Maeve's fingers stopped moving.
Holden noticed immediately. He was halfway through packing his bag, rolling his spare uniform into a tight cylinder, when the sudden silence from her corner of the bunker became louder than any alarm.
She had been typing nonstop for forty minutes, monitoring Capital chatter, tracking military communications and watching the underworld networks she had quietly infiltrated weeks ago.
Now her hands were frozen above the screen. Her eyes were wide, not with surprise but with the wide of someone who had just found a snake in their shoe.
"Holden. Don't pack."
He set the uniform down. "Why?"
"Sit down."
He sat.
Maeve turned the tablet to face him. The screen showed a dark interface, black background with green text. Lines of encrypted code scrolled across the top, but below them, a decoded message sat in plain text.
