When Leo accused her, the air in the server room turned sharp and thin. In her ears, the hum of the servers faded into a dull roar. He had her pinned. This was a direct challenge, a blade held to the throat of her whole story. Fear could do nothing; it was a waste. She locked her cold, dark eyes against his, refusing to look away. She made silence last, turning his weapon back upon him and, when finally speaking, was not defensive but dismissive and just slightly tinged with professional arrogance. "Your team," she said, her tone clinical, "was looking at the system like a guard looking through a monitor. They were looking for a burglar. My father taught me to listen like a priest listening to confession. You don't listen to the admitted sins, you listen for the truths that aren't told." He turned back to the screen with gestures toward the almost invisible processor spike. "Amateurs break into places. Professionals leave traces. Your team was listening like gunfire. I was listening until the last moment that the birds went mute. That's how we differ."
It was a masterstroke in misdirection. Under the cover of hazy mysticism, she was attributing her truly extraordinary skill to a fabled wisdom of her dead "father." Before Leo could even dissect whatever she had said, she thrust on the offensive. "The more interesting question, Leo, isn't how I found this in an hour. It's why you've been sitting on it for six weeks." With that, she swivelled in her chair so that she could confront him fully, her face an expression of pointed questioning. "You've been tracking these spikes, which means you knew the ghost was active, and you knew he was covering his tracks with near-perfect elegance. Yet you have no leads. You tasked me with analyzing logs you already knew were useless. Were you testing me, or are you genuinely out of ideas?" Almost a muscle feathered in Leo's jaw. He was a man accustomed to control as well as results, and she had just thrown back in his face his six weeks' distortion in effort.
His suspicion now warred with his professional pride. He was bound by Damiano's orders, not able to just throw her in a dungeon, but clearly her audacity had rattled him. "My strategies," he bit out, his voice dangerously low, "are not your concern. My only concern is securing this network and removing the threat. Since Mr. Moretti has inexplicably made you a part of that process, we will proceed. But the rules have changed." He stepped closer and invaded her space, forcing her to crane her neck to look up at him. "No more solo flights of genius. From this moment on, every diagnostic you run, every line of code you write, happens with my direct oversight. You do not touch this workstation unless I am in this room. We are partners. And I will be your shadow." It became threat and procedure rolled into one. He was leashing her to him, ensuring he could watch her every move. An unwilling truce, deeply suspicious, had been forged in the cold humming air between them. "Fine," was all Serena allowed. "Then as your new partner, I have a suggestion." Turning back to the monitors, all business again. "The processor spike is our only reliable trace. It's the heat signature of the erasure script. It's our 'ghost's' tell. If we can isolate that signature—the specific string of commands that causes the spike—we can build a trap. A honeypot. We create a file that, when accessed, triggers a silent alarm, but when he tries to run his erasure script on the log file, it triggers a system lockdown instead. We catch him in his own trap."
She laid her strategy out with flawless, cold logic. It was solid, it was proactive, and it was the only possible course ahead. She had taken his accusation and turned it into a collaborative battle plan, so deeply embedding herself in the hunt that he could no longer set her aside without Damiano's perceiving incompetence. Leo was silent long while, dark eyes fixed on the screen, processing her strategy. She had given him a way when he had been stalled for over a month. He was too pragmatic for a good plan to be overruled by suspicion. "Alright," he said finally, the clipped, reluctant word leaving his mouth as he did so. "We'll build your trap." He pulled up a second chair, placing it beside hers at the workstation. The message was clear. They would do this, but they would do it side-by-side, inches apart. The air between them was thick with distrust. Serena focused on the screen, but she could feel his presentiment like a brand, his watchfulness a constant, suffocating pressure. She had survived the interrogation and won her place in all the excitement of the chase, but now, as she starts to lay the digital foundations of their trap, she knows that she has shackled herself to the one man bright enough and suspicious enough to see through her entire deception. While the ghost still lurked out there, her most immediate threat was now her partner.