Red Team

The tabletop exercise was running hot. Paloma stood at the front of the SOC conference room with a laser pointer in her hand, her voice flat and precise against the hum of servers behind the glass. On the screen behind her, a floor plan of the Halcyon Midtown property glowed with red markers indicating compromised badge readers. She had designed this scenario herself. A cloned badge incident on property. Night shift. No immediate detection.

She walked the room through the response timeline. Detection came late in the scenario, containment later still. She called on analysts by name, corrected their assumptions without heat, kept the room moving at the exact pace she had written in the playbook. This was her element. Systems she trusted. Variables she controlled.

The door at the back of the room opened without a knock. A man she did not recognize stepped inside and stood against the wall. Dark suit. Flat eyes. He did not introduce himself. He simply watched.

Paloma paused for half a beat. She did not like deviations from the script. But she could adapt. She returned to the exercise, walking the room through the forensic recovery phase. Her voice did not waver. Her hands remained steady on the pointer. But she felt his gaze like a pressure on the back of her neck.

The exercise concluded late morning. Analysts filed out with laptops under their arms and coffee cups in their hands. Linnea Holm lingered at the door, glancing back at the stranger, but Paloma waved her out with a small gesture. The room emptied. The man approached.

He did not extend his hand. He simply stood at the table across from her and spoke in a voice that was soft and exact. "You're Paloma Vexley. I'm Casimir Dross. Integration lead for the incoming group."

She knew the name. She had read the acquisition documents. She had not expected him to arrive unannounced. "You should've checked in with the front desk. I could've arranged a proper orientation."

"I prefer to observe first." He gestured at the screen. "You run a tight exercise. Your detection timeline is aggressive. I like that."

"Thank you."

"I'd like a private walkthrough of your badge-cloned incident review process. The evidence room, the chain of custody documentation. Can you accommodate that?"

It was a reasonable request. A procedural escort. She nodded and gathered her tablet. "I can. Follow me."

The evidence room was two floors down, past security, through a door that required her badge and a code. She unlocked it and stepped inside. The room was narrow and windowless, lined with metal shelves that held tagged drives and paper logbooks. It smelled of dry air and old ink.

Casimir followed her inside. He did not look at the shelves. He did not look at the logbooks. He set a tablet on the metal table in the center of the room and turned it toward her.

"Before we begin the walkthrough, I need you to review some footage."

She looked at the screen. The first clip showed the lobby of the Halcyon Downtown. The timestamp read the small hours of the morning. She appeared on screen, walking past the front desk toward the restricted server room. She had not logged that visit. She had not authorized that camera angle either.

"I don't understand," she said.

"Keep watching."

The second clip was from a body-worn unit. Her voice filled the small room. She was speaking to a guest in a hallway. The guest was angry. She resolved the complaint without filing an incident report. No paper trail. No record.

The third clip stopped her breath. A hallway camera at the Halcyon Midtown. A guest stumbling. A door opening. A brief struggle. Then her arrival. Her pause. Her decision to walk past. The incident report she had written the next morning listed the guest as a no-show. The actual assault was buried.

Casimir turned off the tablet. The screen went dark. He looked at her with those flat eyes and said nothing.

She heard her own voice, thin and careful. "Where did you get those?"

"Your archive is comprehensive. I appreciate that about your work." He tucked the tablet under his arm. "Your expertise is critical to the integration process. I need you to escort my team through the systems. A procedural request. No need to inform the C-suite yet. Let's keep this operational."

She understood what he was offering. A chance to stay in control by agreeing to lose it. A procedural frame for what was clearly a threat. She could refuse. She could walk to the COO's office right now. She could explain everything.

But she had buried that incident. She had written the false report. She had signed the chain of custody that led nowhere. And he had it all on his tablet.

"I can start the walkthrough," she said.

He nodded once. "Good."

She heard herself agree to the terms he had not yet stated. She walked him to the elevator and pressed the call button. The doors opened. He stepped inside without another word.

When the doors closed, she stood alone in the marble hallway, her hands steady, her pulse a quiet alarm she could not silence. The woman who had always watched was now the one being watched. And she had just agreed to stay in frame.