NATE'S POV
The silence of the study was a physical weight, broken only by the rhythmic hum of the servers and Thomas's steady, sedated breathing from the sofa. Adrian had retreated to the shadows of the balcony, a silent observer in the dark, leaving me to the digital ghosts of the Heller-Vance vault.
My fingers felt stiff as I tapped into the primary terminal. The logic spike the Vulture had injected had been neutralized, but its entry point had left a jagged tear in the island's internal firewall. I wasn't just checking for corruption; I was performing a digital autopsy.
"Sophie," I whispered into my headset. "I'm in the root directory. I need you to run a checksum on the secondary encryption layer. Something feels... heavy."
"Heavy? Nate, the servers are running at optimal temperature now," Sophie's voice came back, sounding exhausted but alert. "The data wipe was avoided by four degrees. What are you seeing?"
