The morning after felt heavier than usual. Sleep had been a stranger; adrenaline was the only thing keeping me upright. My reflection in the mirror showed tired eyes and a calm expression that didn't belong to me anymore.
When I reached the office, people were whispering. There had been an internal audit alert. Files missing, credentials traced. I didn't need to ask who the prime suspect was.
I walked to my desk, pretending not to notice the sudden silence that followed me. Mara wasn't there. Adrian's glass office loomed across the floor, blinds half-drawn, his silhouette visible through the frosted glass.
He called me in five minutes later.
"Sit down," he said.
I did, keeping my tone neutral. "You wanted to see me?"
He nodded, scrolling through something on his tablet. "Cybersecurity confirmed there was an unauthorized data pull last night. Time-stamped at 11:32 PM."
"That's late. Who was it?"
He looked up, eyes locking on mine. "Your terminal."
The air thickened between us.
I said slowly, "You think I hacked my own credentials?"
He leaned back in his chair, studying me. "You tell me."
I could hear my pulse in my ears, but I stayed calm. "If I wanted to steal data, I wouldn't use my own ID."
He smiled slightly. "Exactly. Which makes me wonder why you'd be so careless."
"Or maybe," I said, leaning forward, "someone wants to make it look like I was."
For the first time, his expression flickered — not surprise, just the briefest acknowledgment that I'd hit too close.
He stood, walking to the window. "You know, Selina, the thing about clever people is that they think everyone else is playing checkers while they're playing chess."
"Maybe they just know when they're being lied to."
He turned, his voice soft. "Careful. You're standing on thin ice."
I met his eyes. "Then maybe it's time someone broke it."
He didn't respond. He just smiled again, calm and deliberate. "You can go."
As I walked out, I caught a reflection in the glass wall — not mine. Someone was watching from the far end of the corridor, half-hidden near the server room door.
He wasn't an employee. I knew everyone here. This man was taller, broader, dressed in an unmarked black jacket, eyes hidden behind dark lenses even indoors.
When he noticed me looking, he turned and disappeared into the restricted zone.
I followed.
The door locked automatically behind him, but I had access through the maintenance system. I slipped in silently. Rows of machines hummed, their lights blinking like tiny, breathing hearts. The man stood near the back, tapping something into a portable device connected to one of the drives.
"Excuse me," I said.
He froze, then slowly turned. His face was calm, unbothered. "You shouldn't be here."
"Neither should you."
He smiled faintly, then held up a badge. It had the company's logo — but the color was wrong. Not blue like ours, but silver.
"Who are you?" I asked.
"Contracted security," he said smoothly. "External audit team."
"Since when do auditors carry encrypted field devices?"
He didn't answer. Instead, he unplugged the drive and slipped the device into his pocket. "You're sharp. I can see why he likes you."
"He?"
He smiled again. "Adrian."
The way he said the name — casual, familiar — made my stomach tighten. "You work for him."
"Let's just say I work around him. We have mutual interests."
"Which are?"
"Keeping the system stable."
I stepped closer. "Stable for who?"
"People who know how to use chaos."
He started to walk past me, but I blocked his way. "What did you take?"
He looked down at me, amusement flickering in his expression. "You're brave, Selina. But bravery doesn't change how this story ends."
Then he was gone.
I stood there, pulse racing, staring at the spot where he'd been. Something about his voice lingered — calm, almost detached. Like someone who'd done this a hundred times.
I went back to my desk, opened my terminal, and searched for any trace of external access. There it was — a masked login routed through a government domain. Not corporate. Not private. Classified.
That meant Adrian wasn't just covering up internal corruption. He was connected to something bigger.
At lunch, Mara reappeared, eyes darting nervously around the cafeteria before sliding into the seat opposite me. "I heard about the audit."
"Of course you did."
"You need to back off," she said in a low voice. "This isn't about him anymore."
"Then who?"
She looked down at her tray, pushing the food around with her fork. "You ever heard of Project Halo?"
"No."
"It started five years ago. Data management firm, offshore funding, a fake parent company listed in Dubai. Guess who set it up?"
I stared at her. "Adrian?"
She nodded. "He was hired as a consultant, but the firm was just a shell. They were moving classified data — experimental algorithms, defense-grade AI codes. It was buried under corporate analytics to hide the trail."
I leaned forward. "And now?"
"Now it's active again. This time under our company's servers."
My stomach turned. "So that's what the external guy was doing. Pulling fragments of Halo."
"Probably," she whispered. "And if you keep tracing it, they'll come for you too."
I looked at her. "Then why warn me?"
She sighed. "Because I made the same mistake once. I tried to expose it. And they erased me. New department, new title, different ID. I've been invisible ever since."
I stared at her, stunned. "You were part of it?"
"Everyone here was, at some point. You just didn't know."
The cafeteria noise faded into the background. Every sound — every laugh, every clinking fork — felt too normal for the weight of what she'd just said.
"So what do I do?" I asked quietly.
"Stop digging."
I shook my head. "I can't. Not after what I've seen."
"Then you'd better be smarter than they think you are."
That night, back in my apartment, I connected to my home system again. I had enough evidence now to start mapping the links — Adrian's reports, the dummy companies, the server logins, and now this mysterious Project Halo.
The deeper I went, the clearer it became. Halo wasn't just data laundering. It was building something. A learning framework. Adaptive, self-correcting, capable of rewriting its own code — an artificial intelligence far beyond legal limits.
And it was tied directly to the company's public servers. To me.
I froze.
If Halo ever activated, it would use every connected system as a node. My laptop. The office network. Even the city's surveillance feeds.
I took a breath and whispered to myself, "So that's your game, Adrian."
My phone buzzed. A message from an unknown number.
STOP DIGGING. YOU'RE NOT READY FOR WHAT YOU'LL FIND.
I stared at the screen, thumb hovering over the reply button. Then another message arrived.
MEET ME TOMORROW. 9 PM. PIER 14. COME ALONE.
No name. Just that.
For a moment, I considered deleting it. But something told me this was the same man from the server room. The one who claimed to work "around" Adrian.
If he was part of Halo, then he was also part of its weakness.
I set the phone down and looked out the window. The city lights stretched endlessly, flickering like coded signals against the dark. Somewhere out there, Adrian and his unseen allies were pulling strings, convinced I was just another pawn.
But pawns don't stay pawns forever.
That night, I wrote a message to myself — a digital lock that would trigger a full data leak if I didn't check in after 24 hours.
Then I closed the screen and whispered quietly, "Let's see who's really in the shadow."