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I will not make that mistake again.
“What do we know?” I ask as as I enter the main conference.
Elias and Jace are already inside the glass room. Elias plants both hands on the table, leaning his weight into them, while Jace paces beside the display, coffee sloshing near the rim of his cup.
Elias answers first. “The firewall stopped a full export, but not before they mirrored multiple directories.”
“Did anything get out?”
“We’re still assessing, so it's hard to say right now.”
A weight settles in my stomach. I refuse to let the reaction reach my face. “Did they go for the active build or the encrypted archive?”
“The archive,” Jace says. “We won’t know if it got complete data until the comparison finishes.”
I cross to the wall display and swipe through the security logs until the timestamp appears. Four credentials sit beneath the event chain: mine, Elias’s, Jace’s, and Sloane’s.
Her name glows at the bottom of the column.
“Were all four tokens active?”
Elias nods. “The hacker cloned the permission tree. Yours authorized the root folder, mine opened security controls, Jace’s accessed prototype specifications, and hers approved the export queue.”
Whoever did this understood our permission hierarchy well enough to spread the intrusion across all four accounts.
“Any external routing?”
“Not yet,” Elias says. “The IP resolves locally, but that could be deliberate. Whoever built this wanted us looking inside the building.”
“Or they’re already inside.”
“There's something else.” I place my phone on the conference table and slide it toward them.
Elias reads the message first, his expression hardening. “Who sent this?”
“Unknown number. No identification and Sergio couldn't trace it.”
Jace takes the phone, scans the screen, and lets out a disgusted laugh. “Oh, you've got to be fucking kidding me.”
“Jace—” Elias begins.
“No. Someone breaches our system, uses all four of our credentials, and then sends Nate a conveniently timed message pointing at Sloane?” He pushes the phone back across the table. “That's not evidence. That's someone telling us exactly who they want us to blame.”
Elias doesn't answer immediately.
“What?” Jace demands.
“The timing,” Elias says carefully. “Whoever sent this knew when she joined us, what access she has, and how close she's gotten to all three of us. That information isn't public.”
“So investigate the sender,” Jace snaps. “Don't investigate her because some anonymous asshole told you to.”
“I'm investigating both,” Elias replies.
Jace stares at him. “You actually think she could've done this?”
“I think someone knows enough about us to make it possible,” Elias says.
“Can the transfer have been scheduled?”
