Jesse's fingers hovered over the communication device. The question burned in her implants like a circuit overload waiting to happen. She had seventeen minutes before deployment, and Walsh was still waiting for her acknowledgment on the file review.

She made her decision.

"Commander," Jesse said, her voice level and measured. "I'm looking at the personnel clearance records for the Sentinel facility. The ones that supposedly don't exist because the building's been fully automated for forty years."

The silence on the other end stretched long enough that Jesse's enhanced hearing picked up the ambient hum of the command center shifting frequency. Someone had just muted the background noise on Walsh's end. That meant he was taking the conversation off the main floor.

"What exactly are you looking at, Ferrari?" Walsh's voice had changed. The urgency was gone, replaced by something colder. Controlled.

"Three names with active clearance renewals in the past six months," Jesse said. "Dr. Sarah Chen. A redacted entry I can't access. And you. Your clearance is dated 1980 with a three-week renewal stamp."

Another pause. Jesse could almost hear Walsh calculating, deciding how much to tell her. Her implants registered the spike in her own cortisol levels. Whatever was happening in that penthouse, Walsh had known about it longer than he'd just admitted.

"That's need-to-know information," Walsh finally said. "And right now, you don't need to know."

"I'm walking into a facility housing a dormant superweapon with no backup and no extraction plan," Jesse replied. "I'd argue that qualifies as need-to-know."

Walsh's breathing was deliberate now, controlled. "Your job is to assess the threat and report back. Not to conduct a security audit on military personnel. Can you do that, or do I need to assign someone else?"

The threat was implicit. Question his authority, and he'd pull her from the operation. Send someone else. Someone who wouldn't ask difficult questions.

Jesse looked at her chronometer. Fifteen minutes until deployment window closed.

"I can do the job," she said quietly.

"Good," Walsh replied. "Then stop digging into things above your clearance level and get moving. The penthouse is waiting."