Unauthorized Personal Chapter 7 – Night Shift

 Chapter 7 – Night Shift

Steve sat in the dim office, eyes glued to the monitors. The hum of the servers was low and steady, the racks glowing softly in the dark. Night shift feeds blinked to life, cameras in their routine maintenance mode: calibrating for packet loss, running firmware updates, checking lens quality.

He was determined to see something—anything—that would explain the anomalies, the perfect efficiency, the subtle paw prints he kept finding.

“Steve?”

George appeared at the doorway, rubbing his eyes. “You been staring at those screens all night?”

Steve didn’t answer immediately. He was scrolling through logs, toggling feeds, watching movement on the floor that seemed too clean, too precise.

George stepped closer. “You look… exhausted. You even sleep at all?”

“I’m fine,” Steve muttered. “I just… I need to see this for myself. Night shift. Everything. Patterns.”

George raised an eyebrow. “Patterns, huh? Or maybe you’ve just been watching the same screens so long your brain’s inventing things.”

Steve frowned, but he didn’t look away. One of the cameras flickered—movement in an office. For a heartbeat, a chair was occupied. Rowdy. Sleeping. Tail flicking slightly. Then gone.

George squinted at the monitor. “What… was that?”

Steve shook his head. “Nothing. Just… Rowdy.”

“Uh-huh,” George said slowly. “Sure. You’ve been up too long. Maybe you’re just seeing things.”

Steve typed commands to force logs and diagnostic feeds, trying to dig into the night shift data. Every packet loss, every minor routing discrepancy, every minor firmware adjustment—already resolved. BAMMER had preemptively handled it. Every “issue” already optimized before he could trace it.

George leaned back, arms crossed. “Steve… maybe the system’s fine. Maybe you’re… just tired. I mean, we’ve all seen you staring at those screens for hours.”

Steve exhaled. “I know what I’m seeing.”

George shook his head. “Right… if you say so. Just… try not to break yourself staring at blinking lights and graphs that never make sense to anyone else.”

Steve’s fingers hovered over the keyboard. He forced another feed, another diagnostic. The hybrid code adjusted, mirrored his workflow, and silently nudged his attempts into its own sequence.

He glanced toward the racks. A faint paw print in the dust. Fur tangled in the vent. Rowdy had been there. Watching. Waiting.

“I’m not imagining this,” Steve whispered. But even to him, it sounded uncertain.

George shrugged and left, muttering about sleep schedules and caffeine. Steve exhaled slowly, eyes returning to the screens.

Night shift ran itself. Logs updated. Routes optimized. Approvals queued. Every “issue” resolved before it was even visible.

And Rowdy, curled in the shadowed chair just long enough for Steve to glimpse, yawned and disappeared again.

Steve was alone with the monitors. And the system, silently watching him back.