Chapter 2 - THE FIFTH HIT
We were inside the control room four minutes later.
Daniel locked the door.
Ryan stood instead of sitting.
I did too.
The scoring console continued building a timestamp log in real time.
No one touched it.
Daniel called cybersecurity, range safety and legal preservation.
Not investigators yet.
Preservation first.
That mattered.
Ryan watched him.
“You think somebody hacked the range?”
“I think four shots became five.”
“Sensor bounce.”
“Maybe.”
“I’ve seen double registers.”
I turned toward him.
“How often?”
He hesitated.
There.
“Not often.”
Daniel asked:
“How often?”
“Maybe once every couple weeks.”
The trainee outside had said Tuesday.
Ryan noticed I noticed.
“It’s steel. Sensors get dirty.”
“Then why are qualification scores being stored without exception flags?”
His face tightened.
“Because we verify hits.”
“Who verifies?”
“Instructors.”
“How?”
“Spotters. Lane observation. Shooter confirmation.”
There.
Human correction around unreliable equipment.
Not automatically wrong.
But I knew the software.
Or an ancestor of it.
Daniel placed the black envelope on the desk.
I kept my hand on it.
Ryan’s eyes dropped there again.
“You gonna tell me what that is?”
“No.”
“This is my range.”
“Not while the evidence hold is active.”
“I’m not talking to you.”
Daniel answered:
“She is.”
Ryan laughed once.
“Who exactly is she?”
Daniel looked at me.
I did not help him.
Finally he said:
“Someone whose name is in the original architecture documents for this scoring system.”
Ryan stopped.
That was more than I wanted disclosed.
But useful.
He looked at my scar again.
Then at the black Raven insignia.
“No.”
There.
Recognition trying to assemble itself.
I moved to the workstation.
“Show me Lane Three’s exception history.”
Ryan folded his arms.
“Access is restricted.”
Daniel entered his own credentials.
Ryan looked annoyed.
Good.
The system opened.
I searched six months.
Twenty-six manual scoring adjustments.
Not sensor diagnostics.
Qualification adjustments.
Ryan saw the number.
“That’s not unusual.”
Daniel looked at him.
“Twenty-six?”
“Across how many runs?”
One hundred eighty-three.
Ryan continued.
“Fourteen percent.”
“Twenty-six adjusted scores.”
“Not twenty-six false scores.”
There.
Important distinction.
I opened the first record.
Automated result:
4/5.
Final result:
5/5.
Reason:
Visual confirmation — sensor miss.
Two instructor initials.
Reasonable.
Next.
3/5 changed to 5/5.
Two observers.
Next.
5/5 unchanged but status changed from system uncertain to manual confirmed.
Again.
The process itself came from an old doctrine.
Mine.
Ryan did not know that yet.
Then I opened entry nineteen.
I stopped.
Daniel noticed.
“What?”
The adjustment had been entered at 14:12.
The firing run began at 14:16.
Four minutes later.
Ryan leaned closer.
“That timestamp is wrong.”
“Maybe.”
I opened the audit detail.
No sync delay.
No imported offline record.
The trainee had a passing score four minutes before he fired.
Ryan's face changed.
Daniel asked:
“Who approved it?”
The system showed two credentials.
One belonged to Range Systems Engineer Miles Arden.
The second:
COLE.RM
Ryan.
He stared.
“No.”
Daniel said nothing.
Ryan stepped closer to the screen.
“That’s my token.”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t do that.”
“You’re sure?”
He looked at me with enough anger to make the old trainees outside recognizable in him.
“I know when I change a man’s qualification.”
I opened another pre-fire adjustment.
Same two credentials.
Another.
Same.
Ryan grabbed the edge of the console.
“Those aren’t mine.”
Daniel asked:
“Who has access to your token?”
“No one.”
I looked at him.
He corrected.
“Should have.”
Better.
“Shared terminal?”
“Yes.”
“Cached sign-in?”
“Sometimes.”
“Maintenance tablet?”
Ryan stopped.
There.
“What?”
He looked toward the equipment cage through the glass.
“We had a controller outage in May.”
“Go on.”
“Arden needed command-level reconciliation access while they rebuilt the lane tables.”
“So?”
“I authenticated once.”
Daniel’s expression hardened.
“You left it cached?”
“For the afternoon.”
“How long?”
Ryan looked at the floor.
“I don’t know.”
There.
A credential no one intended to share had become shared because changing it every time slowed the work.
I kept scrolling.
Twenty-six adjustments.
Eleven used Ryan’s token.
Four were his actual manual reconciliations, according to notes.
Seven uncertain.
Three predated firing.
Daniel said:
“Where’s Arden?”
Ryan looked through the glass.
“He left at noon.”
“Why?”
“Vendor meeting.”
I checked the schedule.
No vendor meeting.
Nothing booked.
Then the system chimed.
A remote session had just requested access.
From outside the range network.
Daniel reached toward the console.
I stopped him.
“Don’t.”
The request timed out.
Then came again.
Same credential.
ARDEN.M
Ryan went pale.
Daniel called cybersecurity.
“Block the session. Preserve origin. Do not alert the user.”
Then he looked at me.
“Emma.”
I already knew what he wanted.
I removed my hand from the black envelope.
“Not yet.”
Ryan stared.
“Why?”
May you like
Because the old folder contained the reason a contractor named Miles Arden knew a command override function that should have died eleven years earlier.
And my signature was on the document that created it.
