C2. On her third morning, a humanoid robot passed her door.
Its badge read S-9.
It kept walking.
A minute later, Zira frowned without knowing why.
The next day it passed again — same time, same place.
She checked the clock: 10:14.
On the third day, she watched deliberately.
At 10:14, S-9 approached, stopped in her doorway for only a breath, dipped its head ever so slightly, blinked twice, then continued as if nothing had happened.
No command.
No reason.
No witness except her.
She tried to shrug it off. Syntek was full of strange tech. But the gesture nagged at her.
The next day she timed it again.
Same stop. Same small tilt. Same double blink.
And in a distant window of the building’s north wing, she saw something flicker — a tiny red flash, here and gone.
Once.
Then dark again.
When she saw it on the next day too, she knew it wasn't a coincidence.
When Laura Cortez returned from training the following Monday, the office instantly felt different. Laura’s energy was warm, talkative, grounded.
“You must be Zira,” she said. “I’ve heard you’re very organized.”
Zira smiled. “I try.”
“You noticed the way I arrange my plant, didn’t you?”
“I did.”
Laura laughed.
They clicked instantly.
At 10:14, Zira nodded at the door.
“Watch,” she whispered.
S-9 approached, paused, dipped its head, blinked twice, and left.
Laura stared after it. “Okay, that’s… weird.”
“It’s daily,” Zira said. “Exact time. Exact gesture.”
“And the window?” Laura asked.
Zira pointed. “That one. Look tomorrow.”
They did.
And the red flash appeared exactly on cue.
From that moment, they investigated quietly — reviewing footage, checking logs, testing S-9’s reactions. When Zira stepped into its path to block it, the robot blinked only once and continued, and the distant red flash never appeared.
Someone -or something- was watching.
Someone expected the robot to perform that exact gesture.
Someone noticed when it didn’t.
And that someone was inside the building.
On Thursday afternoon, the building locked down.
Lights dimmed. Doors locked.
A voice announced a “temporary systems check.”
Zira didn’t believe it.
From their window, she and Laura saw two dark cars and three people in plain suits arriving. They weren’t Syntek staff. They moved differently — scanning, assessing, already knowing the layout.
When the lockdown ended, Harlan appeared in their doorway, his smile stretched too thin.
“Ladies,” he said, “can we talk?”
He confronted them gently but firmly about their recent reviews of corridor camera footage.
Zira kept her tone steady. “We found an inconsistency in S-9’s recorded route.”
Harlan’s eyes narrowed just slightly.
“If you find anything else,” he said softly, “come to me directly. Don’t escalate anywhere else.”
When he left, the air between them thickened.
“He’s not telling us to stop,” Laura whispered.
“He just wants to watch what we’re watching.”
That night, Zira couldn’t sleep.
The red flash.
The robot’s silent bow.
The lockdown.
Harlan’s too-easy smile.
She didn’t know the answers yet, but she knew — deeply — that something real was happening beneath Syntek’s clean surface.
And she wasn’t the kind of person who turned away from unanswered questions.
The next morning, their questions became answered.
A woman in a dark suit appeared in their doorway.
“Ms. Medina. Ms. Cortez?”
She held up an ID without any corporate logo.
“I’m Agent Ruiz. We need a word.”
In a private room with the blinds down, Ruiz explained the truth:
The strange S-9 movement was not random.
It was a hidden security check, built to verify the integrity of a quiet surveillance system in room 3N-07 — the same room behind the red flashing window.
Someone had piggybacked onto this secret system, hiding stolen shipment data inside the robot’s daily movements.
“And the person doing it,” Ruiz said, tapping her tablet, “is on this floor.”
She turned the screen around.
A diagram.
A single workstation ID.
OP-HARLAN-03.
Laura exhaled sharply. “Harlan.”
Ruiz nodded.
“He didn’t build the system. He found it. And he used it. And today, we intend to take him.”
She asked for their help — not as officers, not as heroes, but as the two people who had noticed the quiet things no one else did.
Zira agreed.
At 10:14 that day, S-9 walked by.
Its gesture was subtly altered by Ruiz’s team — just enough to confuse anyone intercepting the signal.
In the distant window, the red flash appeared.
Once.
Twice.
A short third pulse.
On their screen, the unauthorized data stream reacted instantly — adjusting, compensating, trying to correct itself.
It rerouted itself into the internal systems.
Then into a hidden relay.
Then into its final destination:
Harlan’s workstation.
The net tightened.
Ruiz had what she needed.
C4. Agent Ruiz met Zira one last time.
“It’s done,” she said. “The leak is sealed. The shipments are safe.”
She looked at Zira in a way that made the room seem narrower.
“You have a way of noticing things most people skip. If you ever want to help more formally — with us, with local investigators and gov agencies — you call this number.”
She slid a simple card across the table.
Zira took it.
She didn’t say yes.
She didn’t say no.
But something inside her shifted quietly into place.
Syntek returned to normal the next week.
A different robot passed at 10:14 now — no pause, no gesture.
The distant window stayed dark.
“You’re going to call her one day,” Laura said casually while typing.
“I can tell.”
Zira didn’t argue.
That night, she held Ruiz’s card for a long moment before placing it on her desk.
She didn’t dial the number.
But she didn’t put it away either.
Some mysteries ended.
Some opened doors.
And some changed the way you looked at every quiet hallway afterward.
Zira wasn’t sure what she would do next. Not yet.
But she did know one thing:
The case at Syntek was over - but her work had only just begun.
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