Chapter Text
When Stan opened the doors to the server room, he could feel the tension right away. Kyle and Kenny were already in there, crouched over some janky cart, which was squeezed in between all of the server racks. Kyle looked like he could blow up any second, meanwhile Kenny had a flashlight in his mouth while he handled some cords.
Stan stopped for a second and watched them.
He noticed how tight Kyle’s jaw was. The way he was typing, fast, precise, and also hard.
“Could I have a status report?” Stan said, stepping closer.
Kyle didn’t look at him. “External IP spoofed through three proxies. They tried to inject revised authorization logs.”
Stan leaned in a little, close enough that his shoulder brushed Kyle’s. “Tried?”
Kyle finally shot him a look. A harsh one.
“They’re still trying.”
Kenny grabbed the flashlight from his mouth and sat back on his heels. “First hit was twenty minutes ago. We stopped it before it changed anything, but it’s still coming at us. Won’t give up.”
Stan folded his arms, staying close instead of backing off. “So we block, trace, and document. Nothing new right?”
Kyle didn’t even glance in his direction. “It’s not that simple. If even one altered log gets cached and we can’t prove it was external, they can argue we modified it during isolation.”
Stan’s voice dropped slightly. “We didn’t.”
“I know that.” Kyle snapped, then exhaled through his nose, rubbing at his temples.
Stan softened. “Okay…” he said quietly. “So what do you need?”
Kyle hesitated for a second.
“Check the drives against the timestamps, if anything changes, flag it immediately.”
Stan gave him a faint smile. “See? You do need me.”
Kyle didn’t smile back, but his jaw unclenched slightly, just enough for Stan to notice.
“Just go, Stan.”
Stan decided to shut up. He nodded, backing toward the door. He stayed for just a moment, watching Kyle frantically work, before finally turning to leave.
Outside, the hallway felt strangely quiet. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. Stan rubbed at the back of his neck, trying to shake the stress off. He had work to do but he also couldn’t stop thinking about the brief acknowledgment Kyle had given. That small unclenching of his jaw…it was distracting.
Lately Stan kept catching himself staring at the dumb little things Kyle does. The way he pauses half a second before hitting enter, that stupid brow furrow when code doesn't add up, how he shoves hair behind his ear like he doesn't even notice. It was ridiculous, and he knew it.
He grabbed a tablet from the nearby console. Kenny and Kyle would keep the core systems busy, but there was a lot more to look at.
He would glance down the hall every few minutes. The door to the server room remained closed, the faint red lights blinking through the glass.
Stan whistled to himself as he checked each backup against the original drives. Every time he confirmed a match, a tiny part of him relaxed. Only a tiny part.
Half an hour passed. Stan moved from one workstation to another. Every so often, a notification flashed red, and he leaned in panicking, before confirming it was a false alarm.
“Got it.” Stan breathed, the progress bar hitting 100%. He went into the server room. “The metadata is backed up. We have the proof.”
Kyle slumped down, the adrenaline leaving his body as he went. He looked at Stan. His eyes were wide.
“We actually got it? Thank God.” He whispered.
“Teamwork makes the dream work. ” Stan said, a sly smile on his face. On the inside, his thoughts were racing.
“Yo, geniuses?” Kenny chimed in. “You guys might wanna peek at the trace right now.”
Stan and Kyle crowded around Kenny’s tablet.
“Since they tried to delete our metadata,” Kenny explained smugly, “they had to keep a live connection to our port. I looped the connection. I just spent the last five minutes downloading their outgoing logs.”
Kyle’s eyes lit up as he scrolled through the data. “Kenny…this originating IP traces to an internal range at the opposition’s law firm.”
“We don’t just have proof we’re innocent…” Stan realized, grinning. “We have solid logs showing unauthorized access attempts originating from their network. Enough to support a felony report under the CFAA.”
Kyle looked from the screen to Stan, then to Kenny.
