The OrionX cybersecurity office occupied a windowless section of the building's third floor, designed with the kind of austere functionality that suggested its occupants preferred digital landscapes to physical ones. At 7:23 AM, Dr. Patricia Wong sat surrounded by monitors displaying network traffic patterns, access logs, and the digital fingerprints left by whoever had compromised their navigation systems.
Eli had been working alongside her for six hours, ever since Dr. Santos had granted him emergency access to the security investigation. The coffee had gone cold hours ago, and his eyes felt gritty from staring at screens full of code that seemed to shift and blur when he tried to focus on specific details.
"There," Dr. Wong said, pointing to a section of access logs that Eli had reviewed dozens of times without seeing the pattern she'd identified. "Look at the timestamp sequence for navigation system modifications."
Eli leaned closer, studying the data with renewed attention. The modifications had been made over a three-week period, always during overnight hours when minimal staff were present, always through authenticated access that wouldn't trigger automatic security alerts.
"The timing is too regular," he said, understanding beginning to dawn. "Every seventy-two hours, almost exactly."
"Like someone with a scheduled maintenance window," Dr. Wong agreed. "Someone who knew when the systems would be accessible for routine updates and used that knowledge to hide unauthorized modifications."
The implications hit Eli like cold water. Whoever had compromised their navigation systems wasn't an external hacker or foreign agent—it was someone with legitimate access to OrionX systems, someone who understood their security protocols well enough to work within them rather than around them.
"How many people have the kind of access required for these modifications?" Eli asked, though he suspected he already knew the answer.
Dr. Wong pulled up a personnel database, filtering for employees with Level 5 security clearance and navigation system access. The list was depressingly short: Eli himself, Milo Harlan, Dr. Santos, and three senior engineers who had worked on the original navigation code development.
"Six people," Dr. Wong said. "Including you."
Eli stared at the list of names, trying to process the fact that someone he worked with daily, someone he trusted with mission-critical responsibilities, had been systematically sabotaging the project they'd all spent three years developing.
"Can you narrow it down further?"
"Already working on it." Dr. Wong's fingers flew over her keyboard, pulling up detailed access logs for each person on the list. "I'm cross-referencing access times with badge entry records, overtime schedules, and workstation usage patterns."
The analysis took another hour, during which Eli found himself studying his colleagues' digital behavior with the uncomfortable feeling of someone investigating his own family. These were people he'd shared coffee with, collaborated with on complex problems, trusted with his professional reputation.
"Got something," Dr. Wong announced, highlighting a series of access logs that showed a clear pattern. "Look at this sequence from three weeks ago."
The logs showed someone accessing the navigation systems at 2:17 AM, making modifications that lasted until 3:45 AM, then carefully clearing the activity logs to hide evidence of the session. But the badge entry records showed that same person leaving the building at 11:30 PM and not returning until 7:00 AM the following morning.
"Remote access," Eli said. "Someone logged in from outside the building."
"And here's where it gets interesting." Dr. Wong pulled up another screen showing network traffic during the same time period. "The remote access came through a VPN connection that masked the original IP address, but our deep packet inspection caught fragments of the source location."
A map appeared on her screen, showing a red dot in a residential area fifteen miles from the OrionX campus. Eli recognized the neighborhood—expensive homes favored by senior executives and engineers who could afford to live away from the company housing complexes.
"Milo," Eli said quietly.
"That's my assessment," Dr. Wong agreed. "The geographic location matches his home address, the timing matches his knowledge of our maintenance schedules, and the technical sophistication matches his expertise with navigation systems."
Eli felt a mixture of betrayal and vindication—betrayal that someone he'd considered a professional rival rather than an enemy had been actively sabotaging their work, vindication that his suspicions about Milo's competitive behavior had been justified.
"Why would he do this?" Eli asked, though even as he spoke the words, he was beginning to understand Milo's motivation.
"That's not really my area," Dr. Wong replied. "My job is to identify the security breach and recommend corrective action. Your job is to decide what to do with that information."
Eli stared at the evidence displayed across multiple monitors—access logs, network traces, geographic data that painted a clear picture of deliberate sabotage by someone who should have been protecting the mission rather than undermining it. The professional implications were staggering: criminal charges, corporate liability, mission delays that could stretch into months or years.
But the personal implications were even more complicated. Milo wasn't just a colleague—he was someone Eli had competed with, respected despite their differences, and trusted with responsibilities that could make or break the entire Saturn mission.
"I need to report this to Dr. Santos," Eli said finally.
"Are you sure?" Dr. Wong's question carried the weight of someone who understood that some actions couldn't be undone. "Once you officially report sabotage by a senior engineer, this becomes a federal investigation. FBI involvement, congressional oversight, media attention that could destroy the mission even if we solve the technical problems."
Eli stood, pacing to the far side of the cybersecurity office while he processed the impossible choice between professional duty and mission preservation. Outside in the hallway, he could hear the normal sounds of OrionX beginning its daily operations—engineers arriving for morning meetings, administrative staff managing the complex logistics of space exploration, everyone working toward a common goal that could be destroyed by the evidence displayed on Dr. Wong's monitors.
His phone buzzed with a text from Noah: Good morning, beautiful. Hope the investigation is going better than expected.
The message reminded Eli that his personal life was now tangled up with professional decisions in ways he couldn't have anticipated. Noah was moving into his apartment that evening, trusting Eli to provide stability and security that might evaporate if the sabotage investigation destroyed his career.
"Give me one hour," Eli said to Dr. Wong. "I need to think about how to handle this without destroying everything we've worked for."
"One hour," she agreed. "But after that, I have an obligation to report the security breach regardless of your decision."
Eli left the cybersecurity office carrying the weight of evidence that could save the mission or destroy it, depending on how carefully he navigated the intersection of technical truth and political reality. In sixty minutes, he would have to choose between protecting a colleague who had betrayed him and protecting a mission that represented three years of his life.
Either way, the choice would define not just his professional future, but the kind of person he was willing to become in pursuit of reaching Saturn's rings.