“Who,” Darius demanded, his gaze pinning Zenia, “are you hiding in my house?” Helena stood shivering inside a technician's fleece jacket, her glare tracking Zenia's every move. Pulse hammering against her throat, Zenia calculated the distance. Teo. He was still in the cubby, a few feet away, probably still giggling over his smart-thermostat triumph. She had to shift the focus, and fast. She rose, brushing concrete dust from her knees with a deliberate slowness, her mind racing. “Hiding?” she asked, her voice calm, a low hum of feigned confusion. “Mr. Voulgaris, you just witnessed a dangerous systems malfunction. I bypassed it. Your aunt was in peril.” She gestured vaguely at the shattered door. “And frankly, this entire foundation feels unanchored.” Darius's mouth set in a hard line. “Don’t deflect. Your… competence, it’s suspiciously timed with these ‘malfunctions.’” “Coincidence, then,” Zenia said, turning toward a large holographic display flickering near the far wall. It displayed a section of Villa Astrakis’s cliffside foundation, a tangled mesh of load paths and subterranean anchors. “Or perhaps,” she continued, her voice gaining a sharp, professional edge, “your team’s genius isn’t quite as robust as you believe.” Scanning the blue glow, she traced a particularly thick column. “Take this load-bearing support for the west wing terrace,” she said, looking straight at Kian, the chief civil engineer, who had just entered with a rumpled tie. Kian, a man whose expensive suit always seemed a size too small for his inflated ego, puffed out his chest. “That column, Ms. Calas, is designed to withstand a 9.0 seismic event. It’s a marvel of modern engineering.” Zenia gave him a dismissive glance. “A marvel of poor calculation, more like. The shear stress distribution at the base where it meets the subterranean bedrock… it’s entirely misaligned with the natural strata. In a genuine seismic event, or even a sustained storm surge, the micro-fractures would propagate catastrophically. The entire terrace would drop into the sea.” Her tone was clinical, detached, like she was discussing a misplaced teacup. Kian scoffed, a strangled sound. “Impossible! My team ran a thousand simulations! Our algorithms are proprietary!” “Your algorithms are clearly built on flawed initial geological data then,” Zenia countered, walking over to a nearby digital drafting table. With a fluid, unthinking motion, she pulled up the schematics. Her fingers, usually clumsy with anything requiring fine motor skills outside of sketching, danced across the interface. She didn’t consult notes, didn’t hesitate. Lines appeared, shifted, flowed. She pulled up an overlay of the local geological surveys, aligning them with the bedrock grid. In under a minute, an alternate configuration for the column’s base appeared, a series of interwoven micro-piles designed to redistribute load into stable limestone. Her revised model glowed green where Kian’s original scheme had flashed amber warning bands. “There,” Zenia said, stepping back with a flat shrug, as if she had just adjusted a picture frame. “A minor adjustment. But one that ensures your future garden parties don’t end up at the bottom of the Myrkan Gulf.” Kian stared, his face paling, then flushing a deep crimson. The other technicians, who had been whispering in awe at her earlier system bypass, now exchanged stunned glances. The sheer audacity, the casual brilliance of her correction, publicly shamed their meticulously vetted expert. Helena watched Zenia with a calculating slant to her mouth, assessing the technical display. Darius did not look away. Her casual draftsmanship dismantled three months of contractor work in sixty seconds. If she possessed this level of command, her presence here was no accidental job placement, and whatever she was shielding behind that duct was deliberate. Later, in the sterile silence of his private office, Darius leaned back in his chair, the glow of his tablet casting stark shadows across his face. The civil engineering team was still scrambling to stress-test Zenia’s revised pile array, while Kian sat sidelined in a conference room. But Darius’s mind was still fixed on the cyber-intrusion, and Zenia’s too-convenient presence. “Nikos,” he spoke into his comm-link, his voice low. “Set up a honeypot. Something irresistible. Fake budget approvals for the ‘Archelon Ascent’ development. Place the file within a secured, but isolated, folder on the main server. Track any access attempt, no matter how brief.” “Sir?” Nikos’s voice crackled through. “Archelon Ascent? That’s highly sensitive…” “Precisely,” Darius cut him off. “I want to see who’s fishing in my waters. Make it seem like a fluke, a temporary oversight, but log everything.” He needed to confirm if Zenia was just a brilliant architect or something far more dangerous. He also needed to know what she was hiding. He watched the server logs, a silent predator waiting for its prey. Minutes crawled by. He scrolled through routine system checks, network traffic, nothing. Then, a sharp, red alert flashed across his screen. A breach. Not a sophisticated brute-force, but a nimble, almost playful bypass. The Archelon Ascent folder. Accessed. Modified. Downloaded. The source IP address pinged, a precise coordinate within Villa Astrakis. The old blueprint storage room. Darius was out of his chair before the red alert even faded. The blueprint storage room. It was a rarely used space, tucked away behind the main archives, filled with dusty, rolled-up schematics from past builds. Why there? Unless… He strode down the long, polished corridors, his footsteps echoing. His mind raced. This wasn’t just a random hack. This was targeted. And the location… He rounded the corner, and there she was. Zenia. She stood directly in front of the blueprint room door, her palm planted flat against the walnut trim, breath coming fast and ragged. “Mr. Voulgaris!” she exclaimed, her voice thin, forced. “What a surprise! I was just… admiring the vintage architectural sketches. Fascinating paper quality, you know?” She laughed, a nervous, brittle sound. She leaned subtly against the door, trying to block his path. Darius narrowed his eyes. “Move, Ms. Calas.” His voice was devoid of emotion, a cold command. He knew with certainty that she was guarding whatever waited on the other side. “But… the air quality in there is terrible,” she stammered, taking a small, almost imperceptible step sideways, but still blocking the path. “All that dust. For your sensitive lungs, it’s not ideal. Perhaps we could look at digital copies instead?” He did not debate. Taking her wrist in a firm grip, he eased her clear of the frame. She gasped, offering no physical fight, though her fingers dug into the fabric of her cardigan as she watched the threshold. Darius didn’t bother with the handle. He kicked the old wooden door open. The room was dim, filled with the scent of aged paper and a faint sweetness that he couldn't place. Rows of tall, metal filing cabinets lined the walls. He walked directly to the back, to a cabinet that stood slightly ajar. He could hear a faint, high-pitched whirring sound emanating from within. A small, familiar glow pulsed from the gap. He threw open the cabinet doors and stared down at a four-year-old boy with his exact silver-gray eyes, holding a hacked tablet.

The Blueprint Honeypot