Page 405 of Black Reign

“Nothing networked?”

“No external connection.”

“Nothing shares firmware with active Blackwell infrastructure?”

His father exhales through his nose.

Xavier answers calmly.

“No.”

“Independent power?”

“Yes.”

“Physical data diode?”

“Yes.”

I glance toward Senior.

“He taught you something.”

“I taught him most of what he knows.”

Xavier looks at his father.

“That is objectively false.”

“Can we begin?”

There.

Patience ending.

I smile sweetly.

“Absolutely.”

Three hours later, I want to murder both Blackwell men.

Not literally.

Mostly.

Xavier is at the left console.

His father occupies the center.

I sit in an extremely expensive chair behind them drinking tea and watching two highly intelligent men waste time in increasingly sophisticated ways.

The second key didn't contain ordinary files.

Papa would never have made it that simple.

It opened a separate audit architecture buried beneath ARGUS.

An invisible ledger beneath the visible one.