Markus replied at 11:58 PM.

  Yuko! Of course I can help. What do you need? I'm still at the office actually. Want me to come by?

  She stared at the message. Still at the office. At midnight. Waiting for exactly this kind of opportunity.

  She typed back: Just need read access to MTM diagnostic streams. Working on a telemetry issue.

  Three dots. Typing.

  That's a restricted system. Can I ask what this is about?

  Yuko's fingers hovered over the keyboard. She needed to give him something. Something that felt like trust.

  It's connected to my father's accident. I found some inconsistencies in the logs. I just need to check something before maintenance wipes the old data.

  A long pause. Then:

  I'm so sorry about your father, Yuko. I didn't realize you were looking into it. Give me five minutes.

  Five minutes later, her access panel refreshed. A new folder appeared: MTM_DIAGNOSTIC_ARCHIVE.

  She was in.

  The shadow logs were massive—months of data, thousands of entries. She didn't have time to read them. The clock read 12:14 AM. Less than two and a half hours until the purge.

  She started downloading everything.

  The progress bar crawled. 8%. 15%. 23%.

  Her phone buzzed. Markus again.

  Access granted. Let me know if you need anything else. And Yuko—be careful. Those systems are monitored.

  Monitored. Of course they were.

  At 47%, a notification popped up:

  SESSION TIMEOUT WARNING: Your access will expire in 60 minutes.

  Markus had given her temporary access. A window, not a door.

  She kept downloading. 67%. 81%.

  At 89%, the screen flickered red:

  MTM_DIAGNOSTIC_ARCHIVE: Maintenance lock initiated. Download will terminate in 5 minutes.

  They were starting the purge early. Ops must have advanced the ARACHNE window—someone had flagged unusual access.

  Yuko's heart slammed against her ribs. 93%. 97%.

  Download will terminate in 1 minute.

  99%.

  The screen went black.

  Then: Download complete.

  Yuko exhaled. She'd gotten it. Not everything—the last 1% was probably corrupted—but enough. Months of shadow logs. Evidence that the parallel logging system existed. Proof that S-Corp had been running override tests and deleting the records.

  She copied the files to her encrypted drive. Then copied them again to a cloud backup. Then to a USB stick she'd hidden in her bag.

  Three copies. Three chances. If they found one, she'd still have the others.

  The USB went into her jacket pocket. Tomorrow, it would go into a locker at Bayport Station. If they searched her apartment, they'd find nothing.

  The clock read 1:47 AM.

  Her eyes burned. Her back ached from hunching over the keyboard. She should go home. She should sleep. Her mother was probably still awake, waiting.

  But she couldn't stop. Not now. Not when she finally had something real.

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  She opened one of the shadow logs at random. Scrolled through the entries.

  MINERVA_THROUGHPUT: OVERRIDE TEST. MINERVA_THROUGHPUT: CALIBRATION EVENT. MINERVA_THROUGHPUT: INTERLOCK BYPASS.

  Dozens of them. Over months. Each one representing a moment when a robot's safety systems had been deliberately disabled.

  How many of these had killed someone?

  A new message appeared. Not from Markus.

  Unknown sender. No subject line. Just three words:

  Rooftop. Ten minutes.

  Yuko stared at the screen.

  Someone had been watching her.

  This could be a trap. Security. HR. Someone testing her loyalty. Her finger hovered over the delete button.

  But if they already knew what she was doing, they would have stopped her. They wouldn't send a cryptic message—they'd send guards.

  Whoever this was, they wanted to talk. Not arrest.

  She grabbed her jacket.

  The rooftop was cold.

  Bayport fog rolled in from the harbor, turning the city lights into smears of orange and white. Yuko stood near the edge, arms wrapped around herself, watching the door.

  She shouldn't be here. This was stupid. Dangerous. Someone had sent her an anonymous message and she'd just... walked up here?

  But whoever sent it knew what she was doing. They'd timed it perfectly—right after her download completed. That meant they had access to the same systems. Maybe even better access.

  The door opened.

  A woman stepped out. Mid-thirties, short hair, wearing a S-Corp safety vest over her blazer. Dark circles under her eyes. She looked like she hadn't slept in weeks.

  Her badge read: ELLEN ZHOU - SAFETY COMPLIANCE.

