I stepped past Hayes, my boots clicking on the metal floor.

“He’s not the sender,” I said, looking at the command prompt on the screen.

“He’s just the bridge.”

The terminal was routing a massive data packet from the local server to an external relay.

My hands found the keyboard.

The plastic keys felt cold and slightly greasy under my fingertips.

“What do you mean, Dr. Mitchell?” Lieutenant Carter asked from the doorway.

His voice was thin and shaking.

“He didn’t download the drive here,” I said.

I tapped a sequence of override keys to trace the source IP address.

The green text on the screen flickered, then began to scroll rapidly.

“He’s mirroring a feed,” I said. “The source is internal.”

“Internal to the base?” Hayes asked, pushing Miller back into his chair.

“No,” I said, watching the network map compile on the screen.

“Internal to the wet slip.”

The terminal beeped twice, displaying a node path.

A diagram of the harbor appeared, with a blinking red line connecting the communications room to Pier 3.

“It’s the Vanguard,” I said.