On the other end of the line, the silence was sudden and violent. The voice in the background stopped instantly. “What?” Miller stuttered, his voice faltering as the mask of authority slipped. “What is this? Who is this?”
Evelyn didn’t blink. She was watching three windows on her monitor, the command-line interface illuminating her face with the cool, blue light of pure logic. “You should have been more careful with the metadata in that fake ‘Badge of Office’ you sent over. It’s quite easy to extract physical coordinates when your image editor doesn’t scrub the data fully, Mr. Gupta.”
She tapped a final key—an ‘Enter’ command that reverberated. “And as for the ‘administrative portal’ you directed me to? I’ve already pushed a small payload of mine through. Your site isn’t just taking my information anymore, Officer. It’s currently uploading a script that is encrypting your local file directory as we speak.”