Chapter 5
We stayed at the diner until the sky began to pale behind the rain.
Gabriel rented the booth for another hour by ordering coffee neither of us drank. He used a clean phone to arrange a protected call, then placed it facedown between us.
I spent that hour pretending the pain had become manageable. It hadn't. Each time I shifted, heat moved through my leg in a slow, nauseating wave. Gabriel noticed, but he didn't expose me in front of the waitress.
When she came to refill our cups, he asked for a first-aid kit.
She returned with gauze, tape, and a look that stopped short of questions. I went to the restroom and locked the door.
The injury was worse than I wanted to admit. The fabric had stuck to the skin. I cleaned what I could, wrapped the area tightly, and stood over the sink until the room stopped tilting.
I didn't tell Gabriel how close I had come to falling.
When I returned, he had moved the laptop onto the floor beneath the table. The drive remained where I had left it.
“You didn't open it,” I said.
“You told me not yet.”
The protected phone vibrated.
My whole body went still.
Gabriel slid it toward me. “You decide whether to answer.”
I picked it up.
“Toby?”
Static answered first. Then a breath.
“Harper?”
His voice was lower than I remembered, strained by distance or caution. I gripped the phone with both hands.
“Are you safe?”
“Define safe.”
I shut my eyes. “Can you leave where you are?”
“No.”
Gabriel watched me, silent.
“Did they come to you?” I asked.
A pause. Something scraped faintly on Toby's end.
“Not directly.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means they don't need to come. They already have access.”
My throat tightened. “Your debt was settled.”
“That was the story.”
I looked at Gabriel. He didn't react, but his hand closed slowly around the edge of the table.
“What debt?” I asked.
“The account they put under my name. Every time I tried to dispute it, the balance changed.”
“Who put it there?”
“I never saw a person.”
“You saw a system.”
“I saw a badge.”
The line crackled.
“What badge?”
“The foundation access badge. Gray stripe. It opened doors that weren't supposed to open for me.”
Gabriel leaned closer, though he kept his voice out of the call.
“Ask about the archive,” he said.
I repeated it. “What archive?”
Toby went quiet.
The silence lasted long enough for me to hear the diner kitchen clatter behind us.
“There’s a locked archive under the old administrative floor,” he said finally. “Not listed in the public records. The badge worked there once.”
“Once?”
“After that, they disabled it and told me I'd imagined the whole thing.”
“Who told you?”
“I can't say.”
“You can say my name,” I whispered. “You called me.”
“I called because you have the drive.”
The fluorescent light above our booth flickered.
“What happened to you?” Toby asked.
I looked down at the bandage beneath my torn trousers. “I got away.”
“That isn't what I asked.”
I couldn't answer. Fear had made a locked room inside my chest, and I still didn't know which key opened it.
Gabriel reached for a pen and wrote on a napkin: DO NOT PUSH.
I nodded.
Toby's breathing changed. “Harper, listen to me. Don't take anything back to the tower. Don't let them put you in a room alone.”
“I won't.”
“Who are you with?”
I looked at Gabriel.
“Someone who knows what the records mean.”
A sharp sound came through the phone, like a door opening.
Toby inhaled.
“I have to go,” he said. “If I stop answering, don't assume—”
The call cut off.
I held the phone to my ear after the line went dead.
Gabriel didn't touch me. “We can try again.”
“Not now.”
“All right.”
The waitress passed our booth, then slowed. A television over the counter showed a muted morning news segment. At the bottom of the screen, a familiar institutional logo appeared beside a headline about an internal security concern.
My name wasn't on it yet.
Gabriel saw it too.
His phone began vibrating.
He read the message, and the color left his face.
“What?” I asked.
He turned the screen toward me.
FORMAL NOTICE: HARPER MONROE IS ACCUSED OF UNAUTHORIZED REMOVAL OF ORGANIZATIONAL PROPERTY.
The diner suddenly felt too bright.
I looked at the silver drive between us.
May you like
“They know,” I said.
Gabriel put the phone away. “They want everyone else to know first.”
