November 2nd, 2017 – Night
The room had no windows and too many screens.
That was the point.
On the twenty-fourth floor, behind two unmarked doors and a biometric lock that didn't officially exist, Clandestine Cleaning kept its closest thing to a conscience: a room full of reflections.
They didn't call it surveillance. They called it Mirrors. Sounded nicer in audits.
Sandra sat in the only comfortable chair, tie loosened, jacket draped over the back. Her reflection looked back at her from half a dozen blacked-out monitors as the system booted.
Most people assumed she went home after Board meetings and hospital visits.
Most people didn't know about this room.
A young tech in a CC polo hovered by the door, holding a tablet like a shield.
"Everything you asked for is loading, Ms Woods," he said. "Last forty-eight hours: boardroom cams, garage, hospital feeds we have access to. Device mirrors are synced for priority targets."
"Good," she said. "And the new additions?"
"We added Mr Hale's phone and laptop to the watch list like you requested," he said. "Minimal scope—just metadata, new docs, flagged keywords. Same as legacy."
He hesitated.
"You're not… worried he'll find out?" he asked.
Sandra raised an eyebrow.
"He's the one writing down 'I see lies in colour' in a synced note app," she said. "If he didn't want anyone clever reading it, he'd use paper."
The tech flushed.
"Yes, ma'am."
"Go home," she said. "I'll take it from here."
The door shut behind him.
One by one, the screens came to life.
---
Top left: Boardroom recording, that morning. Harlan, Cho, Elise, Azad, and the rest. The transcript scrolled along the bottom.
Top right: Hospital corridor feed, timestamped 14:32 to 14:40. The fake nurse pushing a cart down the side hall. The rush to Room 407. The scramble afterward.
Bottom row: a grid of device mirrors: simplified overlays of texts, calls, and browser histories for key players.
In the center, a dashboard with alerts.
Two yellow flags glowed under BOARD – EMERGENCY SESSION.
Three under HOSPITAL – NEURO WARD.
One red under ASSET CANDIDATE: HALE, ASHER.
Sandra tapped the red.
A small window opened.
New document created – synced to cloud – tagged from Hale, Asher's account. Keywords: lie, truth, colour, pattern.
She opened it.
> Colour Notes – 11/2 – Hospital
> Kid – bright orange → scared/angry.
> Kid's mom – tight dark green → fear/protective.
> Maya (nurse) – grey-blue → tired but honest.
> Fake nurse ("Jenna") – pale grey → dirty yellow/red when lying, dark center when cornered.
> Said "new protocol," "completely standard," "we shouldn't delay this." All wrong.
>
> Wade – deep blue, red fatigue, no yellow on "not authorized."
>
> Guess legend so far:
> Yellow = lie / omission.
> Dark green = fear/defence.
> Beige = going through motions.
> Red = anger.
> Gold = care? (Mom, you.)
>
> Someone sent her. Someone knew exactly which room. This isn't random.
She read every line twice.
Most people coped with stress by drinking, shouting, or pretending nothing was wrong.
Asher, apparently, coped by building a field manual inside a notes app.
Sandra's lips moved in the ghost of an expression that, on someone else, might have been a smile.
"Of course you do," she murmured.
She toggled another window, pulling the boardroom transcript beside his document.
> AZAD: "Of course, no one here would ever act against the company's best interests."
> HARLAN: "We're all on the same side here."
Asher's earlier note from the previous night—archived but still there—read:
> Azad – honey-gold, rich green, oily black coil. Enjoys saying "we're all on the same side" when he's not.
> Three Board members flashed yellow on "toxicology."
Now he had added observations about the fake nurse and Wade.
His colours matched her own assessments disturbingly well.
She closed his file and tagged it MONITOR – DO NOT AUTO-DISTRIBUTE. No automated digest. No sharing with risk committees. If anyone was going to weaponize this, it would be her, not the Board.
---
She tapped the hospital feed.
Room 407. Playback at 2x speed.
She watched Asher enter, coffee in one hand, lines of stress around his mouth. Watched the woman in white stand by the IV pole, mask on, badge visible.
The system's facial recognition tried to match her to staff files. Came up empty.
"J. Harper, RN," the badge claimed.
The HR database had no J. Harper on neurology.
Sandra slowed the footage.
Asher's posture changed in the doorway. His weight shifted. His hand tightened around the cup before he set it down. He moved in, said something—audio was low, but the hospital had given them a cleaned-up track.
She flicked on captions.
> ASHER: "What are you doing?"
> FAKE NURSE: "New medication. Dr. Wade updated the protocol."
Sandra watched the woman's shoulders as she lied. No glance at the chart, no check with the pump. Too smooth.
Asher stepped closer, blocking her angle.