“Pack it up,” Kyle said, a small warm smile on his face. “Stan, get those logs and captures to the partner. Kenny, could you burn a forensic image of the firewall logs, we need to make sure everything’s documented. I’ll start drafting the incident report for the FBI tip line and prep the civil injunction motion. Let’s report this properly.”
Kenny nodded, already zipping the files. “Way ahead of you.”
For just a second the room felt calm.
As they were enjoying their victory, the person the IT department sent down finally got their.It was just one guy. Rumpled button down shirt. Messenger bag. ID badge twisted sideways.
Jimmy Valmer got to the server room doorway and blinked, trying to understand what he was looking at. Kyle hunched over the crash cart, Kenny half inside a rack, cables everywhere, Stan just kinda standing there, not doing what Kyle had asked him to do.”
Jimmy slowly took a look around the room. “O-okay, J-just making sure I’m n-not hallucinating here.”
No one answered.
Jimmy tried again, keeping his tone to polite. “Why… are there l-lawyers and PIs inside a s-server rack?”
Kyle straightened. “We’re assisting with a cyber intrusion.”
Jimmy nodded slowly. “Uh-huh. Cool. Love that.”
He finally walked in. “You know this tends to be more an IT p-problem, right?”
“We are aware of the protocol, Jimmy.”
Jimmy shifted, his eyes darting between the three of them. He waited for an explanation, but Kyle’s fingers just kept flying across the keys.
“…So what is this t-then?” Jimmy finally asked, his voice slightly echoing throughout the room.
“Because this isn't just a glitch or something.” Kyle scoffed. “This data could be used as evidence, and we can not have it being altered, that could collapse our case.”
Jimmy nodded. “F-fair. But if you break your own s-system trying to stop it… that also collapses your case. Very much.”
Stan winced from the wall. Kenny snorted.
Kyle looked flustered. “We haven’t broken anything.”
Jimmy gave a tiny shrug. “Cool. Love that for you.”
He set his bag down, eased onto a rolling chair beside the cart. “So what actually h-happened?”
Kyle gave him the run down. Jimmy listened. When Kyle finished, Jimmy tilted his head. “That’s it…?”
Kyle’s stare was sharp.
“You think this is a straight external h-hack?”
“Yes.”
Jimmy scratched his forehead,. “Huh.”
“Can I?” he asked, nodding at the keyboard. Kyle hesitated, then slid over half an inch.
“Okay, this is w-weird. Very weird.”
Stan stepped closer. “Weird how?”
Jimmy pointed at the timestamps. “You said the first visible hit was about forty-five minutes ago?”
“Closer to an hour…” Stan corrected quietly.
Jimmy nodded. “Right. A-anyways this connection e-established almost three hours ago.”
Kyle stiffened. “That’s not possible. We would’ve seen it.”
“You would’ve.” Jimmy agreed. “If it came through the external f-firewall.”
He opened another panel. “This didn’t.”
The room went dead quiet.
“It t-tunneled through a permitted channel, something the system already trusts.”
Kyle frowned. “Meaning?”
“Meaning they didn’t hack in,” Jimmy said. “They were already there.”
Kyle’s voice lowered. “An insider?”
Jimmy shook his head. “N-not physically. Offsite.”
Stan frowned. “So they tricked the system into thinking it was us?”
“B-bingo.”
Kyle pressed his lips together. “Why go through that much trouble?”
Jimmy scrolled deeper, scanning packets. Then he stopped. “Oh…”
Stan tensed up. “What?”
Jimmy stared at the screen. “They weren’t trying to steal anything.”
Kyle stared. “Then what were they doing?”
Jimmy looked up. “They were planting evidence.”
Nobody spoke.
Jimmy kept going, quiet. “These injected logs? They make it look like s-someone on your team altered case data during isolation. Tampering.”
Stan’s stomach dropped. “That’s exactly what the defense would argue.”
