Chapter 44 - The Clone
The cybersecurity laboratory remained sealed for nearly six hours.
Every workstation was disconnected from external networks. Hard drives were duplicated sector by sector. Authentication logs were reconstructed down to the millisecond.
Margaret watched quietly while specialists rebuilt the timeline.
The cloned credentials had not been created during the seven-second outage.
They had existed for months.
Someone had patiently waited for the investigation to reach the right stage before attempting to access the evidence archive.
"Can we determine when the credentials were first copied?" Margaret asked.
The lead analyst enlarged another timeline.
"Approximately one hundred and twelve days ago."
Arthur frowned.
"That was before Margaret officially joined the investigation."
"Exactly," the analyst replied.
Which meant the unknown observer had anticipated an investigation long before Arthur decided to launch one.
Margaret wrote a single sentence in her notebook.
Someone expected the truth to resurface.
As investigators continued reviewing security records, another discovery emerged.
The cloned account had accessed only one directory.
Not financial records.
Not executive emails.
Only documents related to Harold Bennett, Samuel Pierce, and the Executive Leadership Forum.
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Whoever stood behind the intrusion already knew where the real story had begun.
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