CHAPTER 3: THE DECOY FEEDS
The door didn’t swing wide. It cracked open precisely four inches, sticking against the swollen doorframe with a sharp screech of metal scraping enamel. A woman stepped through, wearing a high-visibility security pullover that lacked any state or municipal patch. Her boots were stained around the welt with the fine, yellow dust of the concrete sub-levels.
“Sit, John,” she said. Her accent was flat, mid-Atlantic, the kind developed by corporate compliance officers who spent too much time in windowless logistics complexes. “The airport police are currently logging a severe public disturbance report. They’ve already pulled the terminal security tapes. We are simply saving them the paperwork.”
John remained standing. He kept his heels inches from the chipped legs of the steel folding chair, his balance distributed evenly over the balls of his boots. The smell of old paper and ozone from the tablet’s lithium battery was heavy between them. “Who owns the terminal cameras, ma’am? Because the men at Gate 42 weren’t local security. They knew exactly how much space to give me before they initiated contact.”
The woman didn’t respond immediately. She walked to the opposite side of the laminate desk, her fingers tapping a rhythm against the plastic edge of the digital tablet. When she turned the screen fully toward him, the image shifted from his personal record to a localized streaming interface.
“The public owns the cameras now,” she said softly, sliding her thumb across the glass.
The screen displayed a short-form video feed from an encrypted application popular among the commercial port crews down at the industrial basin. The frame rate was low, jittery, recorded from the high observation balcony overlooking the gate lounge. On screen, John saw the back of his own cap, the distinct black thread of the unit insignia, and the two young men approaching his seat.
John leaned down slightly, not to look closer at his own movements, but to study the upper left corner of the frame. A digital overlay showed a running
