Sarah Burks's Arc

Chapter 12 of 13

Sarah stared at the notebook in the leader's hands. Someone among the Cats had been watching the photographer in secret. They'd documented every move, every tower access, every surveillance session targeting Sarah. But they hadn't reported it. The question burned in Sarah's mind: why hide it? The leader flipped through the notebook's pages, jaw tight. Sarah recognized the handwriting from patrol reports she'd seen at the base—one of the senior technicians who'd been with the Cats since before Brad established the trading hub. The sketches were professional, methodical. Surveillance positions marked with grid coordinates. Timestamps matching the unauthorized tower access down to the minute. But the final entry stopped Sarah cold. "Subject watching Burks knows vault layout. Military training evident. Waited to report until pattern confirmed—didn't want leader trusting analyst who might already be compromised." The technician hadn't been hiding evidence. They'd been protecting the leader from a potential security breach, waiting until they had proof before risking the partnership Sarah had fought to build. Sarah's chest tightened. The technician had done exactly what she would've done—verify the threat before raising the alarm. But that same caution had created the very fracture it was meant to prevent. The leader looked up from the notebook, and Sarah saw the calculation in those eyes shift again. Not anger at the technician's secrecy, but recognition that Sarah's transparency over the past weeks had been the exception, not the rule. The trust Sarah had earned wasn't just about sharing her findings—it was about choosing to be vulnerable when everyone else, even the Cats' own people, defaulted to operational security. Sarah made her choice. "I want to meet them," she said. "Your technician. They were right to be cautious. I need to prove I'm not compromised, and they need to see the vault data firsthand." The leader drove them to the old subway station where the hidden platform lay beneath the factory. The technician was waiting on a metal bench near the entrance, a tattered banner from some pre-war transit authority hanging loose on the brick wall behind them. Sarah recognized them from base but had never worked directly together. She sat down and opened her field notebook, laying out every monitoring session, every energy spike reading, every piece of evidence about the entity below. The technician listened without interrupting, then pulled out a small device—a radiation counter Sarah hadn't seen before. They'd been taking their own readings near the factory, cross-referencing Sarah's timeline. The measurements matched. The technician looked at the leader, then at Sarah. "The photographer's gone. Cleared out two days ago. But they left equipment behind—vault-grade optics positioned to watch sublevel three's access point." Sarah felt the pieces click into place. Whoever had been tracking her wasn't interested in her. They wanted to know when the vault would be opened. And now, with Sarah and the technician comparing data while the leader watched, the Cats finally had the full picture they needed to decide what came next.