The surveillance chamber hadn't changed in years.
Cold. Windowless. Four rows of terminals. Each blinking like a pulse.
Each manned by a technician who pretended to care a little less every day.
Zayaan stood in the threshold for half a second before stepping in.
His presence drew no alarms. No warning lights.
But the man at Terminal 4 looked up anyway — slowly, like he'd been expecting him.
"Didn't peg you for the retro footage type."
Zayaan didn't smile. "Room 308. Pull everything from last night. 02:10 to 02:30."
A pause.
The tech was sitting in the chair, chewing on something that looked like a nicotine patch.
"Clearance?"
Zayaan reached into his sleeve. Pulled out a strip of silver plastic.
Delta Tier.
The tech raised his eyebrows but didn't argue. He slotted the strip in.
The terminal lights blinked once.
Then again.
Then stopped.
"Playback," Zayaan said.
A moment passed.
Then static.
Gray-white snow.
The tech frowned. "System glitch?"
Zayaan stepped closer. "Run it again."
Nothing. Again.
Then something clicked.
A frame appeared. One second. Blurry.
A figure at the door to Room 308.
Not entering.
Standing still.
Then — gone.
The screen returned to snow.
"Looping glitch?" the tech offered weakly, but Zayaan had already leaned in. He hit manual override. Dragged the timeline back frame by frame.
Stopped.
There.
A single frame. Only a sliver of the corridor.
Arwa.
But she wasn't facing the camera.
She was facing the wall.
Hands by her sides. Perfectly still. Like a mannequin that had never been taught how to move.
Zayaan exhaled through his nose.
"Give me access to the physical logs."
The tech didn't move.
Zayaan turned to him. "You logged someone in."
"No one swiped in or out," the tech muttered.
"I know."
The pause this time was longer.
Then the tech reached into a drawer and slid out the old paper logs. Handwritten. Manual backups. Almost ceremonial now.
Zayaan flipped through.
March 4th. March 5th.
There — March 6th.
He stopped.
One entry.
308 Access | 02:16 | Z. Sadaqat
"What the hell," Zayaan whispered.
He hadn't logged in.
He hadn't been there.
But someone — or something — had signed in as him.
---
He left the chamber with the logs folded under his jacket.
As he crossed into the courtyard, the wind shifted.
The lamps above flickered.
And somewhere behind him, a voice hummed from a speaker that hadn't been on all morning:
"Observation complete. Room 308 ready for re-entry."