On the last night of the two-week window, I sat at my desk with the clean device, the access code card, and the sequence my father had read into a voice recorder four years before he died.
I had everything I needed.
The access Charles had given me, which was a test and also an opening, would allow me to navigate to the partition in the logistics system without triggering the anomaly protocols. The sequence would unlock the backdoor my father had built. Once inside, I could establish the connection Elara needed, pass her the routing information, and step back while she did the rest. From my end, the entire operation would be invisible. A routine diagnostic. A series of access logs that looked like the kind of internal maintenance a senior financial analyst might conduct on a Thursday evening before a quarterly review.
From Charles's perspective, it would look like nothing at all.
Until it looked like everything.
