#### **Chapter 33: The Watcher on the Wall**
The Director's new directive had turned W.A.O.'s formidable intelligence apparatus inward, a digital eye gazing at its own allies. Analysts sifted through petabytes of data from civilian networks, searching for a ghost. For weeks, they found nothing.
Then, a low-level analyst flagged an anomaly. A tiny, almost imperceptible burst of encrypted data had been routed from an IP address in Bern to a senior StarLink engineer's private server. The transfer was masked as a file for a high-end pet adoption agency. On the surface, it was absurd. Laughable.
But The Director did not laugh.
"'Covert Affection & Tactical Unit,'" she read from the report, her voice dangerously quiet. She recognized the acronym immediately. C.A.T. Division. W.A.O.'s own defunct, ridiculous emotional warfare unit. It was a message. A taunt. "They're mocking us," she whispered.
She understood the strategist's mind. Kuro hadn't just bypassed her defenses; he had hidden his infiltration behind a layer of such profound absurdity that any serious analyst would have dismissed it. It was a digital Trojan Horse disguised as a meme.
"They're not targeting our arrays," she announced to her command staff, a cold fire in her eyes. "They've compromised the StarLink network. They're planning a global broadcast." She brought up a map of Western Europe, her finger tracing the Alps. "They will need a secure, hard-line connection for the final upload. A location with significant power generation, shielded from conventional surveillance, and defensible. Cross-reference Kyro's known assets with locations that fit that profile. Now."
The hunt was no longer digital. It had a destination. The Director was one step behind, but she was closing the distance with terrifying speed.