The server room hit us with a blast of cold air, a stark contrast to the musty basement corridor. Industrial cooling systems hummed steadily, maintaining the delicate balance these machines needed to function. But something felt off.

  "The cooling's working overtime," I noted, watching my breath form small clouds. The temperature was well below the standard 18°C server rooms typically maintained. The attack must have caused a significant temperature spike overnight to trigger such an aggressive cooling response.

  "Mind if I...?" Goran gestured toward the main workstation, already pulling out his laptop. The sleek machine looked almost anachronistic against the backdrop of institutional beige server hardware.

  I leaned against a cooling unit, trying to keep my distance from the more magically active areas. Even without my fried AR glasses, I could sense waves of energy rolling off certain server racks.

  "According to Jovan's initial assessment," Goran said while connecting cables with practiced efficiency, "this section houses digitized records from the interwar period - 1920 through 1940." His screen flickered as cascading windows of data streamed across while he clicked through the access prompts.

  "That's... oddly specific." I frowned, watching file directories flash past. "Why separate just those decades?"

  "Notice anything strange about the organization?" Goran turned the screen slightly toward me.

  I squinted at the file structure. "They're sorted by archive date, not publication. That's..."

  "Inefficient? Counterintuitive?" Goran's expression darkened. "Unless you know exactly what you're looking for and when it was archived."

  "The attackers knew the system. Once again, this confirms they knew precisely where to look."

  "Right." Goran's fingers pounded the keys with renewed intensity. "This confirms they had intelligence about when the files were initially archived, not merely their publication or digitalisation dates."

  "Which means they must have accessed the archives' records prior to the attack - hopefully leaving a trail we can follow." I nodded, pulling out my phone to send Jovan a brief message outlining what to investigate.

  I watched as Goran navigated through folder after folder, his usual composed demeanor giving way to subtle frustration. The screen reflected off his furrowed brow as he clicked through multiple directories.

  "This is... unusual." He pulled up a diagnostic tool. "Every single file in the archive was accessed simultaneously. Like someone highlighted the entire directory tree at once."

  I leaned in closer, scanning the timestamps. "That's not possible with standard protocols. Even high-level admin access has rate limiters."

  "Exactly." Goran's mouth tightened. "Look at this - all files show identical access timestamps down to the millisecond. 23:13:47.392."

  "During the Lakers game," I shot back, remembering the security guard's story. "But why grab everything? The processing power alone would be..."

  "Unless they weren't actually downloading." Goran's eyes narrowed. "What if they were scanning? Running some kind of magical pattern recognition across all files simultaneously?"

  "Over there." Goran pointed to a rack in the far corner, partially hidden behind a column. "Server rack B-17. Houses all the digitized files from that period."

  I approached cautiously, pulling out my phone since my AR glasses were fried. The rack looked identical to the others - standard Dell PowerEdge servers from around 2010, stacked neatly in their metal housing. But as I got closer, the air felt different. Heavier.

  "Feel that?" I asked, though I already knew Goran could. The magical residue was so thick here you didn't need special equipment to sense it. "Like walking through invisible cobwebs."

  "Now seems as good a time as any to test ECHO," Goran said, rising and approaching the rack. "Hopefully it can detect something we can't."

  I returned my phone back to the pocket and pulled ECHO out, its brass casing catching the fluorescent light. The device felt eager to work. "Let's hope it doesn't fry like my glasses."

  "Just be careful," Goran warned, eyes fixed on the rack. "We're dealing with some serious magical residue here."

  I selected usage scan program and positioned myself in front of the server rack he'd indicated, holding ECHO's crystal viewfinder up to the blinking lights. The device hummed to life, its small LED shifting from blue to green. A progress bar materialized in the viewfinder: 10%... 15%... 20%...

  "It's working," I grumbled, trying to keep my hand steady. The device grew warm against my palm as it passed 30%.

  At 50%, everything changed. ECHO started emitting a high-pitched whine that set my teeth on edge. The casing temperature spiked dramatically.

  "Something's wrong-" The words barely left my mouth before the device became too hot to hold. I dropped it, the brass casing hitting the floor with a metallic clang.

  "Take cover!" Goran shouted, diving behind a server rack.

  I scrambled behind another rack, watching ECHO through the gaps. The whining intensified as the progress bar crawled upward: 75%... 85%... 90%...

  The device vibrated against the floor, its crystal viewfinder pulsing with an intense light. The temperature in the room seemed to rise with each percentage point.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  95%... 98%... 99%...

  I held my breath, waiting for the explosion. The whining reached a fever pitch.

  100%.

  Then... nothing.

  A soft beep broke the silence. The device powered down and restarted, its LED returning to a calm, steady light. The viewfinder displayed a simple message: "Scan complete. Connect to download results."

  I exchanged looks with Goran, who emerged from his hiding spot. "Well," I said, cautiously approaching ECHO, "that was dramatic."

  "At least it didn't explode like the last one," Goran replied dryly. "Let's see what it found."

