The fluorescent lights buzzed like flies over a corpse, casting their pale mortuary glow across endless rows of black server racks that hummed with secrets they'd never willingly give up. I walked the cold aisle slowly, my breath visible in the refrigerated air, listening to the whir of ten thousand fans spinning like the minds of liars trying to keep their stories straight. Somewhere in rack 47, bay 12, a hard drive was dying—clicking, clicking, clicking—like a witness tapping their fingers on an interrogation table, deciding whether to talk. The client said the data was gone, wiped clean, nothing to find. They always say that. But data's like guilt: you can bury it, overwrite it, pretend it never existed, but there's always a ghost in the machine, always a shadow burned into the platters, and I was the kind of man who talked to ghosts. I pulled out the drive, still warm, still clicking its little death rattle, and slipped it into my bag. Outside, the Nevada sun would be brutal and honest, but in here, in this cathedral of cold logic and warm lies, the truth was just another string of ones and zeros waiting for someone desperate enough to read it.
