Chapter 5 Suspicions within NCA

The darkness in the room wasn't absolute, but it was comfortable. A carefully calculated dimness, like everything at NCA: neither so dense as to arouse suspicion, nor so visible as to be noticed. Only the dim blue light of the tablet shone between Lucía's fingers, creating long shadows across her concentrated face.

She had been going over the same sequence of words for over half an hour, calibrating every symbol, every space, every pause. There could be no margin for error. Not this time. What they were about to do would not only test the reach of their internal network, but would also be the first real public provocation, albeit disguised as administrative noise.

Bruno watched her from the opposite corner of the room, his hands in his pockets and his back against the peeling wall. He had learned to read her without her speaking. The way she bit her lower lip whenever she hesitated, the way her fingers trembled slightly just before typing, the way she held her breath in her lungs as if she could freeze time.

"Are you sure you want to send that?" he asked finally. His voice was low, as if he was afraid the walls could hear him. Perhaps they did.

Lucía didn't respond immediately. Her eyes remained fixed on the message:

"File 0-7-CLV presents inconsistencies. Cross-reference with protocol 2A and validate origin. Confirm before the next purge. -Ghost node."

The words were cold, technical, absolutely anodyne to anyone who didn't know the history behind those codes. But to those who understood the scars those letters bore, they were a disguised cry.

"It's not about being sure," he said finally. "It's about moving the board. Forcing the system to show its cards."

Bruno took a few steps closer, letting his shoes crunch lightly on the concrete floor.

"It's a message addressed. Not to everyone. To him."

Lucía nodded without needing to explain.

Julián Iriarte.

The shadow behind the shadow. The silent observer. The only one who knew too much and too little at the same time. The only person who could crush them... or open a door for them.

"What if she takes it as a threat?" Bruno insisted, his tone laden with an unease he didn't usually allow to surface.

Lucía turned to him. Her eyes were dark with fatigue, but there was a new sparkle, a determination that seemed to have grown from the depths of pain.

"Then she reacts. And that's what we need. A movement. Anything but this stillness that is silently killing us."

Bruno held her gaze. He hated himself for not being able to protect her beyond that room. For knowing that, if everything went wrong, Lucía would be the first to fall. And yet, she didn't hesitate. She was ready to light the fuse.

He watched her press the "Send" button with a calm that wasn't calm, but resignation and anger mixed together.

Far away, in the administrative core of level S2, Julián Iriarte felt a small buzz in his network-reading wristband. A subtle beep. Like a misplayed note in the middle of a perfect symphony.

He looked at the secondary terminal, a screen few used, one he kept on only out of habit. And there it was: the message.

He frowned. At first, he thought it was a mistake. An old reflex, a messed-up algorithm. But it took three seconds to understand. His stomach tightened.

0-7-CLV. Clara Villalobos.

2A. The sealed protocol, the one she'd tried to block before her disappearance.

And the signature... "Ghost Node."

Only the two of them knew what that meant.

Julián leaned back slowly in his chair, feeling a cold shiver run down his spine. It was impossible. Or not. Maybe someone had dug up the bones of the past. Maybe someone was testing him.

Lucía? Bruno? Both?

He closed his eyes for a moment. And then, he knew. That message wasn't a threat. It was a key. A call.

Clara's memory returned, like a sharp blow. Her suppressed laughter. Her stubbornness without arrogance. Her voice when she looked at him fearlessly and said, "What if we take the risk?"

They had silenced her for that.

And now another woman dared to ignite the same spark.

Bruno paced in circles, mentally counting each minute without a response. Every second was a rope tightening around his neck.

"What if she took it as a provocation?" he said again, more to fill the silence than to seek an answer.

Lucía didn't look at him. She had learned that fear is part of the process. That one could walk with it, live with its weight.

"Then we'll know there's no loophole within the system. That no one will lend us a hand." "What if it's a trap?"

She finally faced him with serene sadness.

"Then we'll fight to the end. But at least we won't do it alone."

An hour later, a new notification appeared on her internal network. Almost invisible. Encoded with an outdated structure, as if it came from the past.

Bruno was the one who detected it first.

He read in a low voice:

"If you're looking for answers, don't touch Terminal 6-0. It's contaminated. Use Hall 3B. 00:45. No weapons."

Lucía remained still. She closed her eyes as if she needed to absorb those words slowly.

A return message.

An open door.

A date.

"Is it him?" Bruno asked, although he already knew.

"Yes," Lucía murmured.

"And what does it mean?"

She took a breath. For the first time in days, her hands weren't shaking.

"It means Julián chose. Or at least, he's willing to listen."

Bruno approached and took her hand. They didn't say anything else. There was no need for that.

Sometimes, hope is just that: a coded message that arrives when it hurts most to wait.

And that night, they were going to cross another line.

The coded message was still on his screen when Julián Iriarte was left alone in the monitoring room. The other analysts had left, one by one, as if the invisible tension in the air seared their bones.

Not him. He stayed.

There was something about that sending pattern. Something about the way the ciphertext had been fragmented, deliberately disguised as a technical error. It was too elaborate to be an accident... but also too emotional to have come from a cold-blooded saboteur.

The syntax. The pauses. The use of a forgotten semantic key. It all seemed, suddenly, alarmingly familiar.

His heart gave a useless, old, and tired leap. Because it-that combination of codes and silences-resembled her.

Clara Villalobos.

The name struck his conscience like a dull blade. He hadn't spoken it in years, not even mentally. He'd buried her. Forced to. But memory doesn't respond to the commands of duty.

Clara.

Brilliant analyst. Soft voice. Gray eyes like fog before a storm. She was the only one who truly saw him, before he turned to stone. They shared long days in the Risk Assessment Unit, reviewing the same files, constructing reports with surgical precision. But between them, the silences spoke louder than the reports. The pauses in front of a screen. The "accidental" touches when handing over a folder. The gazes held a second longer than permitted.

They never told each other they loved each other. Because at NCA, naming love is putting it in the spotlight.

But they knew.

And Clara was brave. Or unconscious. Or simply human. She refused to accept that everything had to be a calculation. She dared to question one of the darkest programs: the Emotional Reconditioning Protocol. She discovered what no one was supposed to discover. She tried to denounce it, outwit it, sabotage it. Julián still doesn't know how far it went. He only knows that one morning, she didn't return.

"Strategic elimination due to operational risk."

That's what her file said. Empty, cold, monstrously effective words.

Since then, he rebuilt himself like a machine. An obedient cog. Invisible. Precise.

And he promised himself never to love again.

Never to repeat the mistake.

But now...

Now he sees Lucía. Bruno. He knows they're crossing the same line, dancing on the same abyss. And that coded message, that digital whisper someone let slip, resonates with Clara's language.

Not because she wrote it-he knows it's impossible-

but because, somehow, her story lives on in those who dare.

Julián turned off the screen.

It didn't report anything yet.

But for the first time in years, he felt something other than suspicion.

It wasn't hope.

It was vertigo.

And, deep down, a voice saying:

"Don't let them destroy them. Not like her. Not like me."