The tricky medicine (part III)

***

Adrian's car surged forward, the advanced diesel motor whining as he pushed the vehicle roughly into manual mode. He needed to clear the city limits faster than the local traffic algorithms would allow. The car skidded through the sharp turns of the old town district, tires chirping against the cold and snowy pavement, while the road-assist stabilisers fought to keep the chassis level.

Once he hit the open highway, he slammed the system back into full automation and set the coordinates for the Lahti's regional control node.

Released from the wheel, Adrian began patting down his pockets, searching for his communicator. He checked the centre console, the floor mats, and the glove box. Nothing. It wasn't in his gear, and it wasn't in the car.

"Damn it. Fucking bloody communicator..." he growled into the empty cabin. "I just hope to hell nobody needs me for the next eight hours."

The winter light faded rapidly, the horizon bruising into a deep purple before giving way to total darkness halfway through his journey. At first, the highway was a ghost and almost empty road, but as Adrian approached the regional control node, the traffic thickened into a heavy, glowing river of lights.

Frustrated by the conservative pace of the highway's flow-control, Adrian seized the manual overrides. It wasn't a fully manual mode -- global safety regulations had long ago outlawed unassisted driving -- but it allowed him to push the boundaries of the vehicle's spatial sensors. The car became a part of a high-speed hive; thousands of proximity sensors fired every millisecond, maintaining micro-distances between the concrete barriers and neighbouring vehicles. The traffic moved like a swarm of insects, shifting and undulating at lethal speeds with perfect, mathematical precision.

Navigating the chaos with aggressive intent, Adrian reached the facility in record time. He had made the trip in exactly three hours.

Control nodes were typically isolated, tucked away a few hundred meters from the highway's main arteries. They often doubled as rest stops, serving as hubs for refuelling, automated car washes, and small groceries. This facility followed that exact blueprint -- a sprawling complex of parking zones and refill stations perched directly above the highway.

At the far end of the commercial strip stood the heart of the sector: a windowless, gray concrete monolith. Towering above the control node was a massive CO2 harvesting spire, its fans humming as it scrubbed the atmosphere of the highway's exhaust.

Adrian brought his car to a sharp halt near the building's secure entrance. He was in a feverish hurry. As he approached the door, the facility's proximity sensors swept over him, instantly recognising the embedded ID chip beneath his skin. With a single, impatient chime from the terminal, the heavy doors cycled open, granting him access.

Nick Etalainen wasn't expecting a soul. The facility was a tomb at this hour, and that was exactly how he liked it. He sat in the cramped kitchen nook, the fluorescent lights humming overhead as he poured himself a massive cup of black coffee and a glass of ice-cold water. His plan was simple: disappear into the break room for an hour or two while the systems ran themselves. After the chaos of the recent fatality, he was certain lightning wouldn't strike twice; the odds of another incident tonight were astronomical. Only the looming mountain of paperwork remained to haunt his routine.

In the main hub, Adrian stepped through the sliding doors to find the operator's console abandoned. It was a stroke of luck -- the glowing monitors flickered in the dark, unattended and vulnerable. He moved silently through the dim space, his eyes darting between the rows of blinking hardware. Nick was completely unaware that he had an intruder, let alone one who was about to tear a hole in his quiet night.

"Hey, Nick! Wherever you are, stay calm and keep doing whatever you're doing!" Adrian's voice boomed through the sterile halls, cutting through the silence of the break room.

Nick nearly dropped his coffee. Despite the clear instructions to stay put, his instincts took over; he stumbled back into the main hub, his face a mask of confusion as he prepared to demand an ID. Adrian didn't give him the chance to get suspicious. He was already there, flashing his credentials with a practised, authoritative flick of the wrist to settle the man down.

"How's it going, Nick? Struggling with that final report, huh?" Adrian asked, his voice a blur of forced casualness and intense hurry.

"Umm... yeah. No worries, I'm... I'm going to finish it," Nick stammered, his mind struggling to catch up with the sudden intrusion. "Just... just need to finalise the last few things ..."

"May I ask what a Principal Engineer from the Investigation Department is doing all the way out here?" Nick asked, his voice gaining a sliver of professional courage.

"Nothing that concerns you," Adrian barked back, his patience thinning as the clock ticked down.

"Just stay calm and go back to whatever you were doing. I won't have anything to report regarding your... extended break, if you just let me work." Adrian continued.

The threat was subtle, but effective. Nick held up his hands in a defensive gesture.

"Good, good, my friend. I'm going back. Just... let me know when you're leaving the room, alright?" Nick said.

With that, Nick retreated, eager to put a wall between himself and the Principal Engineer's intense, shadowed energy.

Adrian stood motionless until he heard the faint scrape of a chair in the kitchen, signalling Nick had settled back into his hiding spot. He knew this breach would eventually trigger a flag in the central audit, but in a system this vast, a quiet illegality could take days to surface. If he kept the circle of witnesses small, he bought himself the only currency that mattered now: time.

