Page 92 of Duty Compromised
It was cold. Calculating.
Almost disappointed.
The conclusion hit me with devastating clarity, the words scraping past the sudden desert of my throat.
“You’re the traitor.”
The words came out broken, disbelieving even as I said them. Even as all the pieces suddenly clicked into place with horrible clarity. Access to my work. Knowledge of the Cascade Protocol’s capabilities. The ability to embed tracking software without suspicion.
I needed to warn Ty, but I’d left the comms unit at the desk.
Darcy stepped toward me, and one of her men raised his gun to point directly at my chest. Her lips curved into something that wasn’t quite a smile.
“There’s that brilliant mind finally catching up.” She glanced past me toward the open office door, taking in my setup with interest. “Though I’m disappointed it took you this long. All those late-night conversations about your work, all those times I helped you debug code, and you never once suspected.”
My voice cracked, raw with betrayal. “You were my friend. My only friend. Before any of this started, before the Cascade Protocol?—”
“Before the Cascade Protocol, you were just another brilliant scientist wasting her gifts on government contracts and ethical restrictions.” Darcy’s tone hardened. “But the Cascade Protocol? That changed everything. Do you remember how hard I tried to talk you out of giving it to the FBI?”
The memory surfaced with painful clarity. Darcy in my office six months ago, passionate and persuasive. We could sell off pieces of the technology, Charlotte. Not the weapon itself, just components. We’d be billionaires. We’d never have to worry about funding or bureaucracy again.
“I told you then it would come at the cost of people’s lives,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper.
“And I told you that was a price worth paying.” She gestured at my laptop. “But you’re too late anyway. I know you, Charlotte. I know that self-satisfied look you get when you solve something. You’ve already deployed your stabilizer code, haven’t you? Neutralized the Cascade Protocol?”
There was no point in denying it. “Yes. It’s done. The Protocol is useless now.”
Darcy laughed—actually laughed—and the sound was like glass breaking.
“Oh, Charlotte. Brilliant, naive Charlotte.” She shook her head with what looked like genuine amusement. “Do you really think I don’t know you can reverse it? The same quantum entanglement that let you neutralize it can reactivate it. You’re going to undo what you just did.”
She was right; it could be reversed, and I was the only one who could do it. My mind raced even as my chest felt hollow, carved out by betrayal. I needed to stall, needed to signal Ty, needed?—
“All those times you comforted me when experiments failed…” The words came out small, pathetic, but I couldn’t stop them. “When I was frustrated or exhausted or ready to give up and you encouraged me. When we talked about personal stuff. Was any of it real?”
For just a moment, something flickered across Darcy’s face. Her expression softened fractionally, almost imperceptibly.
“You needed a friend. I needed information.” She shrugged, the movement elegant and dismissive. “We both got what we wanted.”
The casual cruelty of it made my eyes burn with unshed tears. Every lunch we’d shared, every late-night debugging or gossiping session, every moment I’d thought I’d finally found someone—someone funny and witty and cool—who liked me… All of it had been a lie.
Even through the shock, my brain couldn’t stop analyzing, connecting dots that suddenly formed a devastating picture. “You embedded the tracking software into the Cascade Protocol before the FBI handoff,” I said, forcing my voice to steady, forcing my mind to work through the pain. “That’s why it started exactly six months ago.”
Darcy grimaced, the first sign of genuine frustration I’d seen from her.
“I had to build it out piece by piece, and it took forever for it to actually work. I couldn’t risk asking you about some of the more difficult implementation details—you would’ve been suspicious if I showed too much interest in the security protocols.” She gestured with a gun she had pulled out of the back of her waistband, casual as if we were discussing a routine debugging session. “That’s why it took so long for me to gain full access to the FBI systems. But once I did, everything fell into place. It was just a matter of finding partners with the right connections to move the Protocol on the black market.”
“Partners.” The word tasted bitter. “You mean terrorists.”
“That’s your fault, Charlotte.” Her voice hardened again. “If you hadn’t been such a bleeding-heart goody-goody, none of this would have been necessary. We could have controlled the rollout, sold to stable governments, maintained oversight. Instead, you had to hand it all over to the FBI like a good little patriot.”
She pointed at Donovan’s still form, and I couldn’t tell if he was breathing, couldn’t see if his chest was moving. The blood beneath his head had stopped spreading, but I didn’t know if that was good or bad.
“It didn’t have to be this way,” Darcy continued. “Nobody had to get hurt.”
“You’re working with people who want to use it as a weapon of mass destruction! How exactly would nobody get hurt?!”
“I’m working with people who understand the value of what you created.” She kept the gun trained on me with steady hands. “Though, I should mention—I’m not the bad guy here. Not entirely. Do you want to know something? When my partners found out you were creating the countermeasure, they wanted to kill you outright. One bullet, problem solved, no more stabilizer code.”
