The echoes in the static.

Chapter 10: Air-Gapped

Riley led Elias into the back room of her warehouse—a Faraday cage she had built herself out of copper mesh and sound-dampening foam. Not a single wireless frequency, cellular signal, or radio wave could enter or leave the room.

"If that drive tries to ping a satellite in here," Riley said, turning on a heavy lead-acid battery station, "it’s hitting a solid wall of copper."

She connected the stolen USB drive to an old, heavily modified terminal running a stripped-down, offline operating system. Her fingers flew across the keyboard, bypassing the hardware's automated execution scripts and stripping away the encrypted outer layers.

Lines of green code scrolled across the dark monitor like falling rain.

"They built a back-door overlay into Oakhaven’s municipal infrastructure," Riley whispered, her eyes wide as she read the decoded logs. "Traffic lights, water grids, law enforcement channels—it's all connected to an automated command hub."

"Where is the hub located?" Elias asked, leaning over her shoulder.

Riley tapped a few commands, bringing up a vector map of the city. A pulsing red node blinked in the center of the harbor district—just three blocks away from her shop.

"The old lighthouse at Blackwood Point," Riley said. "They aren't just spying from afar, Elias. The central server running this entire network is right here in the harbor."

Suddenly, the red light on the power station began to flicker violently. Outside the Faraday cage, the heavy metal door of the main warehouse rattled with a deafening bang.

The syndicate had tracked Elias to the docks before he reached Riley's shop—they were sweeping the harbor block by block.

"They're kicking down my front gate," Riley said calmly, opening a floor drawer and pulling out two portable data storage drives. She copied the decrypted hub coordinates in seconds and jammed one drive into Elias's hand.

"There's a maintenance hatch behind that rack," Riley said, pointing toward the back wall. "It leads out to the pier. I'll draw them away from the shop."

"I'm not leaving you here, Riley," Elias said.

"If they get both of us, nobody stops them," she replied, locking the cage door behind him. "Get to the lighthouse, Elias. Shut it down."