze, noticing the sudden pulse of light. "What the hell—?"
Before he could react, Gwen fired a micro-webline from her wrist, disarming him. The device clattered away.
She stepped out of the shadows, mask activating in a shimmer of light.
"Okay," she said coolly. "I'm guessing you're not here to fix the Wi-Fi."
The man raised his hands slowly. "You shouldn't be here."
"Yeah, I get that a lot," she replied, webbing him to the wall before he could reach for his comm. "Now, let's start with your name before I assume you're another Cadmus fanboy."
He didn't answer. But as he struggled, the holographic web in front of them shifted — like it was listening.
> "Unauthorized Weaver signal detected," Weaver said through her suit. "Initiating defense protocol."
The light around them surged.
"Wait— Weaver, stop! He's not—"
Too late. The entire console overloaded, short-circuiting in a flash of blue static.
The man went limp. The power grid in the basement flickered out.
Smoke and silence followed.
Gwen stood over him, breathing hard. "Great. I'm definitely getting detention for this."
> "System contained. No external breach detected," Weaver said calmly.
"Yeah, but now everyone upstairs thinks a transformer exploded."
> "Statistically plausible."
"Not helping, Weaver."
---
Aftermath
By the time the fire alarms blared and students were evacuated, Gwen was already gone — slipping out through a back exit into the alley.
She crouched behind a dumpster, catching her breath as Weaver recalibrated.
> "Hostile presence neutralized," the AI said. "Source device partially recovered."
"Show me."
Her gauntlet projected the fragment of data she'd copied before the explosion — fractured lines of code, incomplete words.
But one stood out.
"PROJECT: THREADLINE."
Gwen frowned. "That's new."
> "Not in our archives."
"Add it," she said quietly. "We'll figure it out later."
She looked back toward the school, sirens blaring in the distance, and sighed. "So much for a normal day."
> "Normalcy remains statistically improbable," Weaver noted.
She smiled faintly. "At least you're consistent."
Gwen slung her bag over her shoulder and disappeared down the alley, hood pulled low.
The camera lingered on the damaged data drive lying in the darkness — its faint blue light pulsing one last time before fading out.