Chapter 17 Fault Tolerance
Eli’s POV
The roof felt smaller from up top.
I crouched near the ridge line, morning air cold through my shirt, shingles rough under my palm. From inside, last night, that scratching sound had been a monster. Up here it was fallen branches dragged by the wind, a few scattered twigs, little paw prints in the thin dust. Raccoon or squirrel. Nothing in the pattern of a human foot.
Still, my skin would not quite settle. You did not ignore noises on roofs when you had lived through mortar fire.
By the time I climbed back down, the sun had burned off some of the mist on the lake. Sloane was on the porch in my sweatshirt and leggings, mug clutched in both hands, watching the tree line like it might reach for her.
“Well,” I said. “No boogeyman. Just wildlife.”
“Wonderful,” she said. “We can be murdered by nature as well as code.”
“Nature is easier to see coming.”
I spent the next hour stringing fishing line around the perimeter, tying tiny bells to low branches and fence posts. Simple noise traps on the back door and main windows. Nothing fancy, just enough that anything larger than a squirrel would announce itself.
She watched from the steps, arms folded. “This is very medieval,” she said. “Next you will hang garlic and salt the threshold.”
“These cannot be hacked,” I said. “You want defense in depth, it starts with things that only obey gravity.”
Her mouth twitched like she wanted to argue and laugh at the same time.
Later, in the small clearing behind the cabin, I set up a different kind of drill.
“Cabin to car,” I said. “On my count. Someone breaches the tree line, you do not freeze. You move.”
We practiced using trees as cover, how to keep low, how not to silhouette yourself against open space. She was quick, but her body did not have the muscle memory mine did. The first few runs were clumsy. She tripped on roots, misjudged distance, got winded faster than she liked.
“Again,” she said, light sheen of sweat on her forehead, breath sharp.
“We have done it five times,” I said.
“And the sixth is the one that will matter,” she snapped. “Again.”
Her competitive streak was something to behold. By the eighth lap she was moving cleaner, breath more controlled. Then she brushed a hand along a rough trunk and hissed.
“Let me see,” I said.
“It is nothing.”
She tried to wave it off, but blood welled along a tiny cut on her palm, a splinter embedded at an ugly angle. I took her hand gently, ignoring the little jolt that went through me when her fingers curled instinctively around mine.
“Sit,” I said.
On the porch step I dug tweezers out of the kit and coaxed the sliver of wood free. Her skin was warm, pulse quick under the thin line of her wrist. She watched my face while I worked, not the wound.
“This is ridiculous,” she muttered. “I deal in state level threats and you are playing field medic over a splinter.”
“Small problems get infected if you ignore them,” I said. “Ask any corpsman.”
I cleaned the cut and taped a tiny bandage over it, my thumb brushing the inside of her palm. The contact was nothing, a second. My body did not care. It catalogued every heartbeat of it.
Which was the problem.
At the ridge that afternoon, I took the satphone and left her by the lake. Ward check in. Duty did not dissolve just because my faith in our facilities had eroded.
Lucas sounded frayed. “Someone tried to hit our client database,” he said. “Blocked, but close. This is more than Mercer. Someone is mapping how we work.”
“Could be someone inside,” I said. “Or close enough to count.”
“Maybe,” he allowed. “Maybe we have pissed off enough people that they are banding together. Where exactly are you?”
“North,” I said. “Trees. Water. Out of range of whatever they are using.”
“Coordinates, Eli.”
“Not sending them,” I said. “Too many leak paths. I will update on a time delay.”
He cursed, but I ended the call anyway. Choosing her over perfect obedience was a line I had already stepped over. No going back.
When I got back to the cabin, Sloane was on the couch with a battered paperback in her hands, legs tucked under her, hair falling in her face. It took me a second to register that she was reading something that did not involve a screen.
“You read fiction,” I said.
She looked up, startled, then a little defensive. “I read a lot when I was a teenager. Mostly sci fi. Fantasy. Worlds where people rewrote reality. Then work ate everything that was not a white paper.”
“Good?” I nodded at the book.
“Aliens. Politics. People making stupid choices with too much power. Comforting.” Her mouth curved. “First time I got paid, it was because I broke into a corporation’s network to prove their security was a joke. They saw the logs, freaked out and hired me to fix it.”
I could hear the pride under the disdain. “You have always been trouble,” I said.
“Efficient trouble,” she corrected.
She stood to put the book back on the shelf, misjudged the edge of the rug and stumbled. I moved without thinking, hands catching her by the waist. She landed against my chest, palms flat over my heart.
We froze.
Her eyes lifted to mine, then dropped to my mouth. Every neuron in my brain screamed yes while every lesson about lines and clients and Amira screamed no.
“Bad idea,” I said, voice rough. I stepped back like distance could douse what had just flared.
The flash of hurt in her eyes was quick, but I saw it. Berlin had not been a bad idea, apparently. This was.
She turned away without a word, shoulders a little straighter than before, ice sliding back over everything I had just glimpsed.
That night, a bell jingled out in the dark, a tiny sound swallowed by trees. One of my lines tugged.
I was up with the gun in my hand before full consciousness hit, muscles already moving.
“Stay here,” I said, low, as Sloane appeared in the bedroom doorway, hair wild, eyes wide.
She opened her mouth. I did not wait for the argument. I vanished into the trees, every step a promise I was not entirely sure I could keep.