Page 14 of Scaled Daddy's Secret Heir
The diner smells like fried grease and dead dreams.
That’s how I know it’s perfect.
It’s one of those corner units wedged between service conduits and vertical waste chutes—technically zoned for dining, practically ignored by everyone except night-shift maintenance crews and desperate drifters. The kind of place where cameras go to die and good intentions dissolve in weak caf.
I picked it for the sight lines. No direct feeds. No signal intercepts. And enough blind angles inside that if this goes sideways, I can vanish without triggering an alert.
Leah walks in like she owns the lease.
Boots heavy, shoulders squared. Hair up. No makeup. No bullshit.
She doesn’t scan the room like a civilian—she clocks the exits and checks for familiar faces. One glance. Done.
When her eyes land on me, she lifts a brow.
“This where spies go to die?”
“Only the ones who fail at ordering the breakfast special.”
She snorts. Takes the seat across from me and immediately wipes the table with a napkin.
“Gods, this place is an immune system test.”
“Passed mine last week,” I say. “Still breathing.”
She eyes me like she’s not sure that’s a good thing.
I slide a datasheet across the table. Hard copy. Just in case. It’s laminated like a menu. She flips it open with one finger.
“Cute.”
We go over the op.
Controlled grab. Low-risk. We’re targeting a single data feed routed through a mobile diagnostics kiosk during scheduled system downtime. The feed contains timestamped cluster maps—nothing sensitive on its own, but enough to chart internal logistics cadence when matched with shift rosters.
In the wrong hands, it’s a breadcrumb trail.
In ours, it’s a test.
“I’m not sending you in blind,” I say, watching her scan the layout. “Encryption follows standard tri-tier Alliance wrap. Initial breach via ghost handshake, overwrite with phantom keys, then pull the data packet before the node reboots. Two-minute window.”
Leah whistles, low and unimpressed. “That’s tight.”
“You’ll have help.”
Her eyes flick to mine. “Yours?”
I nod. “We go in together. Split approach. I pull the handshake, you sync the keys.”
She leans back, crossing her arms. “Walk me through abort protocols.”
“Layered. If you spot an unknown between the northeast access ramp and the kiosk, pull back. If I drop my hand to the left side of my belt, it’s an immediate abort. If you hear the phrase ‘recalibrated timing’ in comms, that’s fallback protocol. We meet at the sub-transport junction, six levels down.”
She absorbs it. Doesn’t take notes. Doesn’t need to.
“Okay,” she says finally. “But your blind zone overlaps with food unit overflow.”
“Which means?”
