The Past, Rewired

[Soban]

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Donagan noticed his guest’s once‑imperturbable demeanour flicker—so slight a shift it would have escaped a less watchful eye.
He raised both hands in a placating gesture.

“Easy, lad. This is a closed network—nothin’ beyond this room, I swear.” He kept his tone calm, hoping to defuse the tension. “Ye’re free tae erase whatever files ye need—just leave the sample I uploaded. I’m not runnin’ that transfer again.”

A glance at the console confirmed what he expected: the file had already been sliced and copied across the mainframe’s layered architecture for extrapolation.

“An’ dinnae forget tae check every sub‑system,” he added, mild annoyance creeping in—he hadn’t expected anything remotely ‘personal’ to show up here. A few sharp keystrokes on the keyboard produced a directory map, with lengthy path, which he pushed over to Derius. “There ye are—feel free tae handle it yersel’. The frame gets purged when we’re done pullin’ the schematics anyway.”

After a beat, Donagan pivoted back, an inquisitive edge to his gaze.

“One thing bothers me, though: why does a ciphered IRG power‑cell schematic carry plain data that looks mighty personal—an’ tied straight tae you?” He eyed the progress bar still crawling across his screen. “What in tarnation are ye tryin’ tae pull here?” His eyebrow climbed higher as fresh filenames kept scrolling onto the console.