Kyle paled. “Sanctions. Criminal exposure.”
Jimmy nodded. “Yeah. It’s a legal b-booby trap. Pretty diabolical, actually.”
“So if we hadn’t caught this—”
“You might’ve submitted those as genuine,” Jimmy sighed. “And it would’ve looked like you falsified evidence…”
Jimmy scrolled again. “Good news, though.”
Everyone looked at him.
“They weren’t very s-subtle.”
He highlighted a code segment. “This injection tool has a signature. I’ve seen it before.”
Kyle leaned in. “Where?”
“Corporate espionage. Dirty l-litigation plays. That sort of thing.”
Jimmy ran a quick query. A match popped. He turned the screen. “O-originating infra ties back through p-proxies to vendors the o-opposing firm’s used before.”
Kenny whistled low. “They tried to frame us and got sloppy.”
Jimmy shrugged. “They didn’t expect you to catch it mid-write, e-especially not while basic stuff was being g-gathered.”
Kyle glared. “Can you remove it?”
Jimmy blinked. “Oh. Yeah. Easy.”
Jimmy typed in three commands, Stan just stared, He’d never really seen this side of things up close the precision of someone who actually knew the machine inside out. It was almost mesmerizing.
Jimmy leaned back. “Okay. Threat n-neutralized. Nothing permanent stuck.”
Kyle stared at the screen. “That’s it?”
Kenny sighed and flopped onto the floor. “Dude…”
Jimmy nodded. “I’ll still r-recommend full forensic audit, credential rotation, the usual. But the immediate problem? Yeah. D-done.”
Kyle spoke again. “So they weren’t trying to access our data.”
“Nope.”
“They were trying to make it look like we altered it.”
“Yep. Very much.”
Stan folded his arms. “That’s…cruel.”
Jimmy made a face. “Honestly? K-kind of standard for something like this. More common than w-we’d like.”
He got up to leave.
Kyle stopped him at the door. “Jimmy.”
He turned.
“Can we prove this was external manipulation?”
Jimmy considered. “Yeah. Chain of custody stays clean.”
Stan and Kyle exchanged a look. A relieved one.
Jimmy adjusted his bag. “Oh, and one more thing.”
Everyone looked up.
“If they tried this once…they’ll p-probably try again.”
Kyle’s face turned cold. Jimmy left.
The door clicked shut behind him, leaving the three of them alone, exhausted and burnt out.
“Hey, anyone want to get food?” Kenny’s voice interrupted the silence they were in.
Stan took his eyes off the wall he’d been staring at for the last couple of minutes. “Is that even a question, dude?”
Kyle didn’t say anything. He was still standing at the crash cart.
Kenny kicked a rolling chair. It bumped Kyle’s shin with a sad thud. “Dude. Food. You look like you’re about to crash. Literally.”
Kyle blinked slowly, his movements sluggish. “…What time is it?”
Stan checked his phone. “Late enough that we need to eat.” He stepped closer, intending to nudge Kyle toward the door, but stopped when he saw the way Kyle’s hands were shaking. “Kyle? You okay?”
Kenny gave a thumbs-up. “Perfect. Let’s go.”
“I’m fine,” Kyle muttered, though his voice sounded faint. He was already digging into his bag. “Just… give me a second.”
Stan watched, confused, as Kyle pulled out a small zippered kit. Kyle didn’t look at either of them — just unzipped it, grabbed a small device, and pressed it to the side of his finger.
Click. A tiny beep cut through the hum of the servers.
Stan frowned. “Uh… what is that?”.
“Type 1…” he said flatly.
It took Stan a full second to process.
His stomach dropped.
“Oh. Oh—”
Kyle glanced at the screen. His shoulders dropped. He let out a shaky breath, leaning hard into the rack “Sixty-two,” he said, more to himself than to them. “Great.”
“Shit.” Kenny was already moving, scrambling toward his own bag. “Kyle, you should’ve said something.”
