Please look under my coat before she sees you!
The gag order was a crushing blow. Federal marshals, ten years in prison – Evelyn had played her hand masterfully, painting Apex Titan’s criminal network as a matter of “state security.” It meant we couldn’t go to the authorities, at least not through official channels.
Back in my garage, Kowalski was fuming, pacing between his workstations. “State secrets! The gall of that woman! She’s turning our own laws against us.”
Rachel, ever the pragmatist, was already strategizing. “We need to hit her where she can’t hide behind ‘national security.’ Something public, undeniable, and impossible to retract.”
But the key was still Maya’s collar. We had the bypass code for the thermal lock, but simply freeing her wouldn’t bring Evelyn down. We needed direct, irrefutable proof of Evelyn’s involvement, something more than just Apex Titan’s voter fraud.
Kowalski returned to his analysis, focusing on the collar’s unique properties. “The ‘Guardian V.2’ model,” he mumbled, hunched over his oscilloscope. “It has an ultra-high-frequency sub-band. Always wondered what it was for. Never made sense for basic tracking.”
He’d been running complex signal processing on every stray emission he could detect from the collar’s known frequency signature, cross-referencing it with its original design specs.
“Most of the collar’s data is encrypted, live-streamed, just as Rachel found,” he explained, pointing to a fluctuating waveform on his screen. “But this… this is different.”
He tweaked a knob, and a new, distinct waveform appeared on a lower part of the spectrum. It was faint, almost imperceptible beneath the main signals.
“This sub-band,” Kowalski said, his voice hushed with discovery, “it’s not for transmission. It’s for storage. A secondary, unencrypted storage micro-chip buried inside the clasp.”
My breath caught in my throat. “Storage? What kind of storage?”
“Raw data,” Kowalski elaborated, his eyes wide. “A backup. The internal memory of the collar is constantly logging everything. Not just audio from Maya, but ambient sound. And, crucially, any external commands or signals the collar receives.”
He worked furiously, running a data recovery program he’d written years ago. A progress bar slowly filled on the screen.
“If Evelyn was communicating with Apex Titan executives while Maya was wearing the collar,” Rachel interjected, piecing it together, “and those conversations happened within earshot of Maya, or if the collar received specific commands for its own operation…”
The progress bar reached 100%. A file folder appeared, labeled “COLLAR_ARCHIVE_RAW.”
Kowalski opened it. Inside, a series of audio files, timestamped. Not encrypted. Just raw sound.
He clicked on the most recent one. Static for a moment, then Evelyn’s voice, clear and cold, unmistakable.
“—ensure the bidding documents reflect *our* agreed-upon parameters. Apex Titan gets the contract, no questions. And the ‘Sarah Hollister incident’… is closed. Permanently. No loose ends.”
The words hung in the air, a chilling echo. *Sarah Hollister incident*. *Closed. Permanently.*
My blood ran cold. This wasn’t just about contract bid-rigging. This was Evelyn, in her own voice, giving explicit orders regarding the staging of Sarah’s fatal accident.
The micro-chip inside Maya’s collar wasn’t just recording Maya. It was Evelyn’s personal, unwitting confessional booth. It held the direct, undeniable evidence of Evelyn’s role in Sarah’s murder. And it was unencrypted.
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