"Imagine now a man who is deprived of everyone he loves, and at the same time of his house, his habits, his clothes, in short, of everything he possesses: he will be a hollow man, reduced to suffering and needs, forgetful of dignity and restraint, for he who loses all often easily loses himself."
— Primo Levi, If This Is a Man, chapter 1 ("The Journey")
May, D+2, two days after the election
Author's note. VIVRE's headquarters at La Défense was designed according to the layered security principles inherited from the French nuclear program. Each layer is independent, redundant, and designed to slow rather than stop. The theory is that an attacker will always end up making a mistake — you simply have to give them time to make it.
The car moved through an empty Paris.
Two in the morning. The streets were deserted corridors of asphalt, traffic lights blinking for no one. Gabriel stared at the sleeping buildings: shutters closed, windows dark, lives continuing without knowing.
Fatima drove in silence.
Her hands on the wheel were steady. No trembling. No tension in her fingers. She watched the road as though it were a daily commute, as though she were going to work.
— You do this often? Gabriel asked.
— Do what?
— Drive at two in the morning to hack a multinational.
She barely smiled.
— First time.
— You seem used to it.
— I'm used to being afraid. It helps.
The car turned onto the ring road. La Défense appeared before them: a forest of glass and steel, towers rising toward the black sky. Most were dark. But at the summit of the tallest one, the VIVRE logo blazed in electric blue.
An eye keeping watch over the city.
Gabriel felt his mouth go dry.
— Is it always lit?
— Twenty-four hours a day, said Fatima. — Even on Sundays. Even at Christmas. The CEO says it's to remind people they're being watched.
— Is that a threat?
— It's a promise.
She parked on a side street, two hundred meters from the main entrance. Cut the engine. Silence fell like a weight.
— Let's go, she said.
They walked toward the tower.
Wind blew between the buildings, cold and dry, carrying dead papers across the asphalt. Streetlamps cast orange circles of light on the pavement. Gabriel counted his steps.
One. Two. Three.
His breathing was too fast.
Four. Five. Six.
He needed to slow it down.
Seven. Eight. Nine.
Fatima stopped in front of the glass door of the secondary entrance. A small lobby, an empty reception desk, a turnstile with a badge reader. Nothing impressive. Nothing that looked like a bunker.
— Security is invisible, Yannick had said. — That's the principle. The more ordinary it looks, the more people walk through without asking questions.
Fatima pulled her badge from her pocket. A white rectangle, worn, the photo so old her face was barely visible.
— Will it still work? Gabriel asked.
— We'll see.
She passed the badge over the reader.
A green beep.
The turnstile opened.
She turned back to him, a tight smile on her lips.
— Too much paperwork.
They went in.
The lobby was empty.
Green plants in terracotta pots. A black leather sofa. An absent receptionist: her station was off, the screen dark.
Fatima crossed the lobby with a sure step. She knew every corner: the spot where delivery drivers left packages, the door that creaked, the crack in the floor tiles near the elevator.
— I worked here for seven years, she murmured. — I know this place better than my own home.
— Why did you leave?
— I asked too many questions.
She pressed the elevator button.
The doors opened.
— The data center is in the basement, she said. — Level -3. Restricted access.
— And the first layer?
— We just passed it. The badge. She stepped into the elevator. — The second one starts in the corridor.
The elevator descended.
Numbers scrolled across the screen. G. -1. -2.
The elevator stopped.
The doors slid open onto a white corridor.
Long. Narrow. Lit by fluorescent tubes overhead.
At the end of the corridor, a metal door.
Between them and the door, an empty stretch.
— The second layer, said Fatima. — The corridor analyzes your gait. Your posture. Your micro-movements. If you walk like an employee, the sensors stay green. If you walk like an intruder, they turn red and the doors lock.
It looked harmless. Just a corridor.
— And how do I walk like an employee?
— That's what this is for, she said, pulling a metal box from her pocket. No bigger than a phone. Yannick had spent hours calibrating it.
— Clip this to your belt, she said.
He took the box. It was cold. Heavy.
— What does it do?
— It emits a signal that mimics the movement pattern of a senior executive. Someone from the legal department. Yannick found his profile in Solène's files.
— And if it doesn't work?
— Then we're dead.
Gabriel clipped the box to his belt.
He gauged the distance.
Sixty meters. Maybe seventy.
— Do I walk beside you? Fatima asked.
— No. You stay here. If I trigger the alarm, you leave.
— Gabriel...
— That's what we agreed. I'm the only one who can go in.
She looked at him.
Her eyes said something she wasn't saying.
— Good luck, she murmured.
He breathed in.
He breathed out.
He walked.
His footsteps echoed in the corridor.
Clack. Clack. Clack.
His soles on the tiles. The sound was too loud. Too sharp. Each step was a declaration.
He tried to walk more softly.
Clack. Clack.
The fluorescent tubes hummed above him. The air was dry, air-conditioned, almost cold. The air of a machine, not of men: plastic, metal, servers running in silence, for no one.
