OPERATION WINTERSPINE (Strings Between Us Book 2)

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: OF SIGNALS THAT BREACHED, SYSTEMS THAT FRACTURED,

Tofer leaned forward, fingers interlocked. "They're seeing how close Khaizer can get to breaking without activating Rowan. Measuring thresholds."

"They're not just measuring him," Keryn said quietly, eyes cold. "They're measuring us."

She wasn't wrong.

"Agreed," I said. "This was not an assassination attempt. Not really. It was observation through provocation."

Saichel, for once, wasn't smirking. Hands steepled under his chin, eyes flicking between the map and pulse data, the faint hum of the holographic schematics vibrating through the floor beneath us.

"So they knew we'd intercept," he murmured. "They wanted us to."

Seb clicked his claws against the table once. The metallic ring echoed sharply in the cold hall. "They were recording us. Motion sensors hidden in uniforms. Smart thread tech."

"How much did they see?" Alexie asked, worry sharpening her tone, the faint scent of recycled air clinging to the room.

"Not enough," I replied evenly, feeling the low hum of the obsidian table through my fingertips. "Keryn's sweep disabled uplink pulses before transmission. They saw us respond—but not how."

Silence fell again. Calculated. Heavy. The faint scent of ozone from the table's dormant power coils hung in the air.

"They'll probably do it again," Thres growled through gritted teeth.

"They'll probably do it again," Thres growled, voice low, gravelly.

"Guys, I found something."

We all turned to Tofer, hunched over his tablet, fingers moving fast across the illuminated keys, the soft clicking barely audible over the hum of the war table.

"What is it, Tofer?" Lyle asked, measured, sharp but calm, his shadow stretching across the floor as the holo-lights flickered slightly with movement.

Tofer didn't look up. "Something called Glass Echo just came online."

Lyle's voice was measured, but low. "What was it all about?"

Tofer finally looked up, the faint hum of his acoustic sensors dimming. "I wasn't looking for it," he said. "It found me."

He tapped a side panel of his bracer, projecting a waveform—thin, jagged, and ruptured in all the wrong places.

"A 2.3-second pulse distortion. Spliced through five closed bands at once. It matched no known Court signal... but the pattern matched a corrupted field entry from the old Halcyon Pulse Archives. I had to dig backwards—real-time—through dead code to find the match."

Thres voice was tight. "What was the trigger?"

Tofer hesitated. His eyes flicked, just briefly, toward the monitor still glowing with heat signatures and recent emotional imprints. One of them—centered in Sector Theta-9—was flaring, inconsistent with baseline.

"It wasn't tech," he said. "It was... him."

A beat of silence.

"Khazier Dylan," Alexie whispered.

Tofer nodded slowly. "His pulse—his actual pulse—broke pattern. Just for a blink. Veilfall system flickered. And for exactly 2.3 seconds... his Echo signature pinged through the static."

Lyle's hands curled slowly at his sides. "Does he know?"

"No," Tofer said. "But something inside him does."

A fracture opened in my chest. He doesn't remember. But his body does. His pulse screamed before he could. I could feel it in the back of my skull, faint but insistent, like a ghosted vibration.