Chapter 8
Pentagon Shadows
Their investigation points to high-level involvement within the Pentagon. Temide and Eliza realize the conspiracy is deeply entrenched in powerful government circles.
Temide traced the faint, almost invisible line on the screen with his finger. It wasn’t a glitch, not a flicker of faulty code. This was something deliberate, something that whispered of intention. The new smart meter, installed just last week on Mrs. Gable’s quaint little cottage at the edge of town, was humming a tune that was entirely off-key. He’d checked it twice, then a third time, his brow furrowed in that way it did when a puzzle piece just refused to fit. Eliza, perched on a stool beside him in his makeshift workshop – which was really just a corner of his garage overflowing with wires and blinking lights – hummed a similar tune of confusion.
“It’s like… it’s singing a different song to the main grid,” Eliza mused, her fingers flying across her own keyboard, a blur of focused energy. “The data packets are being rerouted, but not in a way that makes sense for energy distribution. It’s… cleaner. Too clean, almost.”
Temide nodded, his gaze still fixed on the anomaly. “It’s like someone’s taking a perfectly good river and diverting a small stream to a secret garden, but then making it look like the river is flowing exactly as it should.” He ran a hand through his already-tangled hair. “And this isn’t just Mrs. Gable’s meter, is it? I’ve seen whispers of it in the logs from the industrial park, even a few from the new apartment complex downtown.”
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