The handcuff rubbed the tape off Caleb's left wrist whenever he shifted in the chair. Security had taken his armor, helmet, and comms chip. In the cold interrogation room, his damp undershirt stuck to the dressing on his back.
Mabel put a datapad between his chained hands.
The Class-5 brute filled the screen. Its broken chassis lay across the kill-house road, surrounded by the smaller targets.
"The mainframe logged a Tier-Four drill," she said. "My engineers found twelve tons of unauthorized machine. Brock says you killed it with a knife."
"Through the exhaust vent."
She enlarged the damaged housing. "The knife wasn't built for that casing."
"It didn't go through the casing. The vent was open. I broke the grate."
Mabel brought up the impact record. A spike rose above the rest of the run.
"With one-point-two percent output?"
"I dropped from the top of the chassis. My weight did the work."
She looked at him instead of the screen. Caleb kept his right forearm on the table. The bruise had darkened beneath the edge of his sleeve, and the handcuff was starting to press on it.
"Did you see that model before the doors locked?"
"No."
"Did anyone tell you it was coming?"
"No."
"Somebody bypassed the firewall and isolated my squad. Your feed was the only one I couldn't access. You understand why you're in this chair?"
Caleb nodded. He understood the difference between surviving the machine and explaining how it had entered the drill. The knife answered only one question.
The door opened. Barrett came in with another datapad and stopped beside Mabel.
"Shishido flagged his telemetry," he said.
Caleb looked at the captain.
"Their surplus armor," Barrett said. "Their output anomaly. They've invoked the oversight clause in the supply contract."
Mabel folded her arms. "My engineers are reviewing it."
"They want their own monitor while you do."
Barrett set the second datapad beside the first. Suzu's assignment notice showed on the screen.
"Temporary attachment. Recruit Shishido records your physical metrics until the anomaly review closes. She stays First Division; you stay Seventh. You comply with the monitoring."
"She's recovering too," Caleb said.
"Then don't give her a reason to chase you."
Mabel looked at Barrett. "He's still a possible entry point."
"Which is why Oswin gets the helmet before he goes anywhere. Move him to holding."
Two guards came in. One unlocked the cuff from the table while the other waited at Caleb's shoulder. Caleb stood slowly enough to keep the pull out of his ribs.
***
Holding Cell 4 had a cot, a table, and no window. Caleb sat on the cot with his hands between his knees. Without the chip, he could hear the vents and the guards moving beyond the door.
Chief Engineer Oswin arrived carrying a diagnostic terminal and the cracked helmet. He put both on the table, then pulled the chair close enough to work.
"You wear anything else linked to this?"
"The comms chip security took."
"I've got its record. Leave it with them."
Oswin connected the helmet's data port to the terminal. Green code scrolled across the screen.
"They went looking for an outside breach," he said. "This came in with your biometric feed. Whoever did it left a tether in the helmet."
Caleb watched the progress bar appear.
"Can you shut it?"
"After I trace it."
Oswin leaned over the keyboard. A second line appeared beneath the bar, then a third. His hands stopped long enough to read each one before moving again.
"They're trying to purge it. I've locked that out."
The bar reached eighty percent.
Purple letters lit the helmet's damaged visor.
[HE'S TOO FAST. I'M BURNING THE BRIDGE.]
The battery casing whined.
Oswin caught the cable, but the power surge reached the terminal before he pulled it free. Sparks jumped from the port. White smoke poured through the helmet's seals.
Caleb rose from the cot. Oswin backed into the table, one hand still holding the disconnected cable.
The terminal went black.
Oswin set the cable down and checked the screen. He pressed the power switch once. It did not respond.
"The drive," he said. "She burned the tether and the trace with it."
"All of it?"
"The route back to her. The breach logs are on the mainframe, but I needed this to find the other end."
He covered the smoking helmet with his coat and called the guard to open the door. Caleb sat again as Oswin carried the dead terminal out.
For several minutes, nobody spoke to him.
The helmet was destroyed. That connection was gone. Caleb let himself hope there had been only one, then looked at the wall where the engineer had stood. He had been one fifth of a progress bar from finding her. She had spent hardware to stop him.
Barrett returned before the smoke smell cleared.
"Oswin confirmed the intrusion," he said. "He can't attribute it from what's left. The external records show the drill was altered, not that you altered it."
Caleb lifted his hands. The cuff chain hung between them.
"So?"
Barrett called the guard in.
"No active sabotage charge. Back to duty. Monitoring stays in place until the review closes."
The guard unlocked the cuffs. Caleb rubbed the raw patch on his left wrist rather than touching the swollen right one.
"Report anything that reaches you through the equipment," Barrett said. "I won't have another squad locked inside because you decided a message was private."
Caleb nodded and stepped into the corridor.
***
His returned armor waited at the locker-room counter. The old comms chip remained in security custody, and the burned helmet had not come back with the plates.
He took the kit to his locker. A black garment bag hung inside above his duffel.
Caleb unzipped it with his left hand.
A charcoal wool suit filled the bag. Another comms chip was pinned to the lapel, smaller than the seized one. A cream card sat in the breast pocket.
He checked the hallway before taking it out.
*They let you out. Put the suit on. Upper Sectors. Dinner at eight.*
Caleb looked at the new chip. Oswin had closed a route through the helmet. Somebody had still put this parcel inside his locker.
He touched the card's raised lettering with his thumb. There was no screen to break, no server address to follow. She wanted him to come to a table.