The hum of the city at night was a familiar soundtrack to my life, but tonight it felt sharper, more insistent. Sterling's arrest had been a shock, a disruption to my carefully laid plans. He was behind bars, but his knowledge was a live wire. He knew I wasn't Simone Dubois, knew I had asked about the network, about my father. What had he told the Anti-Crime unit during their initial interrogation?
I spent the night in my apartment, not sleeping, but reviewing everything. The recording from the bar – Sterling's veiled admissions, my dangerous questions. It was both potential leverage and a damning piece of evidence against me if it ever surfaced in the wrong hands. I secured it meticulously, adding another layer of encryption to the file.
My mind kept replaying Sterling's face as he was led away – the shock, the dawning recognition, the fury. That look… he wouldn't forget. And men like him, cornered and facing serious charges (fraud alone could put him away for a long time), would use any leverage they had.
The next morning at the precinct, the air still crackled with the aftershocks of Sterling's arrest. He was big news – a high-profile lawyer brought down. I worked on the official Eastbrook network case, the files against the hospital administrators building steadily, using the chaos as cover to ask quiet questions about Sterling's status.
"Still fighting the fraud charges," Alvarez reported after checking the system. "Refused to cooperate on anything else. Standard play for a guy like him. Protect the real dirt."
"Any word on what he said during the initial sweep?" I asked, trying to sound casual. "Anything about… who he was with?"
Alvarez shrugged. "Anti-Crime didn't mention anything specific. Just that he clammed up pretty fast and demanded his lawyer. Why? Think he gave them something on the network?"
"Maybe," I hedged. "Just curious about his state of mind."
But I knew the danger wasn't about the network *yet*. It was about Simone Dubois. Had he described her? Had he mentioned the questions about Daniel Blackwood? The thought was a constant, low-grade thrum of anxiety beneath my professional calm.
The IA investigation under Miller remained a shadow over the precinct. No one was openly accused, but everyone felt the scrutiny. The camera near my desk remained unexplained – just a "technical glitch." But I knew it wasn't. Someone had tampered with it. Someone had been watching.
The subtle disturbances around my desk continued. A file slightly out of place. A sticky note with a meaningless symbol left on my monitor. They were designed to unnerve, to make me doubt myself, to feel the constant presence of an unseen observer. Was it the leaker Miller was hunting? Was it someone connected to the network, now aware that Detective Blackwood was digging too deep? Or was it someone connected to my vigilante life, somehow sensing my other identity?
I spent hours after work, armed with a small toolkit, meticulously sweeping my apartment and my desk area for bugs, cameras, anything that could compromise me. I found nothing. The professionalism of the surveillance was chilling. It suggested resources, expertise. The kind of resources the Eastbrook network, or the powerful men on Freeman's list, would have access to.
The lack of concrete evidence from Sterling on the network, coupled with the escalating, subtle surveillance against me, created a volatile mix. He was a key to understanding the full scope of the network, but getting to him now was impossible through official channels, and too risky through my usual methods. And with someone watching me, my ability to operate as Simone or any other persona was severely compromised.
That night, reviewing the names on Freeman's list, I felt a surge of frustration. So many men who had evaded justice, protected by this system of enablers. And the man connected to my own pain, my father, was part of it. Sterling was just one piece, albeit a significant one due to his legal expertise in silencing victims.
The walls weren't just closing in from outside; they were potentially built into the very foundation of my world, within the precinct, within the corrupt systems I was fighting. The pressure was mounting, and I needed to find a way to alleviate it, to regain control, before the walls collapsed entirely.