Stan blinked. “You—you knew?”
Kenny shot him a quick look like that was the least important part of the situation. “Yeah, dude. Since, like, forever.”
Stan’s face burned. “I didn’t—I mean—he never—”
“I don’t announce it, everyone just knows.” Kyle snapped weakly.
Kenny dumped the contents of his bag onto the floor,pens and crumpled receipts scattered everywhere. “I’ve got fruit snacks. And… uh… half a granola bar that got crushed by my flashlight.”
“I just need sugar.” Kyle said.
Stan stepped forward without thinking, panic hitting him all at once.
“You’re not fine,” Stan said, voice low and tight. “You look like you’re about to pass out.”
Kyle rolled his eyes. “I’m not going to—”
He wobbled.
Stan’s hands were there instantly at Kyle’s waist. Steadying him without pulling him in closer. “Okay, nope. Definitely not fine.”
Kenny shoved a handful of fruit snacks into Kyle’s hand. “Eat.”
Kyle didn’t argue.
Stan watched him closely.
“I’m sorry…” Stan blurted quietly. “I didn’t know. You never said anything.”
Kyle swallowed, still not looking at him. “Because it’s not anyone elses problem.”
“Yeah, well…” Stan sighed “It kind of is if you collapse in front of me.”
Kenny hovered close, arms folded tight, Stan could tell he was holding himself from fussing. “He gets stubborn when he’s low…” he muttered to Stan. “Don’t let him pretend he’s fine.”
Stan nodded quickly, eyes still locked on Kyle’s face.
Kyle shot Kenny an embarrassed look.
After a minute, some color started creeping back onto his face.
Kenny sighed. “There he is. Welcome back.”
Kyle slumped against the server rack, eyes sliding shut for a second. “I hate this.”
Stan felt his chest tighten. “Why the hell didn’t you say something earlier? We could’ve paused for like, two minutes.”
Kyle let out a tired laugh that held zero humor. “Because we were in the middle of something important, Stan. It wasn’t exactly snack time.”
“Still…” Stan said quietly. “You don’t have to just…power through everything.”
Kyle opened his eyes and looked at him.
“For the record…” Kyle said hoarsely, “I was managing it.”
Kenny snorted. “Yeah. Your sugar was at sixty-fucking-two, dude. That’s not handling it.”
Kyle flipped him off with a shaky finger. “Traitor.”
Stan scooted closer, still having a light hold on Kyle’s arm. “Okay, new plan. We’re bailing.”
Kyle frowned, already trying to get up. “We can’t. There’s still the—”
“Nope.” Stan cut in. “Crisis over. You need real food.”
Kenny nodded in agreement. “Hell yes. Pancakes. Waffles. Shit, throw in some bacon. Maybe a whole IHOP.”
Kyle hesitated.
Stan softened, voice dropping. “Come on. Please.”
Something about that tone broke Kyle.
Kyle let out a defeated sigh. “Fine. Five minutes.”
“Two.” Kenny said immediately.
Stan grabbed Kyle’s bag before he could protest and slung it over his own shoulder. “No negotiations, dude. Diner across the street. They’ve got pancakes shaped like dicks if you ask nice.”
Kyle opened his mouth, then stopped in his spot, and swayed a little.
Stan’s grip tightened on instinct. “Yeah. Definitely no negotiations.”
Kyle stared down at Stan’s hand on his arm, then up at his face. His expression softened slightly.
“I’m supposed to be the one in charge here…” Kyle muttered.
Stan smirked. “Well, you can be in charge of pancakes versus waffles.”
“Waffles,” Kenny said instantly. “Always waffles”
Kyle let out a small laugh. “You’re both assholes.”
Stan nudged him toward the door, staying close enough to catch him if his legs decided to give out. “Let’s go dude.”
This time, Kyle didn’t argue. He just leaned into Stan a little more than necessary and let them drag him.