He did not sit down.

"We have a problem."

I looked at him.

"Another one?"

"Maybe the same one."

The sergeant straightened.

"What?"

The officer set the laptop on the table.

"When the unit was isolated, the system preserved the volatile session image as designed."

"I saw the snapshot notification."

He nodded.

"Unit forty-four had a body-camera interface anomaly."

The sergeant's face changed.

"What kind?"

"Manual local-mode state."

"English."

The security officer looked at him.

"The officer's body camera was configured not to sync live to the network."

The sergeant's eyes went toward the closed door.

"Could the override have caused that?"

"No."

"When did it happen?"

"Before the traffic stop."

The room became very still.

I looked at the laptop.

"How long before?"

"Eleven minutes before your isolation command. Roughly three minutes before the stop was initiated."

I remembered Brady approaching me.

The confidence.

The lack of interest in the taillight.

The way he had ignored every evidence procedure.

The security officer continued.

"The camera itself was still recording locally."

I understood before the sergeant did.

"The buffer."

"Exactly."

The sergeant looked between us.

"What buffer?"

The security officer answered.

"Local camera storage. Normally it syncs continuously. In local mode it holds footage onboard until reconnection or manual handling."

"And the diagnostic isolation?"

"Froze the session image before anything could be changed."

The sergeant's gaze settled on me.

"You accidentally preserved the video."

"Apparently."

The security officer opened a file.

"I haven't watched the full recording. Chain of custody needs to be established first."

The sergeant nodded.

"Don't play it here."

Then he looked at me.

"You said Brady never checked the engraving?"

"Correct."

"You said he called it stolen property before taking it?"

"Yes."

"You said he gave you no receipt?"

"Correct."

The sergeant pushed away from the wall.

"I need to speak to the watch commander."

He stopped at the door.

Then looked back.

"And you need to understand something."

I waited.

"Whatever that footage shows, it doesn't erase what you did."

"I know."

He studied me for another moment.

"Good."

He left.

The security officer remained.

I looked down at the black rectangle of empty skin where my terminal usually sat in my pocket.

"I suppose I'm suspended."

"Your credential is."

"Same difference."

"Not exactly."

He began closing files.

"You're probably going to spend the next several weeks learning how different they are."

He was right.

It took considerably longer than several weeks.

Part IV — What the Record Keeps

The city suspended my remote diagnostic access before I reached home.

I knew because I tried to log in.

Not to change anything.

Not even to check Unit 44.

Habit.

For years, I had ended most evenings by reviewing system health from my dining room table.

The terminal was gone, so I opened the secure portal on my workstation.

ACCESS RESTRICTED
CREDENTIAL UNDER ADMINISTRATIVE REVIEW

No accusation.

No explanation.

Just a locked door.

I sat looking at the message until the screen dimmed.

The house sounded different without the low background chatter of system alerts.

I removed my prosthetic and examined the irritated skin around the socket line. A red patch had formed where I'd stood too long on the sloped shoulder.

I cleaned it.

Applied the ointment I kept nearby.

Then I took off the silver watch and placed it on the table.

Under the kitchen light, the new scratch near the clasp was obvious.

I turned it over.

My name.

Twenty years of service.

For a long time after the accident, I had disliked the engraving.

Service implied continuity.

The body does not care about continuity.

One day you move through the world without planning every curb. Then an accident changes the geometry of every room you enter.

My job had changed with it.

I stopped spending twelve-hour shifts inside server rooms and communications centers. I stopped crawling beneath consoles and climbing equipment ladders. I became the man on the secure video call, the voice explaining why a firmware migration should wait, the engineer typing commands from a dining room where nobody could see the prosthetic leaning against the wall.

The watch had come before the accident.

That was why I still wore it.

It belonged to a version of my life that had not needed adaptation.

Brady had looked at my leg and assumed limitation.

I had looked at my terminal and assumed power.

Neither assumption had improved the afternoon.

My phone rang.

The number belonged to the city legal office.

I answered.

The attorney identified herself, confirmed I was not being criminally charged "at this stage," and requested an interview the following morning.

"Am I required to bring counsel?"

"That's your decision."

"That sounds like yes."

"It means exactly what I said."

City attorneys speak a dialect built to survive depositions.

I almost smiled.

"Will Officer Brady be there?"

"No."

"What's happening with him?"

"I can't discuss personnel matters."

"Of course."

She paused.

"There is also a technical review of Unit forty-four."

"I know."

Another pause.

"How?"

"The security officer told me about the local camera buffer."

Silence.

That silence told me more than an answer would have.

"You should not discuss that with anyone," she said.

"I haven't."

"Do not contact Officer Brady."

"I wasn't planning to."

"And do not attempt to access municipal systems."

"My credential is suspended."

"Do not attempt."

I looked at the message on my monitor.

"I won't."

"Nine tomorrow."

She hung up.

The next morning, I wore the watch.

I considered leaving it at home.

Then decided against it.

The legal office occupied the fifth floor of a municipal building I'd visited dozens of times. Nobody searched me at the entrance. Nobody stared at my prosthetic. The normality felt almost insulting.

The attorney met me in a conference room with the network-security officer and a representative from the department that managed my consulting contract.

Three people.

Three separate problems.

The attorney opened a folder.

"We're recording."

"Fine."

She gave the formal date and time.

Then she asked me to describe the traffic stop from the beginning.

I did.

The broken taillight.

Brady noticing the watch.

His statement that it looked stolen.

My explanation.

His failure to inspect the engraving.

The seizure.

The lack of paperwork.

The walk back to Unit 44.

My terminal.

The override.

She stopped me there.

"When you pressed confirmation, did you believe the vehicle's communication hardware had been compromised?"

"No."

"Did you believe there was an active cybersecurity threat?"

"No."

"Did you believe the system isolation was necessary to protect public safety?"

"No."

The contract representative shifted in his chair.

The attorney continued.

"Then why did you initiate it?"

I looked at the watch on my wrist.

"Because I wanted leverage."

Nobody moved.

The attorney wrote something.

"Leverage."

"Yes."

"To recover personal property."

"Yes."

"You understood the function could temporarily remove an active police unit from dispatch communications."

"Yes."

"Yet you used it."

"Yes."

The contract representative leaned forward.

"You know how this sounds."

"I know how it was."

He exhaled.

The attorney looked at him.

"Let me conduct the interview."

Then back to me.

"At any time did you consider restoring communications before the supervisor arrived?"

"Yes."

"Why didn't you?"

"I was still treating it like a negotiation."