Page 120 of Twist of Fate

Luke stepped closer. “What did you build?”

“A tracking system.”

“Tracking what?”

“Anomalies.”

Luke held his gaze. “That’s not an answer either.”

Fear finally broke through Hale’s composure.

“Magic.”

There it was.

Hale studied him, some of the fear giving way to calculation. “You don’t seem surprised.”

“I just watched one man crush the air out of my lungs while another stopped an attacker with an invisible wall. It’s been an educational morning.”

Hale continued to watch him, clearly unconvinced that explained everything.

Luke didn’t give him time to ask. “You built a system that tracks magic, and now you’re selling it.”

“It isn’t finished. We’re still refining the model and calibrating the receiver. It doesn’t⁠—”

“It works.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Both your buyer and a team of magical attackers just tore through your office.” Luke leaned closer. “Pretty sure they think it works well enough.”

Another distant impact shook the elevator. Hale went still. “We need to shut it down. If they’re here because of the system, we remove the reason they’re fighting.”

Luke studied him. “Will that stop them?”

“I don’t know.” Hale’s mouth tightened. “But it keeps either side from taking control of it.”

“Where?”

“The control system is in the sub-basement. The servers, stored data, and internal routing are all housed there.”

“And the receiver?”

“On the roof, but it draws its data from the servers. Shut down the control system, and the receiver should go blind.”

Luke hated should, but it was the closest thing to a plan he had.

He caught Hale’s wrist and pressed his palm against the elevator’s control panel. The secured options illuminated. Luke canceled the elevator’s default lobby-level destination and chose the lowest sublevel.

“How close are you to full deployment?”

Hale hesitated.

“Numbers.”

“Ninety percent.”

Luke watched the floors tick downward. “Who else knows what the system does?”