He slid into the operator's chair. The common interface hummed beneath his fingers as he pulled up the node's local storage logs from the day of the crash. There it was -- a massive, bloated block of encrypted telemetry. It sat there like a lead weight in the system's memory, waiting for the final purge.

"I'm lucky today; there is still time to grab the data." sparked quickly in Adrian head.

To crack it, he needed the 'Triple-Lock' handshake. He already had the first two: the Department of Transportation's master investigative key and his own high-level Principal clearance. But the third was the operator's witness key -- a physical token or biometric signature currently sitting in the pocket of the lazy man drinking coffee about twenty meters away.

Even if he got the key, he still faced the privacy protocol's limitation, which slowed down external transfers to prevent bulk leaks. He didn't just need the data; he needed to kill the system's conscience.

The privacy protocol was a hard nut to crack; bypassing it through software would require a chain of command approvals he simply didn't have. So, Adrian decided to exploit a physical loophole. While any data leaving the node was flagged and throttled, operations performed within the internal storage array were considered routine maintenance.

He checked the storage volume diagnostics. Physical drive wasn't full with the data, but it was enough to worry about data copying time. He located a spare hot-swap drive in the rack and began a low-level ID tampering. He masked the spare volume ID to perfectly mimic the primary incident storage.

The plan was set, but the order of operations was critical: he had to secure the unencrypted data before performing the physical swap, or the mismatch would trigger a system-wide lock.

"Nick! Sorry to bother you again," Adrian called out, his voice now quieted and stripped of its earlier bite.

He sounded like a tired professional just trying to get through a long night. "It's about the timeline for that last incident. I need your witness key to extract the raw timestamps. Standard procedure for the final report."

Nick was a man of least resistance. He lived by predefined templates and strictly followed the path of the basic procedure. To him, thinking about a request from a superior was more work than just granting it. If a Principal Engineer told him a key was needed for a timeline, he wouldn't dream of questioning the logic. He just wanted the request -- and the intruder -- to go away so he could return to his routine.

He stood up, the chair scraping against the floor, and began the short walk back to the console, reaching for the physical key -- token clipped to his belt.

The handshake was over in seconds. Nick tapped his physical token against the reader, the terminal chirped a dull green of approval, and the triple key encryption fell away.

"Thanks, Nick. I'll take it from here," Adrian said.

Nick gave a tired nod and retreated toward the kitchen, his mind already back on his coffee. Adrian's eyes were fixed on the terminal. His brain was already projecting the next steps visualising how the data should look on the screen.

As soon as Nick was out of sight, Adrian's fingers flew across the interface. He didn't use the facility's network to connect to the interface; instead, he deployed his mobile terminal -- a specialised, multi-functional device he'd brought in his jacket. He bridged the connection directly to the internal storage bus, bypassing the facility's outgoing data-monitoring.

The data stream began to flow. High frequency signals were silently moving across the unconventional, but functional wiring scheme.

Once the copied signal flickered, he moved with practised precision.

He popped the physical latch on the server rack, slid the original incident drive out, and clicked the tampered fake drive into its place.

He performed a quick clean sweep script to wipe his temporary access logs, ensuring the console looked exactly as it had when Nick left it. The original drive, now heavy with the secrets of Lizzie Wolters' death, was safely tucked into his pocket.

***

Dry, freezing weather was typical for a Frankfurt winter. It wasn't a devastating cold, just a few degrees below the water freezing point, but it bit at any exposed skin. The remnants of a rain from days ago had turned into thin layers of ice, glazing the naked bushes and the dark yellow fallen leaves. The morning sun was just beginning to play with the reflections off the glass of the massive office buildings.

Michael found the bitter weather a nice fit for his new ideas; the cold kept his mind sharp. He'd chosen to spend the morning near the Cluster's Earth HQ, leaning against a cold stone wall. He was waiting. It wasn't technically necessary, but he wouldn't be satisfied until his own eyes witnessed the mundane event.

Yesterday, he had issued the order: every shipment and delivery tied to the Hugo Moreau's death investigation had to be approved by him personally. No exceptions. Now, standing in the shadow of the Cluster HQ, he waited for the first notification to buzz against his palm.

He positioned himself between the glass-heavy HQ entrance and the concrete maw of the underground parking gates. Because the lobby sat nearly two meters above the facility level, he had a clear line of sight over both. It was the perfect vantage point -- discreet, elevated, and bitingly cold.

He didn't have to wait long before a vehicle marked with a bio-hazard sign arrived. Almost instantly, his device buzzed with a message: "Michael Berndt — your delivery has arrived. Please review and approve the next steps."

He watched the vehicle for a moment, his gaze lingering on the hazard symbol, before finally turning toward the entrance to head to his warm office.