He spent forty-eight hours running background on the names he didn't recognize, using channels he hadn't touched in six years and hoped still worked. They mostly did. The people on the other end were surprised to hear from him, in the specific way of people who had been told, at some point, that he was dead.
This was new information.
The nine names he didn't recognize resolved, slowly, into a pattern: researchers, engineers, one policy analyst, one military contractor. Different countries, different disciplines. The thing they shared, when he mapped it carefully, was a project designation that appeared in three separate documents across three different government archives, always in a context that suggested it had been classified above the level of the documents that referenced it.
MERIDIAN.
The documents described it as a communications protocol. Decommissioned, officially, in 1987. A Cold War relic, too sensitive to repurpose, too expensive to maintain. Archived. Finished.
Cross sat with that for a while. Then he called the one person he trusted enough to call.
"I need you to find something for me," he said when she answered. "Something that was officially shut down thirty-eight years ago."
A pause on the line. "Is this the kind of thing that gets people killed?"
"Eleven of the twelve people associated with it are dead. So probably yes."
Another pause. Longer.
"I'll need a week."
"You have three days."
"I'll need a week," she repeated, and hung up.