Read Chapter 17: The Scarf's Secret

The café smelled of burnt sugar and rain-soaked pavement. Lucie sat by the window with a half-empty espresso, her carry-on bag propped against her chair like a nervous animal. She looked up as Camille and Antoine slid into the booth across from her, and her face cycled through surprise, recognition, and something close to resignation.

"I told you everything I could," Lucie said, wrapping both hands around her cup. "I have a flight in forty minutes."

"Then talk fast." Antoine's voice was clipped, still smarting from the drive across the city at rush hour. "You gave us a USB with code. But you didn't tell us where Maxime is hiding, and you didn't tell us why."

Lucie's jaw tightened. "I already said—"

"You already said a lot of things." Camille leaned forward, lowering her voice. "You said Françoise's involvement runs deeper than mentorship. You said Maxime discovered something about her that drove him into hiding. But you framed that scarves conversation like I'd figure the rest out on my own."

Lucie's fingers twitched toward her collar. Camille followed the motion and felt the air leave her lungs.

The scarf. The exact same shade of deep crimson, the same hand-stitched hem, the same small silver thread woven into the pattern near the left shoulder. Camille had worn hers to dozens of meetings, through two company crises, through the night she'd found the note tucked inside its folds. She'd thought it was a gift. A personal gesture from her mentor.

Now she saw it for what it was. A uniform.

"That's not a coincidence," Camille said slowly. "Is it?"

Lucie's hand dropped from her collar. She stared at Camille for a long moment, then let out a breath that seemed to carry years with it. "How long have you had yours?"

"Three years. Françoise gave it to me after I joined AlgoSens. Said it was a tradition." Camille paused. "A symbol of trust."

"It's not trust." Lucie glanced toward the window, as if checking for someone. "It's commitment. Françoise started giving those scarves to people who worked on the Helios project."

"Helios?" Antoine's brows knit. "I've never heard of it."

"Because it doesn't exist anymore." Lucie's voice dropped to a near-whisper. "We erased it. Archived the files, destroyed the prototypes—well, most of them. Pretended it never happened."

Camille's mind raced through the fragments she'd pieced together from Maxime's encrypted files, the warehouse data, the chat logs she and Antoine had pulled in the middle of the night. "Early AI project. Scraping user data. You were testing behavioral prediction models before the EU regulations locked down."

Lucie nodded slowly. "Helios was Françoise's baby. And Maxime's. They built it together at the lab, before AlgoSens even had a name. It was beautiful—a system that could predict user behavior with uncanny accuracy. The algorithm was elegant, too elegant. It didn't just predict. It learned how to nudge. How to influence. How to make people choose things they wouldn't otherwise choose."

Antoine shifted in his seat. "How much data did it scrape?"

"At first, it was anonymized. Public datasets. Creditable research." Lucie's voice caught. "But Maxime found something in the logs six months before launch. Françoise had authorized a partner relationship with a third-party data broker. Real personal data. Health records. Browsing history. Location traces. Financial transactions. They never got consent. The early tests ran on unsuspecting users across three European countries."

"That's a criminal violation," Antoine said flatly.

"It was. It still is." Lucie's eyes welled up. "We didn't know, not at first. Maxime discovered it during a routine audit. He confronted Françoise. She said she'd handle it, she'd unwind the project, she'd make it right. He believed her. He gave her a chance to come clean."

"And she didn't," Camille said. It wasn't a question.

"She buried it de center. Deeper than de center." Lucie straightened, wiping at her eyes with the edge of the scarf. "She moved Maxime to AlgoSens and buried Helios in secrecy. Then she built a wall around the remaining code. She told everyone it had been destroyed. But Maxime knew she'd kept a copy somewhere—for leverage, for future development, who knows."

"That's why he went into hiding," Camille whispered. "He didn't just expose her. He ran."

"He tried to expose her on his own terms. He gathered evidence from the original lab servers. Transferred some of the files to his personal system. Then Françoise found out." Lucie's hands shook as she pushed the espresso cup away. "She went to him. There was a confrontation. It got ugly. He fled with what he could carry—the code, the logs, the evidence. He's been running ever since. He only contacted me once, a few months ago. Said he'd hidden the complete Helios archive somewhere safe and left a trail for someone he could trust."

Camille thought of the dead drop, the USB stick still warm from her pocket. "The file fragment we decrypted pointed to the warehouse. But the full archive—where is it?"

But Lucie was already shaking her head. "I don't know. I never asked, and he never told me. He sent me here to give you the real code so you have leverage. Whatever else he left behind, he meant for you to find it. That's why he planted those files, laid those breadcrumbs. He trusted you."

"Trusted me?" Camille's voice came out hollow. "I barely knew him."

"You knew Françoise." Lucie's gaze was heavy. "That was enough. Maxime always said Françoise would never expect a student to think past the mentor. She would never see it coming if you turned on her. He believed you'd figure it out—when the moment came, when you had to decide where your loyalty really stood."

Camille's scarf felt suddenly heavier. She touched the red fabric at her neck, the note still tucked in her memories. *Remember your beginning.* She'd thought it was about nostalgia. About honoring the roots of her partnership with Françoise.

But maybe it was about the other beginning. The one Françoise had written out of existence.

"Françoise knows Maxime is running," Camille said slowly. "She knows he has evidence. That's why she's been circling, watching. She gave me this scarf to keep me close, to mark me as one of hers."

"Yes." Lucie stood, pulling her carry-on strap onto her shoulder. "And she'll know you're not anymore the second you stop behaving like it."

"How do I stop her? She has board influence, political capital, years of relationships. I have a USB with code and a dead man's trail."

Lucie's expression softened. She reached into her coat pocket and pressed something into Camille's palm: a folded index card, yellowed with age. Camille looked down.

Seven names. Dates. Positions. A lab address in Lyon from over a decade ago.

"The Helios team," Lucie said. "Everyone who worked on the project. If you need allies—or witnesses—they're the ones who know the truth. They'll be scared. Most of them have moved on, built careers, families. But if you can convince them Françoise is about to burn down what she built, some of them will talk."

"You're one of them." Camille looked up. "Your name's on this list."

"I'm the one who's already talking." Lucie smiled bitterly. "Consider the rest a project in conversion. You're good at that."

She turned toward the door, then paused. "One more thing. Don't trust anyone you wear the scarf with. Not Antoine. Not the board. Not even Jacques. Françoise built Helios to read people, to understand what makes them move, to predict what they'll do before they do it. She never stopped running that playbook. She's been watching you the whole time—your habits, your relationships, your breaking points."

Camille's stomach dropped. "How do you know?"

"Because I was one of her watchers too. And I know the trick she uses best." Lucie's eyes locked on hers. "She gives you a gift with one hand and takes your secrets with the other. That USB you have? The one with the real Sansio code? Check the metadata. Check how many times it's been accessed. Check the device ID."

Camille pulled the USB from her pocket. It was warm against her palm. "What are you saying?"

Lucie was already out the door. Over her shoulder, she called back: "You're not the only one who's been carrying it."

The door swung shut. Camille stared at the USB in her hands, then at Antoine. His face had gone pale.

"Who gave Lucie that drive originally?" he said quietly.

Camille opened her laptop. The moment she plugged it in, she saw it. The file history. The access log.

One prior connection. Three months ago. A device registered under Françoise's name.

The scarf had never just marked her as family.

It had marked her as a target.