Page 19 of Cipher: Lethal Algorithm

Solid wood, utilitarian. They face away from the windows, angled slightly toward each other. The desk on the left is Julian’s. It holds a multi-monitor rig running a custom Linux distro, cables tied and routed with compulsive precision.

The desk on the right is empty, save for a brand-new, top-of-the-line curved monitor, a mechanical keyboard, and a high-speed encrypted router block.

My chest tightens. A sudden, sharp lack of oxygen.

He didn’t rent a safe house with an extra chair. He built a workstation. He ran the cables. He bought the hardware. He looked at the available bandwidth in a Portuguese colonial print shop, decided it wasn’t enough, and installed a dedicated encrypted line.

He did all of this before he picked the lock on my rental car.

He was absolutely, fundamentally certain he was going to catch me. And he was certain he was going to bring me here.

“You arrogant son of a bitch.” The words slip out before the filter catches them. My voice sounds hollow in the large room.

Julian closes the heavy steel door behind us. The locks engage automatically—three distinct mechanical slides. He walks past me toward the kitchen, tossing his keys onto thecounter. He moves with that same terrifyingly loose grace, completely unbothered by my hostility.

“I prefer ‘prepared’.” He reaches for a ceramic mug, opening a bag of coffee beans. “The monitor has a 240Hz refresh rate. I noticed you favor high-speed rendering for your vine animations. I figured you’d want zero latency.”

He’s doing it again. He’s deploying his thoroughness as a weapon. I know you. I tracked you. I anticipated you.

“I’m not sitting at that desk.” I drop my go-bag onto the bare wooden floor. It hits hard, a dull thud emphasizing the silence. “And I’m not giving you the HSM.”

Julian stops measuring coffee. He turns around and leans against the counter. He crosses his arms over his chest. In the flat, artificial light of the apartment, the dark circles under his eyes are more pronounced. He looks lethal. He looks entirely too good to be human.

“Okay.”

The single word infuriates me. It’s exactly what he did in the car. He doesn’t argue. He just states a boundary and lets me hit it.

“Don’t handle me, Rhodes. I’m not one of your federal informants. You want the ledger. You want the Consortium’s financial routing. You told me Task Force 9 needs it.” I step toward him, closing the distance, letting the anger override the exhaustion. Anger is safe. Anger is a predictable algorithm. “If you want my data, I need your file.”

Julian tilts his head. “My file? What file?”

“Your intel on the Consortium.” I hold his eye contact. I refuse to look at the way his thermal shirt stretches across his broad, muscular shoulders. Shoulders I most certainly should not be noticing. “You claim you have a direct line to the judicial infrastructure that processed the Kincaid breach. You claimtheir Southeast Asia cell activated eight hours ago. Prove it. Give me access to the Task Force 9 operational summary.”

“You want to audit federal intelligence.”

“I want to know if you’re competent or if you just have good funding and a God complex.”

He stares at me. Three seconds pass. The silence in the room thickens, pressing inward. The hum of the refrigerator. The faint, ambient whir of his cooling fans.

Then, Julian pushes off the counter.

“Desk on the right.”

He walks to his terminal, taps a twelve-character alphanumeric sequence into his keyboard with one hand, and hits enter.

“You’re going to have to sit at it, and use it.” That cocky grin returns as he throws my words back at me.

The brand-new monitor on the right desk flares to life. A secure login prompt blinks against a stark black background.

“Decrypted partition.” Julian walks back to the kitchen to finish making the coffee. He doesn’t look at me. “The operational summary is in the root directory. You have read-only access. Don’t try to elevate your privileges; the system will lock you out and wipe the drive, and then I’ll be very annoyed.”

I stare at the glowing screen.

He didn’t fight me. He didn’t demand the HSM first. He just gave it to me.

I bite the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste copper, grab my go-bag, and walk to the desk he built for me. I drop into the chair. My fingers hit the mechanical keys.

Clack-clack-clack.