  "You're Joel's daughter," Ellen said. Not a question.

  "And you're Safety Compliance." Yuko didn't move from her position. "Which means you have audit access. Which means you've been watching me all night."

  Ellen's eyebrows rose slightly. "Bold and quick."

  "I don't have time for games. You saw my download. You know what I found." Yuko stepped forward. "So either you're here to stop me, or you need something. Which is it?"

  Ellen walked to the railing, keeping distance between them. Her hands were shaking slightly. "Neither. Both." She almost smiled. "I've been trying to blow the whistle for six months. Every door I try, someone slams it shut. Then I see you—Joel's daughter—digging into the same system that got me reassigned."

  "How do you know what I found?"

  "Safety Compliance has read access to system audit trails. It's how we catch procedural violations." Her mouth twisted. "Or it was, before they reassigned me to a nothing role. They deleted most of my permissions—but not the audit logs. Guess they figured nobody in Safety would actually use them."

  She pulled out a tablet, tapped a few commands. "Here. Your download path, visualized."

  The screen showed a elegant diagram—Yuko's access requests mapped as branching nodes, timing correlations highlighted, risk signatures flagged. It was the kind of analysis that would have taken Yuko hours to compile. Ellen had done it in real-time.

  "You built this?"

  "I repurposed their own monitoring tools against them. Seemed fitting." Ellen almost smiled. "They think Safety is just checkbox compliance. They don't realize we see everything."

  She glanced at the city lights below. "Three months ago, I flagged suspicious purchases routing through shell companies in Katland. Opaque ownership. Someone hiding their name on the invoices."

  "What happened?"

  "The flag disappeared. My supervisor said it was 'outside Safety's mandate.' A week later, my access was revoked." Ellen's jaw tightened. "Someone powerful is protecting Minerva from every direction."

  "What do you know about Minerva?"

  "Enough to get reassigned." Ellen's voice hardened. "Enough to know it's not just a software glitch."

  "Then tell me what it is."

  Ellen glanced at the door. Nervous. Scanning for cameras. "Not here. What I know, what I've seen—it's not something I can explain in five minutes on a rooftop."

  Yuko grabbed her arm. "My father is dead. I just downloaded proof that S-Corp is running unauthorized override tests. You don't get to be cryptic."

  Ellen looked at Yuko's hand, then at her face. Something shifted in her expression—respect, maybe.

  "There's an off-books site," she said quietly. "Not on any company map. That's where the real evidence is. Victim lists. Operator logs. Proof of who gave the orders." She pulled her arm free. "Your shadow logs are fragments. Scraps. If you want the full picture, you need to get inside."

  "Where is it?"

  Ellen pulled something from her pocket—a cheap flip phone, the kind you'd buy at a gas station. "Burner. One number. When you're ready, call it."

  "I'm ready now."

  "No, you're not." Ellen pressed the phone into her hand. "Two badges required to get in. Yours won't work—wrong clearance level. I can get you a second badge, but the security rotation resets every seventy-two hours. Miss that window and the badge is useless."

  "Three days."

  "Three days. During the shift change at 11 PM, there's a four-minute gap in camera coverage. That's your window."

  "Why are you helping me?"

  Ellen was quiet for a moment. "I have a niece. Eight years old. Terrible at math, but she tries so hard." She looked out at the city lights. "Every time I see her, I think: what kind of world am I leaving her?"

  She turned back to Yuko. "And because your father wasn't the only one. Three months ago—Route 7. Single father. Two kids left behind."

  Yuko's chest tightened. Another family. Another cover-up.

  "How many?" she asked.

  "That's what's in the archives." Ellen stepped back toward the door. "Three days. 11 PM. Don't be late."

  She disappeared inside.

  Yuko stood alone on the rooftop, the burner phone heavy in her hand.

  Route 7. A single father. Two kids.

  Her father. Her mother. Her.

  How many more?

  Somewhere below, a delivery drone hummed past the building, navigation lights blinking. Robots cleaned the streets. Automated systems kept the city running while its people slept.

  The burner phone buzzed once—a test signal.

  Then the screen went dark.

  Yuko looked at her father's watch. 2:14 AM. The second hand swept forward, indifferent.

  Sixty-eight hours and forty-six minutes until the window opened.