Page 121

There are seventy-two posts before a moderator locked it.

I scroll through the visible posts first. Players offering in-game currency, rare drops, and crafting materials. Normal stuff, even if it breaks the rules.

The deleted posts sit at the bottom, rendered in pale gray text on the darker background, flagged previously as deleted script.

I skim.

Post sixty-eight doesn’t match the others. Instead of game items, a user named ProtocolTrader offers high-value data packages with a list of serial identifiers. The post gives a secure messaging service for contact and a timestamp of November 3rd. Three months ago.

I shuffle through the stack of servers and find the one with the correct date range.

October and November flooded the Blue Note Crew with jobs, mostly small stuff for the neighborhood.

I copy the first of the serial identifiers and run it through the search engine. Nothing. The second and third are the same, but the fourth pulls up a file, and my breath catches.

VX-7A91-KR44-082

At the end of last year, Ash’s baby sister got tangled up with a nasty piece of work who had stolen from the Vartanians, Lev’s family.

When Lev came snooping around, Rowan had let him run his little data crawler through the systems at the Blue Note. I’d been in on that mission, which was pretty thrilling.

Poor Lev thought he was being so sneaky, while we’d been capturing his search parameters.

And serial VX-7A91-KR44-082 was part of his data crawler.

ProtocolTrader is connected to the stolen Vartanian data. Which means at least one person using the Dusk Protocol forums is linked to whoever tried to set the Vartanians and Blue Note at each other’s throats.

Could Kain have been targeted for uncovering these transactions?

I don’t believe in coincidences.

This serial is the thread. Find the seller, find whoever has been targeting our people.

Rowan needs to know.

I reach for my phone on the desk and freeze. My suppressant alarm flashes across the screen, silenced, and the timestamp says my ‘one more thread’ turned into two hours.

Shit.

The moment I push back from the desk, the room tilts.

My hand flies out to catch my balance and knocks the can of Pixel Peach, sending it jumping, pink liquid sloshing onto the wood surface.

For a few seconds, all I can do is wait for the world to stop moving. The monitors blur, blue light smearing into white before the image sharpens.

In through my nose. One. Two. Three.

Steady.

My phone sits where I left it, screen up. The suppressant alarm is still going off without a sound. I tap it open, and the alarm settings show Single. It’s not on Repeat.

If I hadn’t tapped it blind, I would have missed it altogether.

I set the phone down and take inventory.

My palms are damp. I wipe them on my hoodie, and the fabric sticks. My pulse hammers, faster than it should after sitting still for hours, and the warmth at the base of my spine has settled into a deep, persistent thrum, like a guitar string tuned too tight.

The Heat app predicted twenty-four to forty-eight hours. I’m somewhere in that window, and the suppressants I took this morning are wearing off.