CHAPTER 283: WHAT SHE SAW

The sun hadn’t fully risen when I left the penthouse.

I made sure the girls were still asleep—or at least resting—before I slipped out. Camille had fallen asleep on the couch with her tablet balanced against her thigh. Alexis had left a short checklist pinned to the fridge for me to review later, a habit she’d picked up whenever she had trouble sleeping. Evelyn’s blindfold was already on by the time I walked past the living room. She didn’t say anything, but I could feel her stillness shift when I passed. Sienna had curled into the blankets in my room, arms wrapped around one of my sweatshirts like she thought I wouldn’t notice.

I noticed.

The air was thin outside. Crisp. Early enough that the streets were still yawning. People moved like they weren’t quite in their own bodies yet, only beginning to remember what it meant to be human.

I took the bus to Sector 47.

The station was mostly quiet when I arrived, though the precinct had already shaken off its sleep. Lights hummed. Phones rang. The low murmur of officers starting their shifts echoed from the briefing room. A thin haze of stale coffee clung to the air like it had given up trying to be useful.

I found Grant in his usual spot—slouched beside a data terminal near the back, scrolling through two different monitors at once. He looked up the second I walked in.

"Morning," he said. "You look like hell."

"Thanks. You look like a warm mug of disappointment."

He snorted. "You’re the poet, Vale."

"Any updates?"

Grant leaned back in his chair, lips pressing into a line. "Some. Not all good."

I motioned toward the corner desk. We moved there—more private, slightly quieter. He slid a folder across the surface. It was thin.

"The polaroids," he said. "We ran a full sweep on every image you handed over. Front, back, edges. Multiple layers. Zero hits."

I stared at the report.

"Null?" I asked.

He nodded.

I let the paper sit there for a moment. The top line stared up at me: FINGERPRINT MATCHES: 0.

Truth be told, I’d anticipated it—but the word still stung. There was always a chance. Always a hope that someone had gotten sloppy. A thumbprint. A smudge of oil. Something human.

But this wasn’t human.

This felt surgical.

"You look surprised," Grant said.

"I was betting against the odds. Thought maybe if he wanted to feel close to them, he’d touch something."

"Whoever it was," Grant said, "they either wiped everything perfectly—or they were never on the surface long enough to leave a trace."

"What about the footprint?"

"Still in forensics," he replied. "They’re running a pressure analysis now, trying to estimate weight, stride, boot type. Tread suggests some standard civilian footwear."

I nodded slowly. "Height guess?"

"They are likely to be somewhere between 5’10" and 6’1". Male or female still unclear. Deep impact for the weight. Stronger than average, but nothing too crazy."

So not just precise. Physically capable, too.

I sat back in the chair.

For a moment, neither of us spoke.

Then Grant said, "You’ve got that look."

"What look?"

"The ’I’m-about-to-make-your-life-harder’ look."

I smirked faintly.

"You ever heard of System-assigned hacker jobs?"

He blinked. "A few. Most of them got culled years ago after NovaCore. After that nobody was assigned as a Hacker by the System."

"Yes, but it’s not all of them," I said. "Some people slipped through. Got blacklisted. Others never registered in the first place. I think our guy has one of those jobs."

"You’re saying this was done through a skill?"

"Yeah. The camera footage from my building was never logged. No breach. No overwrite. It just... existed. A ghost image. It was sent to my phone too, despite not having my number known by many people. That’s not a normal hack."

"Shit," Grant muttered, sitting up straighter.

"I think his job is related to hacking," I said. "With skills that can slip through protocols, maybe even create shadow entries. We’ve seen abilities that bypass human knowledge before. Something like this wouldn’t even require him to understand how it works—just that it does."

"You think the System assigned that to him?"

"The System doesn’t care if something should exist. Hell, we don’t even know how skills and jobs are truly assigned by it. Do something enough times and you might get a skill, but you could also be drawing your whole life just to get a Lawyer job."

Grant leaned forward, rubbing his jaw. "Okay. Let’s say you’re right. What do we do?"

"We build a list," I said. "Search for every known hacker-type job. Any reports on anomalies, unregistered job holders, or NovaCore survivors who might’ve had clearance skills. Doesn’t matter if they’re local or not. For all we know he could be from a neighboring state and he simply visits once in a while. Not to mention that if this guy can ghost into camera systems, proximity might not mean much."

"I’ll start the queries," he said. "But it’ll take time. Some of these files are buried."

"I figured."

Grant’s fingers hovered above the keyboard for a beat.

"Anything else?"

I hesitated.

"There’s one more thing we can try," I said.

He looked up.

"In one of the polaroids," I continued, "the girl—Lea—she was looking at the camera."

"Okay?"

"Not just in frame. I mean she was looking directly at it. Eyes locked. Awake."

Grant frowned.

"She saw the intruder?"

"I think there’s a chance," I said. "Maybe it was dark. Maybe it was blurry. But that’s our only possible witness right now. We need to talk to her."

Grant nodded slowly.

"Alright. I’ll get in contact with Jacob."

"No," I said. "Let me."

He raised an eyebrow.

"You sure?"

"They already know me and I have skills for these type of things. It’s better if I ask."

Grant hesitated—just long enough to mean something—then nodded.

"Okay. Just... go easy."

"I will."

I stood, slipping the folder under one arm.

As I moved for the door, Grant called after me.

"Reynard?"

"Yeah?"

"Be careful with your words."

...

What an odd thing to say.