As the room began to empty, Albert remained seated, scrolling through the brief but messy dossier now on his screen. This wasn’t just another opportunistic ransomware job—this was targeted. The hospitals had all recently integrated a new AI-assisted patient management system, one whose encryption layer was… well, let’s just say cost-effective.

And that system? He’d recommended it—two years ago—to the Department of Health. Not because it was the cheapest, but because it was the least bad option that procurement would actually approve.

Now, it was his name that would come up in quiet conversations at Whitehall, and it would be his phone that rang when the Prime Minister inevitably wanted to know how quickly this could be fixed.

“Your mess?” Poppy asked, peering at his laptop with her luminous green eyes.

“It’s not my mess,” Albert replied sharply, “it’s the government’s mess. I just happened to be the one who told them which broom to buy before they swept it under the rug.”

She tilted her head. “So now they want you to sweep it again?”

“Now,” he said, shutting the laptop with a click, “they want me to find the broom, pull it out of the bin, and hit the hacker over the head with it.”

His PA poked her head back in. “Sir, Cabinet Office on Line One. They say it’s urgent.”

Albert stood, adjusting his cuffs. “It always is when they’re the ones on fire.”

When he picked up the call, the voice on the other end was clipped and to the point. “Mr. Nestory, we need you to act as liaison between GCHQ and the private sector partners affected. You have the trust of both, and—frankly—neither side will speak openly unless you’re in the room.”

Which was true. Albert had a knack for cutting through bureaucratic nonsense, in part because he ignored protocol, and in part because he had the unnerving habit of telling CEOs and ministers alike when they were talking shit.

“All right,” Albert said. “But if I do this, I’m not just here to babysit. I want a direct line to the attacker’s channel—however they’re communicating—and I want to bring in my own people.”

The voice hesitated. “We’ll… discuss it.”

“You’ll agree to it,” Albert said, and hung up before they could answer.

Poppy was hovering just above the conference table now, swaying idly in the air. “You like this,” she said.

“I like getting things done,” Albert corrected. “And I’m better at it than most of the clowns they’ll send otherwise.”

Her smile widened. “And I’m better at making coffee cups walk across the table than most pixies. But you told me to stop.”

“Yes,” Albert said dryly, “because when you do it, it’s creepy. When I do it, it’s a government contract.”

She burst out laughing, the sound tinkling through the empty glass room.

His PA reappeared with a fresh coffee and a stack of briefing papers. “We’ve got a secure conference call with NHS Digital and the software vendor in twenty minutes.”

“Set it up in my office,” Albert said. “And get me a list of every hospital using this system. I want to see the infection pattern.”

As she turned to go, Poppy drifted after her, peering over the woman’s shoulder at the papers. “Ooo, this is going to be fun.”

Albert caught the movement. “Poppy. Boundaries.”

His PA froze for a moment, clearly wondering if he’d just addressed her.

“Not you,” Albert said quickly, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Just… still responding to messages.”

The look she gave him on her way out was polite, but there was no mistaking the question in her eyes.

Albert sighed. He had twenty minutes to prepare for a call that could decide the next seventy-two hours of his life—and possibly the Prime Minister’s career—and now he had to do it with a pixie who thought a cyberattack was a spectator sport.