Ben did not move.
Maya stepped between Mercer and the terminal.
“This system is under federal evidence preservation.”
Mercer looked at her.
“You cannot expect me to leave compromised infrastructure active.”
“I expect you not to destroy attribution while we are investigating who compromised it.”
“I’m protecting the network.”
“Then why does your protocol strip administrator relationships?”
Mercer did not answer.
Maya turned to the technician.
“Can you separate police dispatch from Sloan administration?”
“Yes.”
“Maintain county operations?”
“Yes.”
“Maintain the forensic mirror?”
“Yes.”
“Then isolate external write access.”
The technician began.
Mercer said:
“You’re changing departmental infrastructure without command approval.”
“Federal evidence and a federal witness were just affected through that infrastructure.”
She held his gaze.
“We are stopping additional modification while keeping public-safety systems live.”
The technician confirmed:
“Outside write channel blocked.”
Lena checked dispatch.
“Operational.”
“Transport?”
“Voice relay intact.”
“Hidden server?”
“Readonly mirror stable.”
Maya nodded.
“Good.”
Rebecca Sloan was no longer in the room.
Maya noticed.
“Where is Lieutenant Sloan?”
Ben looked toward the hallway.
“I saw her go upstairs.”
“Where?”
“Secondary admin.”
Maya moved.
Two federal technicians followed.
The secondary administrative room door was partly open.
Rebecca stood at a workstation.
The administrator console filled the screen.
She turned.
“What are you doing?” Maya asked.
“Preparing an export.”
“Step away.”
Rebecca removed her hands.
“I’m preserving the logs before your people corrupt anything else.”
The technician sat at the adjacent workstation.
“There is no export active.”
Rebecca looked at him.
“I hadn’t started it.”
He opened action history.
“Archive selection.”
A pause.
“Overwrite queue assignment.”
Another pause.
“Purge preparation.”
Rebecca’s face changed.
Maya asked:
“Were you trying to delete preserved records?”
“No.”
“Explain the purge.”
“I was isolating contaminated data.”
“Under whose authority?”
“My security responsibilities.”
“There has been a federal preservation order active since this morning.”
“I know.”
“And you initiated a purge.”
“You’re interpreting a technical function as intentional destruction.”
The technician opened authentication.
“This command requires biometric confirmation.”
Rebecca went silent.
He displayed the record.
FINGERPRINT ACCEPTED — REBECCA SLOAN.
Maya waited.
Then:
“Did someone else use your hand?”
Rebecca looked at her.
“No.”
“Then stop blaming the machine.”
Chief Mercer entered.
“What happened?”
Maya looked at him.