Your name tag still works on Tuesdays. That’s how you know it’s Tuesday—the light turns green instead of red. The new security system they installed after the purge has a 40% failure rate on credentials, but you’ve figured out the rhythm. Tuesday mornings, the humidity is right, the reader accepts your GS-14 badge.
You sit in a cubicle that smells like ozone and burnt coffee. Outside your fabric walls, the office is hemorrhaging. “Fork in the Road” emails expiring in 48 hours. The new Director—Patel—walking through with his Praetorian guard, looking for “disloyal elements.” He’s firing the Russia guys, the January 6th investigators, anyone who worked the “wrong” cases.
He’s looking for you, basically. He just doesn’t know what you look like.
On your screen: SMITH-GRAND-JURY-EXHIBITS-2022-2023.zip
Jack Smith’s team compiled these before they were dissolved. Toll records. Metadata. Phone calls between Kash Patel and Susie Wiles during the certification period. The kind of thing you get without a judge’s approval because it’s just numbers—who called whom, when, for how long. The kind of thing that tells a story even without the audio.
The new Director wants dirt. He wants proof that the “Biden regime” weaponized the FBI against “patriots.” He’s ordered a full declassification review of all “Prohibited” files to find the “truth.”
You look at the file. You look at the filing system.
The filing system is ancient. Older than the building. It runs on a database language that half the new political appointees can’t pronounce, let alone navigate. You learned it in 2014 because you were bored. Because you are a GS-14 analyst in the Counterintelligence Division and you believe that information wants to be findable.
You could delete it. You could take the buyout—$25,000 and a non-disclosure agreement—and go home. You could leak it to the Times, but then you’d be a criminal. You could do nothing, and let it get buried.
Or.
You could file it.
You move the Patel/Wiles records from ACTIVE-INVESTIGATION to DECLASSIFICATION-QUEUE-PENDING-CONGRESSIONAL-REVIEW. You tag them with the standard metadata: “Obtained via routine subpoena, 18 U.S.C. § 2703(c)(2), toll records only, no content.” You add a routing slip: “Recommended for release to support oversight of previous administration’s surveillance practices.”
You know what he thinks he’s looking for. You know what he’ll find instead.
You hit ENTER.
The system accepts the filing. The timestamp is 09:14 EST, Tuesday, February 25, 2026. The database logs it. The database always logs it. The database doesn’t care who appointed the Director.
Three days later, you’re eating a vending machine sandwich at your desk. The alert pops up on your screen—ACCESS-REQUEST: PATEL-K-DIRECTOR. He’s queried the DECLASSIFICATION-QUEUE. He’s opened the file.
You don’t have a camera in his office. You don’t need one. You can see it in the logs. The file was opened at 14:23. It was printed at 14:25. It was re-classified as DIRECTOR-EYES-ONLY at 14:31.
At 14:32, your phone rings. It’s your supervisor. “Did you file the Smith exhibits in the open queue?”
“Yes sir. Standard procedure for congressional oversight prep.”
Long pause. “The Director is… reviewing them now.”
“Good,” you say. “Transparency is important.”
You hang up. You finish your sandwich. The file system hums. Somewhere down the hall, you can hear shouting—not the confident shouting of purge-and-replace, but the high, tight shouting of a man who thought he was the hunter discovering he’s been GPS-tagged since 2022.
You don’t smile. That would be unprofessional.
You open a new tab. Spreadsheet time. Someone has to track the overtime pay for the agents who are now, officially, too “disloyal” to fire because they know where the bodies are buried.
Your badge still works. The filing system still logs. The math is still the math.
You are a GS-14 analyst. You don’t need gun kata. You have administrative privileges.
The thermal exhaust port was filed under Miscellaneous.
Click.
Gnosis Under Fire 