The Puppeteer's Game

Chapter 15

Fault in the Wire

The operations room felt smaller, like the walls had crept in overnight. The air was heavy, the cables above more like restraints than wires. Monitors flickered cold light over skin and steel. The server hum was no longer background noise—it was the room's pulse. Constant. Unblinking.

Miguel stood at the front, arms crossed, face unreadable. The case board behind him looked the same—maps, timelines, photos—but two things stood out: a red circle marked Internal Compromise and a blank glyph under Tomas Garrido's photo. No one touched them.

Ramos leaned by a filing cabinet, tapping a closed laptop. Emily sat cross-legged, notebook open, pen still. Monteverde hovered near the door, hands in his pockets, eyes fixed on the floor.

That morning, everything was reset—biometrics, codes, even the coffee machine needed a co-sign. Messages were handwritten and hand-delivered. No network. No backups.

Miguel let the silence settle before he spoke. Not loud, not dramatic—just calm. Final.

"We're done pretending this is a containment breach," he said.

No one responded, but the shift in the room was immediate. He didn't need to raise his voice. The truth already had weight.

"The Phantom's not probing anymore. He's in—our systems, our routines, our heads."

Emily's grip on her pen tightened. She didn't look up.

Miguel let his eyes pass over each of them. "This wasn't random. It was precise. Every leak, every planted file—it was curated. Targeted. That means he's not guessing. He knows us."

Monteverde shifted. Ramos stopped tapping.

"So from now on, everything goes through verified analog drops. No exceptions. No shortcuts. You log your hours by hand. You move only with clearance. No one walks alone."

Another beat.

"And trust?" he said. "It's no longer automatic. You earn it."

The silence afterward felt different—sharper, like something had been cut loose. Even the servers seemed to quiet down.

Miguel turned slightly, eyes flicking to the red circle and glyph behind him.

"This team doesn't fall apart because someone came for us," he said. "It falls apart because someone let them."

His gaze landed on each face in turn.

"So until we know who that is, we move like it could be any of us."

The tension hardened. Still a team, but the bond turned cold—brittle. Suspicion clung to every glance and pause.

Miguel felt it. So did everyone else.

He stepped back from the board, letting the weight of what he'd just said settle into the room.

"Let's get to work."

No one moved right away.

Then Emily clicked her pen. Ramos flipped open his laptop. Monteverde turned toward the whiteboard.

The room didn't exhale—but it stirred. Cautious. Mechanical. Like a puppet waiting for its next string to be pulled.

***

The first crack came just after noon.

Miguel sat at the center desk, tracing reroute logs across Emily's taped-down maps.

Tomas's last mission—the San Pablo extraction—was full of gaps. Too many loose ends. Too much silence from the one person who should've known it all.