Access Logs

Elena saw the story at 6:47 a.m., scrolling through her phone with coffee she hadn't finished. The headline on Polaxis was sharp and specific: Inside the Palace: How the Treaty Negotiation Is Failing.

She set the mug down.

The story was dated this morning. It pulled from talking points—not hers exactly, but the framework was unmistakably the one she'd written for Damien's briefings. The phrasing had been refracted through someone else's hands, sharpened into something more damaging. Where she'd said "staged commitment," this version said "theatrical posturing." Where she'd written "insufficient parliamentary consensus," this read "collapsing internal support."

She read through the first section twice, tracking each distortion like a linguist cataloging mutations. Her memo on confidence-building had said "staged commitment to demonstrate good faith before substantive negotiations." The article had extracted "staged commitment" and paired it with "theatrical posturing"—not her word, not even her tone. She'd meant calibrated strategy. They'd made it sound like performance for an audience that knew better.

Another distortion caught her. She'd written that "insufficient parliamentary consensus required careful timing." The story quoted it as "collapsing internal support necessitated radio silence"—completely inverted the meaning, suggested Damien was hiding something rather than strategizing around legitimate political obstacles. And the timeline they'd used for the subcommittee insertion was precise enough to damage trust with the EU liaison. She'd never have contextualized it that way.

The specifics were surgical. A direct quote from an internal memo about EU protocol objections. A timeline of when the trade subcommittee was brought in—that detail was from a document she'd given only to Damien and Margaux.

She read it through a third time. The coffee went cold.

By 7:15 a.m., she'd pulled the original memos from her files and cross-referenced every quote. Someone had access to her work product and had chosen the most inflammatory pieces. Someone had decided which facts wounded most.

The door to her temporary office—a cramped side room off the communications wing—opened without a knock.

Damien was still in his suit from last night's reception. He hadn't slept. She could see it in the angle of his jaw.

"The story," he said. Not a question.

Elena set her phone down. "I didn't write it."

"The talking points in it are yours."

"The framework is mine. The execution is someone else's. And it's wrong—deliberately wrong. They took the architecture and rebuilt it as a weapon."

He stepped closer. "You wrote those memos."

"I wrote confidential memos for your briefings. Which you received. Which were in this office." She didn't stand. "I didn't leak them."

"Then who did?"

"I don't know. But I can tell you that the access I have is exactly what makes this work. If you can't trust the access you gave me, then we don't have a contract. We have an expensive liability."

His hands tightened. "My internal communications are now front-page news."

"Your internal communications have been front-page news since before I arrived. You think this is a fresh leak?" Elena stood now, matching his height by three inches of posture. "This level of detail, this kind of selective sourcing—this isn't me. This is someone with the same access I have, or close to it, and a reason to hurt the treaty process. Which suggests your communications were already compromised. I've been working with a hole in the hull."

He didn't answer immediately. The silence was a different kind of accusation.

"The talking points had details only you knew," he said. His voice was quieter now, which was worse. This wasn't anger anymore. This was the sound of betrayal.

Elena waited one breath. "You're looking at this wrong," she said carefully. "The details that appear in the story aren't privileged information. They're reconstructed information. Someone took confidential material and cross-referenced it with publicly available parliamentary records. That takes time and knowledge. But more importantly—it takes motivation. If I'd leaked this, why would I let someone else alter it? Why would I let them make it worse? That's not self-preservation. That's self-sabotage."

He didn't respond. She pressed forward.

"The talking points had details only people with access to this office knew. I've been in Valloria for seven weeks. Camille's been here for three years. Margaux's been here for twelve. Whoever runs the hospitality archive has been here longer. I could inventory the people with full access, but that's not the point. The point is that you're looking at the wrong problem. You gave me access because you needed someone who could work at your level. Now you're angry because someone else is using that same level against us. That's not my fault."

He turned toward the window. The palace gardens were already lit with morning. She could see the edge of his profile, the tension at the corner of his mouth.

"Find out who," he said. Not a request.

"I already started."

He left before she could say anything else.

---

The leak had fingerprints. Elena spent the next four hours mapping them.

She isolated the phrasing that didn't belong to her—the specific adjectives, the syntactic choices. Someone had deliberately altered her framework while keeping enough of the original to make it traceable. That suggested either someone who wanted her blamed, or someone careless about coverage.

She pulled the distribution list from the original memo. Seven people. She cross-referenced the parliamentary records—the story quoted objections that had appeared in subcommittee minutes two months ago, before her contract began. That narrowed it.

The leaked version cited a specific memo about trade protocol. Elena had written it. The distribution list had five names.

