KNOX’S POV
The dead man’s trigger first. I enter Logan’s code into the server interface — the alphanumeric sequence, exactly as he recited it in the storage room with that smile I still can’t decode.
The system prompts for confirmation. I confirm. The screen flashes once, a progress bar runs, and then a single line of text:
DISTRIBUTION PROTOCOL DEACTIVATED. TRIGGER OFFLINE.
The kill switch is dead.
Ember exhales beside me. I didn’t realise she’d been holding her breath.
I pull out the diagnostic device Nathaniel gave me.
Military-grade, designed for intelligence operations — it scans for duplication signatures, verifies whether data has been copied or transferred to external devices, and confirms whether the physical drive is the original or a clone.
I plug it in, and the scan tak
