"Ms. Ryder," the serpent man said. "Right on time."
The serpent man chuckled. "He's smart. Always was. That's why we hired him, back in the day. And that's why we're here now. You've been a very busy bee, Ms. Ryder. Sealing away our associates, freezing our digital assets. You think those little spreadsheets of yours just track parolees? You've been mapping our entire network for two years, and you didn't even know it."
Ice water flooded Sheena’s veins. He was right. She had been aggregating data, cross-referencing phone logs, visitation records, and financial patterns of her parolees. She thought she was just being thorough. She had stumbled, blindly, onto the periphery of something vast.
The boiler room exploded into a chaos of blue light, shouts, and the screech of metal. Sheena grabbed a fire extinguisher, swung it like a club, and didn't stop swinging until the only people left standing were her and the man she was supposed to lock away.