I turned my back on Turner and focused entirely on the tablet in my hands.

The green progress bar on my decryption tool was crawling forward.

The signal from the rogue transmitter was still active, pulsing from somewhere deep within the lower levels.

“It’s moving faster now,” I said, pointing to the screen.

“Where is it heading?” Hayes asked, stepping up beside me.

His shoulder brushed against mine, his gaze fixed on the digital map of the dry dock.

“It’s bypasses,” I said. “It’s skipping the primary diagnostic terminals.”

“Why would they do that?” Hayes asked.

“Because they don’t want to change the system settings,” I said. “They are extracting.”

The blue dot representing the signal moved past the secondary pump room.

“It’s heading toward the dry dock basin itself,” I muttered.

I tapped the screen, trying to isolate the specific data packets being transferred.

A stream of raw hexadecimal code began to scroll down the right side of the tablet.

“What is that?” Turner demanded, trying to peer over my shoulder. “Is that the drive telemetry?”

“Stay back, Captain,” Hayes said, placing a firm hand on Turner’s chest.