Ethan couldn't sleep. Instead, he walked back and forth, nervously circling around the light from his computer screens until the morning sunlight peeked through the blinds, casting shadows like dark veins over his cables. Claire had been clear: first, protect everything; then, look for evidence. She was moving faster than usual for legal matters, which should have reassured him but only made his stomach feel tight with anxiety.
He called Mark at dawn. "We need to secure the servers, lock down access points, change keys… everything," he said, the words spilling out.
Mark listened and then sighed. "If you ask for a lockdown now, the investors will freak out. They can't stand uncertainty."
"It's too late for that," Ethan replied. "Someone tried to erase a record. Someone is monitoring Parkland's network closely. This isn't just about data; it's about people."
Mark didn't argue. He understood when things had gone too far. "Okay. Do what you need to do. Just keep it technical and keep it tight. I'll handle the investors."
Ethan started his commands. He sent an encrypted file of the logs to Claire and opened a secure channel to Parkland's IT contact, a guy named Alvarez who responded with a neutral tone. Ethan framed his request in business terms and then added the real question at the end, soft and procedural.
"We need special access for a full audit," he wrote. "Emergency access for 24 hours, read-only, with an independent observer."
Minutes felt like hours until Alvarez replied. "Please provide your credentials and a signed request from the hospital lead. Security has to approve."
Ethan's throat tightened. The hospital lead. He could name himself as the vendor, but he knew how that would look. He needed someone from Parkland to sign off on the urgency. Claire could do it, but the official channels preferred an internal endorsement.
He called Stephanie. He had left her a careful voice message the night before. He couldn't pretend it was just about technical curiosity anymore. She picked up on the second ring, her voice sounding strained.
"You shouldn't be calling me," she said.
"You're the lead on the review," he explained. "I need your approval for elevated diagnostics. It's urgent."
There was a long pause, almost like the city was holding its breath. "I can't," she finally said. "Not without approval from records. You know the rules, Ethan."
"I know the rules," he replied. "But I also know how quickly something can be erased. Trust me. We're just looking. Read-only. Independent observer."
Her silence felt like a decision. "I'll try," she said. "But if you touch anything live or make changes, I'll hold you responsible."
"I won't touch anything, I promise." He hated using the word promise, as it used to mean a lot between them, but now it was the only word he had.
She agreed. She emailed a scanned letter to Alvarez, insisting on the read-only clause and naming Claire as the independent observer. Alvarez wrote back with strict, corporate language, and within an hour, Ethan had a temporary access token.
Claire arrived with the calmness of someone used to working under pressure. She brought coffee in a travel mug and a folder of orders. "Good," she said when she saw him. "We'll do this by the book. No heroics."
They used the token to start their diagnostic sweep. Ethan watched the logs come to life, a dance of data packets and handshakes. He ran queries, pulled metadata, and checked timestamps. He was looking for a clue that wasn't fake.
He found something in a vendor invoice hidden under a pile of routine entries. The invoice number was plain, and the amount was small enough to be normal. But in the memo field was a code that meant something to the insiders: HRT-REIMB-47. A human name had been turned into a code. He cross-referenced HRT and found an internal note from a separate spreadsheet that had been shared quietly months ago: Hart, S. Reimbursement for calibration.
He took a breath and read the entry again. Reimbursement to whom? The file path led to a procurement liaison who had been quietly moved to an advisory role after a "health issue" months earlier. Ethan pulled the liaison's last emails, finding a series of messages sent to a vendor address. One of those emails used shorthand similar to the words Stephanie had used when they were still together, little nicknames they had left behind like old clothes.
He shouldn't have noted that detail; it wasn't technically relevant, but it hit him hard. The data felt less like numbers and more like people.
Claire stood behind him, watching. "This could just be sloppy bookkeeping," she said. "Or it could be a hidden payment stream. We need the ledger, and we need a subpoena."
"We need to act faster than subpoenas," Ethan argued. "If they can erase records, they can bury ledgers too."
Claire nodded. "Then we'll make copies and send them to secure facilities. We should also escalate to the DA if this pattern keeps up. But be ready. Once we do that, people will know we're looking closely at everything."
Ethan ran another check, this time digging deeper, looking for remnants left by deletion events. He found a fragment that hadn't been totally erased. Following it, he discovered a partial filename that ended in .jpg. He opened what was left.
It was a blurred and cropped photograph, the same image that had been given to Stephanie in the alley. The file metadata had been partially removed, but not completely wiped. Someone had missed a small trace: a camera signature embedded in the pixel noise. He ran it through a noise-reduction algorithm and identified the camera model. It wasn't a high-end DSLR; it was a compact camera usually used by maintenance crews for equipment checks. The serial number traced back to a tablet assigned to the trauma unit.
Claire leaned closer. "Now that's interesting," she said.
Ethan felt the room close in around that tablet. He thought about Stephanie in the hallway, the whispers on the phone, the bracelet on her wrist. He remembered the man in the alley who had told her to comply. The idea of complicity changed depending on which side you were on.
He drove to the hospital without planning to. He told Mark he was stepping out, making up excuses about verification and investor calls, then hit the freeway with a focus that made other drivers feel like background noise. The trauma unit smelled the same as always, a clinical antiseptic that cleared his mind but also froze it. He signed in at security with the token, and Alvarez met him with the professionalism of someone who managed emergencies in networks as well as plant operations.
Stephanie wasn't at the nurse's station. He found her in the small on-call room, slumped in a chair like someone carrying the weight of the world. She looked up, not surprised, as if she had been expecting him.
"You shouldn't have come," she said.
"I should have called the DA first," he admitted. "But there are threads being pulled here, and it seems like someone wants to intimidate you."
She avoided his gaze. "They want to stop the audit. They want control. They want people to stay quiet." Her voice was soft and steady. "I told them no. That answer didn't please them."
He placed the printout on the table between them: the blurred photo, the ledger note, the procurement code. "You didn't do this alone, Steph. The logs point to a tablet from your unit. The admin account used the username s.hart_admin."
Her fingers tightened around the bracelet until the metal dimmed. "You think I'm the admin? You think I deleted records?"
"No," he replied. "I don't know what to think. I see patterns. I see connections. Right now, this connection raises uncomfortable questions."
She swallowed hard. "There are people in the hospital who make decisions for their own reasons. Some of those reasons are protective, and some are selfish."
"Who?" he pressed.
She didn't answer. Instead, she pulled out her phone and scrolled, showing him a text with a partial image he recognized immediately. It was the same photograph, but someone had circled a number on the margin and written a single word beneath it: Remember.
Ethan's phone buzzed before he could respond. Another message from an unknown number. It read: Last warning.
He glanced at Stephanie. She looked back. They both felt the same tension in the hospital air, a sound that felt less like a threat and more like a promise: someone was not done yet.