She opened Camille's access logs for the communications directory. Camille had forwarded a copy to her assistant, Léa Montagne, on a Tuesday in May. Léa had opened it. Léa's access pattern showed a copy saved to an external drive at 11:43 p.m. that night.

Between calls to the communications office about messaging strategy and a briefing with Damien's policy team about parliamentary soundbites, Elena worked through the forensics. She couldn't let this derail the schedule. The committee vote was in three days. They still needed to shore up the confidence narrative, still needed to move the timeline forward. The leak would delay things if she let it. She didn't let it. She answered the messages about the story—straightforward corrections, nothing emotional—and kept the campaign moving. The professionalism of continuing mattered more than the crisis. Especially the crisis. Especially now.

Elena pulled the Polaxis byline. New reporter. The story was attributed to someone named Michel Blanc, but the sourcing was parliamentary-adjacent. Straight from someone who'd been in the room.

She sent one message to Camille's secure line: Need to meet. Confidential.

Twenty minutes later, she had confirmation. Camille's face, when Elena laid out the timeline and the access logs, went the color of old paint.

"Léa wouldn't," Camille said.

"The drive was at 11:43 p.m. on May 18. She accessed this memo fourteen minutes before that."

"She's—she's a junior. She wouldn't understand what she was giving—"

"Who approached her?"

Camille's silence was an answer.

"Camille. Who?"

"An interest group. Against the EU treaty. They said they wanted context, background information for parliamentary advocacy. They said it was legal commentary."

Elena didn't flinch. "You knew better."

"I knew—yes, I knew better. But I thought Léa was just gathering public materials. I didn't know she'd taken internal documents. I would have stopped it."

Elena believed her. That was worse. She believed that Camille hadn't known. She also believed that Camille hadn't asked closely enough.

"This is going to be contained," Elena said. Not unkindly. Not coldly either. Just matter-of-fact. "Léa needs to understand what she did. The interest group needs to understand that we know. And you need to understand that oversight matters."

Camille's shame was a physical thing now—visible in the way she couldn't meet Elena's eyes. "I do," she said quietly. "I do understand that now."

"I need Léa's contact information. And the name of everyone who approached her."

---

By 2 p.m., Elena had the full picture. She wrote it down, careful and precise, and walked to Damien's office.

Margaux answered the door to his private study. She took in Elena's expression and stepped aside without comment.

Damien was at his desk, still in yesterday's suit. He looked up, then back down at the documents in front of him.

"Camille's assistant," Elena said. "Léa Montagne. She was approached by representatives from the Vallorian Union for Democratic Progress. They told her they wanted background material for parliamentary commentary. She didn't understand what she was giving them. Camille didn't know the scope of what Léa took. The memo was forwarded as routine information sharing. Léa copied it to an external drive in May. They've had it since then."

He listened. He didn't interrupt.

"The altered version—that was done by them. They took the original framework and sharpened it into an attack. They distributed it this morning to create maximum impact before the Thursday committee vote. The goal is to crater public confidence in the treaty process, which gives their parliamentary opposition leverage."

Elena set the evidence on his desk. The access logs. The contact information. The names of the three people who had contacted Léa.

"It's not me," she said. "It wasn't ever me."

He looked at the papers for a long time. Then at her.

"I know," he said quietly.

She left before he could see her hands shake.

---

She was at her desk at 8 p.m., pretending to work, when he appeared in her doorway.

He was in a clean suit. He'd slept, or tried to. His expression was controlled, the professional face back in place.

"Will you continue," he said. Not a question. The way he said it made it clear that it was two things at once—a question and a request.

Elena didn't answer immediately. She looked at him, at the line of his shoulders, at the careful distance he was maintaining.

"Yes," she said.

He nodded. He stepped inside the office and closed the door behind him. He crossed to her desk in three strides, and his hand came down on her arm—gentle, deliberate—just above the inside of her elbow.

He didn't speak. His fingers were warm. He held his hand there one beat past the point where a goodbye ends, one beat past the edge of professional gesture, his thumb tracing a semicircle against her skin.

Then he stepped back.

"Thank you," he said.

He turned and left, pulling the door softly closed behind him. She heard his footsteps in the corridor, the particular rhythm of his walk, the sound of him moving away. She sat very still and listened until the footsteps disappeared into the deeper silence of the palace.

She still didn't move. Her arm was warm where his thumb had been. She could still feel the precise weight of his fingers, the deliberation of his touch—one beat past professional, one beat past anything she could file away as gratitude.

The documents were still on her desk. The access logs. The three names. The committee vote in two days, the confidence narrative still fragile, the treaty still alive by a margin she'd have to rebuild by Thursday. She knew exactly what she needed to do next. She had always known what to do next.

She did not reach for the papers.