The bones of the old world. He can build a scanner from spare parts and tap a landline with his eyes closed.
But the digital landscape has shifted under his feet. Encrypted cloud storage, VPN tunneling, packet sniffing. This is all my territory.
Between his experience and my education, we start finding seams.
"Here." I point to a timestamp. "The intruder accessed the financial directory just after two in the morning, but the proxychain shows a four-second lag between the first and second bounce. They're routing through a residential IP in Fairmont."
Krypton nods slowly. "Fairmont's close. Half an hour, maybe forty-five minutes if the roads are icy."
"If I can isolate the residential IP before it bounces, I can narrow the origin to a physical location."
He looks at me. Really looks, not the way brothers look at prospects, but the way one tech looks at another when the problem gets interesting.
"You're better at this than I figured." He picks up his coffee. "Daemon told me you were wasting time at school."
"Daemon thinks electricity is witchcraft."
Krypton snorts. It's the closest thing to a laugh I've heard from him in years.
We keep working. By noon, I've built a new monitoring system—a tripwire layered over Krypton's existing hardware alerts, designed to catch the intruder mid-session and trace them before the proxy chain completes.
"Next time they come in," I close the laptop, "we'll see them in real time."
Krypton nods, draining the last of his third coffee. "Bring this to Ruger. He needs to see what you've got."
Ruger is in the chapel with Bloodhound and Ounce when I knock on the open door.
Three officers. No other brothers. This isn't Church. This is a conversation they were already having when I showed up.
"Prospect." Ruger's tone is flat. Controlled. "Come in."
I step inside. The door stays open behind me.
I lay it out the way I laid it out for Krypton. The intrusion history, the proxy chains, the Fairmont residential IP, the tripwire Krypton and I built this morning. Calm, precise, no filler.
Ruger listens without interrupting. Bloodhound is motionless against the wall. Ounce has his arms crossed, chin down, taking it in.
When I finish, Ruger is silent for a long count.
"You and Krypton built this today." Not a question.
I straighten. "Yes, sir."
"And the tripwire will catch them next time they access the network."
"If they come back, I'll have a location within minutes."
Ruger looks at Bloodhound. Something passes between them without words.
"Handle it." Ruger turns back to me. "Whatever you need. Access, equipment, time. You and Krypton run this down."
I nod. Start to turn toward the door.
"One more thing." Ruger's voice stops me. He's leaning back in his chair, arms folded, wearing an expression I can't read. "Krypton ran a background check on your girl."
The air in the room changes.
"Standard check," Ounce adds from the wall. "Anyone new in the club's orbit gets a look. You know how it works."