BEHIND THE CLOUD

Chapter 8 — Trials and Tests

The next days blurred into a pattern: stakeouts, sensor checks, and attempts to intercept drone flights. Amara and Jax spent a long starlit night on the rooftop, antenna in hand, scraping flight logs from the contractor’s open servers.

She set up a model: wind direction, humidity, drone activity—her predictions matched field events with uncanny precision until one false measurement sent her rushing to triangulate a launch corridor. She missed by twelve minutes—a human error, and the proof that algorithms could not account for all variables.

“Don’t beat yourself up,” Jax said beside her, munching a soggy granola bar. “Machines get most things right and some things wrong, just like people.”

“Except machines don’t have siblings with secrets,” Amara snapped.

Jax nodded, not arguing. They watched as the sky flickered briefly—another drone off course, a microburst tipping onto a street too new for proper drains.

Back in the lab, Rhea showed her pressure readings. “You’re getting closer. Whoever runs the tech thinks they’re invisible, but people leave traces.”

Amara mapped the traces. The corridor aligned with the spot where the river first split. Each new log scribbled evidence onto her evolving theory: the system was being tested and iterated, risk mapped against profit margins.

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