Aria didn't need the data anymore.
She felt the rhythm before Noah finished mapping it.
"Pause," she said.
He froze the screen.
---
The accesses came in clusters.
Not random.
Not constant.
Three reads.
A gap.
Then another three.
"Heartbeat," Noah said slowly.
"Confirmation cycle," Aria replied.
---
She pulled an old memory forward—one she hadn't touched in years.
Field ops training. Early days.
Observe.
Wait.
Re-check.
Escalate only if deviation persists.
"They're verifying stability," Noah said. "Making sure nothing's changed."
Aria shook her head. "They're making sure I haven't."
---
She overlaid the ghost's access times with public events.
Each spike followed one of her decisions.
Declining the script.
Ignoring the anonymous orders.
Holding the pause onstage.
"It watches after resistance," Noah said.
"Yes," Aria said. "To see if the resistance holds."
---
Her fingers hovered over the keyboard.
"I trained under this logic," she said quietly. "Before it was abstracted. Before it was automated."
Noah looked at her. "So you know what comes next."
She nodded.
"A test," she said. "Something small. Something deniable."
"To see if you break pattern," Noah said.
"To see if I self-correct," Aria finished.
---
She leaned back, calm settling in.
"That's the mistake," she said.
Noah raised an eyebrow. "Which one?"
"They think patterns belong to the system," she replied.
"They forget patterns belong to people first."
The ghost process continued to read.
To watch.
To wait.
And Aria smiled—because she already knew how this test would be designed.
She had written versions of it herself.