Building a Case, Part 1

“Answers,” Slaiton said. “Now.” He turned his most withering gaze on the collection of security specialists crowded in front of him. The effect was likely diminished by the faint, bluish coloration cast by the emergency lights.

“All our equipment is down,” Secmaster Whent said. “Power's out in the entire corporate complex.”

“Except the servers,” a young Secminion added in. “They're still running. Must be a separate circuit.”

Slaiton crumpled his empty paper cup slowly in his hand. Deep breath. “So. What did we find out in the time we had? I hope thirty-six hours were enough to accomplish something.”

“We made a decent mapping of network traffic, including proxy references, in and out,” Whent said. “It covers the entire time we've been seeing the elevated Raid activity.”

“And?”

“There's a spike in activity starting just a few weeks before,” said another Secminion. What was the girl's name? Archavia? “Most if it passed through proxy nodes.”

“But nothing solid we can trace,” Slaiton said.

“No, but it's building up a pretty good circumstantial case,” Whent added quickly. “Enough to start interviewing everyone here, maybe. Figure out who's behind this.”

“That's harder than you think,” Slaiton said. “All Hellard has to do is come up with some handwave about why his traffic looks that way and we're back to square one. What else do we have?”

A delicate hand went up in the back of the room. Another Secminion, Slaiton guessed. She looked barely out of primary school. Slaiton grunted and waved in her direction.

“I think I might have figured out how to talk to it,” she said.