> ASHER: "Funny. Maya was here ten minutes ago and said the opposite."
The argument. The grab. The struggle over the syringe.
If she slowed it frame by frame, she could see the exact moment Asher switched from "confused son" to "someone who has decided the other person is a threat."
That was familiar. She'd seen it in soldiers, in operatives, in Victoria.
Most civilians hesitated.
He didn't.
He went for the hand with the weapon.
Good boy, she thought, without intending to.
Maya's entry, the alarm, the attempted capture, the escape to the hallway—they played out in a blur.
Sandra switched cameras.
Side hallway. Service elevator. A flash of white. The fake nurse jammed the DOWN button three times like it might respond faster. The elevator doors opened. She stepped in.
The system overlay flashed: GUEST OVERRIDE – SPONSORED BY: R. AZAD.
"Of course," Sandra said softly.
Not proof, not by itself. Guest override codes could be shared, stolen, cloned.
But combined with everything else…
She screenshotted the frame and filed it in a folder marked THREAD: HOSPITAL – AZAD?.
She'd tug on it later.
---
Her secure chat pinged.
An internal security analyst had sent a brief report:
> Subject: Fake Nurse – Preliminary
> – Badge ID belongs to long-term staffer currently on maternity leave.
> – No login trail for "J. Harper" in past six months.
> – Entry to neurology from service corridor, not main hall.
> – Service elevator commands include guest override 14:33, authorized user: R. Azad (Board-level access).
> – No footage of subject exiting building; probable change of clothes or blind spot on basement level.
>
> More to follow.
Sandra let the facts arrange themselves in her head.
Azad's access waking up a door.
A fake nurse walking through it.
A neutral "investor" watching from somewhere, calling events "evaluations."
A boy with gold and silver in his outline grabbing a stranger's wrist because her colors were wrong.
She moved to another feed: device logs.
Azad's phone showed three short calls in the hour before the attempt, all to blocked numbers. The same numbers Asher's unknown caller used. Duration: twenty to forty seconds each.
Busy man. A lot of "observing."
She checked Asher's mirrored messages.
His text from an hour ago:
> There was a fake nurse. Tried to inject something into Mom's line.
> I stopped her. She got away. Wade says it wasn't authorized.
>
> Also: the watcher called again. Knew way too much.
She'd replied in reflex.
> I saw the footage. We'll talk in person. Don't leave the ward alone again. Drink water.
> Good job.
She didn't regret it.
Operatives needed feedback. Even the reluctant ones.
---
She opened a new file.
> ASSET CANDIDATE: HALE, ASHER
>
> Observations:
> – Heightened intuitive pattern recognition.
> – Self-reported "color associations" correlate strongly with known behavioural tells (deception, fear, disinterest, aggression).
> – Identified unauthorized staffer (fake nurse) before action taken.
> – Physically intervened without prior training, targeted weapon hand, limited toxin delivery.
>
> Risks:
> – Untrained.
> – High emotional stake (mother).
> – Now visible to:
> • Internal Board factions.
> • At least one external "investor" group.
> – Potential for panic or refusal if confronted with full scope of situation.
>
> Recommendations:
> – Do NOT inform Board of his anomaly.
> – Prevent direct contact between Asher and Azad without supervision.
> – Quietly test reliability of his "colour" reads against Mirror data.
> – Begin shaping him as field profiler / asset, not corporate heir, if Victoria does not object (or is incapacitated).
She tagged it EYES ONLY – SW and locked it.
Some reflections were for her alone.
---
Her phone vibrated with a different kind of alert: an external channel. Old network. Old debt.
The reply to a message she'd sent earlier:
> Checked your number.
> It's not a rival firm. It's money.
> One of your older offshore backers—the kind that doesn't put their name on org charts. They fund three outfits like yours and two you wouldn't touch.
> They wanted Victoria for another project once. She said no. Loudly.
> Looks like they've noticed the son.
A second line followed:
> Be careful, Woods. When investors get bored, they don't just move money. They move people. Off the board.
Sandra stared at the words, then locked the phone.
The appropriate feelings knocked—annoyance, worry, the old itch for a cleaner solution involving a bullet.
She didn't let them in.
Emotions didn't change outcomes.
Information did.
She shut down three of the screens, leaving only the hospital feed: Room 407, angle from above.
Victoria asleep.
Asher in the visitor chair, slumped, head tilted back, one hand still near the bed rail, as if he could catch another syringe just by proximity.
Even half-bent, he had Victoria's jawline.
"He passed the first test," she said to the empty room. "We'll see what he does with the rest."
She turned off the last monitor.
In the darkness, her reflection lingered for a moment in the blank screens, then faded.
Mirrors never stopped watching.
But for now, she had seen enough.