Under the steady amber light, Dallas holds the stamped service plate to the console again. The relay key sits in the slot, and the monitor brightens with a fresh frequency trace.

The line on the screen does not drift out to some dark external source. It loops back through Harbor Unit bands, through logged channels, through the city’s own internal throat.

Dallas keeps the plate steady as the signature resolves. The routing marks are familiar, official, and rotten, a borrowed path hiding inside police infrastructure.

The Figure stares at the display, stunned silent. The hidden feed is not haunting the Harbor Unit, it is coming from inside it.

The amber light holds. The plate’s stamp, once just a mark, now reads like a confession, and Dallas has the shape of the answer at last.

Dallas slides the personnel log into the console reader and compares the routing marks line by line. The screen sorts, then locks onto one Harbor Unit access chain that repeats too often to be chance.

A name blooms in the log, stamped to the same channels that fed the broadcast. The badge trail, duty roster, and maintenance timing all point to one internal handler.

The Figure leans in, one hand braced on the doorway, eyes fixed on the highlighted entry as if the shape of the conspiracy has finally taken a human outline.

Dallas taps the final entry, and the console cross-links the route stamp to the same internal office, the same shift window, the same dead-drop pattern. The source is no longer a suspicion, it is a lead with a badge number attached.

The amber light holds steady while the relay clicks under the floor. On the monitor, the looping trace pauses at the identified account, waiting for Dallas to decide where the next door opens.