Chapter 55: The Traitor's Ghost
"What do you mean, uploading?" Leo asked, his voice low as he took the evidence bag from Stokely. The idea was so contrary to what they had assumed that it sent a chill down his spine.
"The forensics Cogs are still piecing it together," Stokely said, stepping inside their new command unit and letting the door slide shut behind him. "But the initial data flow from the incident wasn't one-way. There was a compressed data packet—tiny, encrypted to hell and back—that originated from Thorne's terminal and was sent to the Infiltrator a split-second before you blew the system. The big download was the smokescreen. The real transaction was this." He tapped the evidence bag.
Leo held the scorched data chip up to the light. The Chiron Ouroboros seemed to mock him. Thorne wasn't just a simple traitor who had sold them out for knowledge. He was an active corporate agent. He hadn't just opened the door for Chiron; he had been passing them secrets all along.
"What's on it?" Maria asked, her arms crossed.
"I had Ben run a preliminary analysis on the data fragments he managed to recover from the server logs," Leo said, his mind already connecting the dots. "He found ghost-fragments of a sub-network hidden within our own. A shadow system, running parallel to The Foundry's mainframe."
Ben, who had been listening intently, chimed in, his excitement overriding the grimness of the situation. "It was brilliant! He wasn't hacking the system; he was using a 'janitor's closet' of his own—unused server space, redundant pathways... He built his own private internet right under our noses and used it to communicate."
"Communicate with who?" Rick asked.
"The other mole," Leo said, the final, horrifying piece clicking into place. "Rostova was right. There's a 'Saboteur'. Thorne wasn't working alone. He was communicating with someone else inside The Foundry."
The room fell silent. The external threat of Chiron was bad enough. The internal threat of Thorne was contained. But a second, unknown traitor, still active within their walls? That was a cancer.
"Rostova can't know about this," Leo said immediately. "Not yet."
"What?" Sarah protested. "Leo, she put you in charge of internal security! This is exactly what you're supposed to report!"
"And what happens when I do?" he countered, his gaze sweeping over his team. "She'll initiate a full-scale purge. A witch hunt. She'll lock down the whole facility, pit neighbor against neighbor. Grunt and his goons will be let loose on the population. The trust that holds this place together will shatter. That's what the Saboteur wants. Chaos. It's the perfect environment for them to complete their mission."
He held up the chip. "Thorne's ghost is still on the board. He's left behind a partner. And if we want to catch them, we can't use Rostova's hammer. We have to use a scalpel. Our scalpel."
He was proposing their first official act as the Department of Internal Security be to conduct a shadow investigation, hidden from their own commander. It was a massive risk.
He looked at each of them. Maria gave a short, sharp nod. This kind of high-stakes subterfuge appealed to her. Ben was practically vibrating, the challenge of a silent network war already consuming him. Rick looked at Sarah, his loyalty torn, but then nodded as well. Finally, Sarah sighed, the weight of the decision clear on her face.
[Party Decision Unanimous: Initiate Operation 'Quiet Sweep'.]
"Alright," Leo said, his authority settling over the room. "Here's how we play this. Ben, you have my full clearance. I want you to live in the network. Hunt for this shadow system. Don't engage. Just map it. Find its access points, its dead drops. Be a ghost following a ghost."
"On it," Ben grinned.
"Maria, you're on infrastructure. The saboteur still needs to move physically. You and your crew will be conducting 'structural integrity checks'. Use it as a cover to install subtle sensor grids in the maintenance corridors, the vent shafts... the places our mole likes to crawl."
"A spiderweb," Maria smirked. "I like it."
"Sarah, Rick," Leo continued. "You two have the hardest job. I need you to profile Thorne. Go through his personal effects, his medical records, his psychological evaluations. Who did he talk to? Who were his friends? The Saboteur has to be someone he trusted, someone he worked with. The answer is in his life."
"A psychological autopsy," Sarah murmured, her analytical mind already churning. "We can do that."
"And what's your job, boss?" Maria asked.
Leo looked down at the chip in his hand. "My job... is to talk to the ghost." He turned to Ben. "I need a secure, isolated terminal. Something completely disconnected from the Foundry network. And I need you to find a way to crack this chip. I want to know what secrets Thorne was willing to die for."
The plan was set. It was a complex, multi-fronted investigation built on subtlety and misdirection. A true janitorial operation.
As the team dispersed to their tasks, Leo stood alone in their command center, the scorched Chiron chip resting in his palm. He had spent his whole life making himself invisible, cleaning up messes no one else wanted to see. Now, he had to hunt an enemy who had mastered that same art. And the entire fate of The Foundry depended on which of them was the better ghost.