He scanned the walls.
Sensors. Everywhere. Small black lenses set into the ceiling, lines of green LEDs running along the baseboards.
They're watching me.
They're analyzing me.
They know who I am.
But the LEDs stayed green.
He kept going.
Twenty meters.
Thirty.
The back of his neck was warm. His breathing quickened despite himself.
Calm.
Slow down.
Walk like a legal executive.
How does a legal executive walk?
He didn't know.
He tried to picture a man in a suit, briefcase in hand, crossing this corridor every day without a thought. Shoulders straight. Eyes vacant. Steps mechanical.
He tried to become that man.
Forty meters.
Fifty.
The metal door was drawing closer. He could see reflections on its surface, the small illuminated keypad beside it.
Sixty meters.
He reached the door.
The LEDs were still green.
He exhaled.
It worked.
He placed his hand on the door.
It opened.
The third layer was an armored door.
No handle. No visible lock. Just a touchscreen set into the metal, with a numeric keypad.
Fatima had rejoined him.
— The code changes every twelve hours, she said. — Generated by a proprietary algorithm. Even employees don't know it in advance — they receive a notification on their phone in the morning.
— And Elias predicted the code?
— He spent three weeks analyzing the algorithm. Using Solène's data, he reconstructed the generation function.
She pulled a folded sheet of paper from her pocket.
— The code for this window. 23:00 to 11:00.
Gabriel took the sheet.
Numbers. A sequence of twelve characters.
7-4-2-9-1-8-3-6-5-0-2-7
He memorized them.
— Are you sure? Fatima asked.
— No.
He faced the keypad.
His fingers trembled slightly.
7.
4.
2.
9.
1.
8.
3.
6.
5.
0.
2.
7.
He pressed Enter.
A silence.
A green beep.
The door slid open with a hydraulic thud.
Behind it, darkness.
He entered the server room.
And he stopped.
It was immense.
Rows of servers stretched as far as he could see, aligned like graves in a cemetery. Blue lights blinked on each unit: thousands of tiny stars pulsing in the darkness.
The air was cold. An artificial, mechanical cold that made him shiver. The ozone, acrid and electric, stung his nostrils. The hum of the fans was constant, a continuous bass note that vibrated in his bones.
It's a cathedral, he thought.
A cathedral of data.
He moved between the rows.
The servers were taller than he was. Walls of black metal, blue and yellow cables running along the racks. LED lights blinking in rhythm: green, blue, green, blue.
He was looking for the central router.
Yannick had sketched a plan on a paper napkin the night before. A rough diagram, arrows, scrawled notes.
"The main router is at the center of the room. You'll recognize it — it's the only one with a maintenance console."
Gabriel counted the rows.
Three. Four. Five.
He turned left.
Six. Seven.
He saw it.
At the center of the room, a rack larger than the others. A console mounted on an articulated arm. A dark screen. A keyboard.
The central router.
He approached.
His footsteps rang on the metal floor.
He unclipped the front panel of the rack.
Inside, cables. Dozens of cables in every color, running off in every direction. A tangle of copper and plastic.
He looked for the USB port.
Yannick had said: "The port is hidden behind the third orange cable from the left. You'll see it — it's marked with a small white sticker."
Gabriel counted.
One. Two. Three.
He moved the orange cable aside.
The port was there.
Small. White. A sticker beside it, with a six-digit code written in black marker.
He pulled Solène's device from his pocket.
A black casing, no bigger than a USB drive, surprisingly dense. Cold. A connector at one end, a small button on the side.
"You plug it in. You press the button. You wait for the light to turn green. And you leave."
He inserted the device into the port.
A click.
He pressed the button.
A red light blinked.
Red. Red. Red.
He waited.
The seconds passed.
Red. Red.
Red.
Green.
The light turned green.
The virus was deploying.
Gabriel exhaled.
It's working.
It's actually working.
He stepped back.
And the alarm went off.
A shriek.
Not a siren: a shriek. A high, piercing sound that drove through his skull like a needle.
The blue lights on the servers turned red.
All at once.
A red flash that flooded the room.
And then the voice.
— Unauthorized access detected. Security protocols engaged.
A woman's voice. Calm. Neutral. Like an airport attendant announcing a delay.
Gabriel looked up.
A camera, on the ceiling, was pointed directly at him.
Small. Black. A lens watching him, impassive.
It saw me.
From the beginning.
It was waiting.
His heart beat in his ears.
The shriek of the alarm continued.
— Please identify yourself to security personnel.
He stared at the device.
The light was still green.
The virus was still deploying.
How long?
How long to finish?
Yannick had said: "Three minutes. Maybe four."
He had plugged in the device thirty seconds ago.
Two and a half minutes.
Maybe three.
Too long.
He heard footsteps.
Several people. Running. In the corridor.
They're coming.
He looked at the door.
He looked at the device.
He looked at the servers.
I can run.
I can stay.
I can...
The shriek of the alarm.
The footsteps drawing closer.
The green light blinking.
He didn't move.