  I picked up ECHO gingerly, half-expecting it to burn my fingers. The device felt cool now, almost cold.

  "So they managed to do the impossible," Goran said, with a sly smile on his face. "ECHO was cobbled together from two separate prototypes - one for scanning magical energy patterns from historical archives, paper documents, that sort of thing. The other was purely for digital systems."

  "So what it looked like to me is... we basically just created a magical particle accelerator in the middle of the National Archives?"

  "More like a fusion reactor." Goran ran his hand through his damp hair, "The device was reading both the original magical aura from when these documents were first archived, and the new digital-magical overlay from their digitalisation. "

  "And they weren't meant to work together?"

  "Not just that - they were fundamentally incompatible, hence the first prototype explosion. The magical footprints repelled each other." Goran stepped to my side, his eyes fixed intently on the screen. "Like trying to mix oil and water. The development team spent months attempting to bridge that impossible gap before creating this prototype. We hoped it would succeed. Luckily, the test proved we were right."

  "Lucky is an understatement." I shot Goran an angry side-glance. "When exactly were you planning to tell me I was testing the equivalent of a nuclear bomb?"

  "Come now, don't be such a whiner. Everything went perfectly fine," Goran chuckled as he plugged the ECHO into his laptop.

  I leaned over Goran's shoulder as ECHO's data populated his screen. Five encrypted entries materialized, each tagged with detailed archival metadata. My eyes widened as I scanned the titles.

  The first entry detailed a report from 1889 by Sima Lozani?, about electromagnetic anomalies on Avala mountain. What caught my attention wasn't just the subject matter, but the mention of direct correspondence with Tesla himself. The summary noted fourteen pages of measurements and seven detailed diagrams, all tantalizingly out of reach behind that damned encryption.

  My eyes darted to the next entry - royal correspondence about occult practices from the Kara?or?evi? court, dating 1903 to 1905. Forty-seven pages of classified documents about supernatural occurrences and protection rituals during the coronation.

  The third document made me lean closer to my screen. Pan?i?'s "Herbarium Magicae Serbica" from 1867. The summary described it as a coded botanical journal, with energy lines masked as plant location data.

  Cviji?'s 1912 diary came next, documenting underground chambers beneath Belgrade. Twenty-three hand-drawn maps, the summary noted, along with observations about energy concentrations and crystal formations. The kind of things that would get you committed to an asylum if you talked about them in public - unless you were one of the most respected geographers in Serbian history.

  The final entry was a military intelligence report from 1918, describing strange lights on Fru?ka Gora during the First World War. The summary mentioned monastery records and Austrian research correspondence, with several sections apparently redacted even in the original document.

  "Hold on - Sima Lozani?'s correspondence with Tesla? And Pan?i?'s secret botanical journal?" I whistled low. "These aren't just random archives. They're documenting early magical research in Serbia, disguised as scientific studies."

  "Exactly." Goran's fingers flew across the keyboard, creating a secure backup. "And look at the dates - all from the period when modern scientific method was first being applied to magical phenomena. The transition period between traditional knowledge and systematic study."

  "The Kara?or?evi? papers especially..." I trailed off. "These aren't just historical documents. They're instruction manuals. Each one details a different aspect of magical practice in Serbia - energy lines, botanical applications, underground power sources..."

  "And the military applications," Goran added grimly, pointing to the last entry about Fru?ka Gora. "Remember what Ljiljana said about the Book? These documents might be early attempts to systematize magical knowledge before the current system was established."

  I leaned on the wall, thinking. "So our hackers weren't after specific information - they were looking for these foundational texts. But why? The modern Books are far more comprehensive and these were available for more than a century."

  "Unless..." Goran's expression darkened. "Unless they're looking for something that was deliberately left out of the official publications. Something from that transition period that was kept only in these original manuscripts."

  The implications sent a chill down my spine that had nothing to do with the server room's temperature. "We need to see what's in the files."

  "Agreed." Goran unplugged ECHO, its casing now cool to the touch. "But first, we need to secure these files. If someone went to this much trouble to find them..."

  The file transfer began, progress bar crawling across the screen with agonizing slowness.

  "This is definitely what they were after," Goran murmured, eyes fixed on the screen. "But we have a problem." His fingers tapped impatiently against the laptop's edge as the files copied over.

  "What kind of problem?" I leaned closer, squinting at the encryption notification that had popped up.

  "These files have dual-key authentication protection," he explained, disconnecting once the transfer completed. "I have one of the authorization keys through Order of Perun's government clearance, but..." He closed the laptop with a soft click that echoed in the server room. "The second key is held exclusively by the Archive's director."

  I sighed, squeezing my forehead where a headache was forming. Of course it couldn't be simple. Nothing in this job ever was. The ancient magical bureaucracy, now digitized but no less Byzantine in its complexity, never failed to complicate matters.

  "So we need to have a chat with the Archive staff," I concluded, stretching my cramped shoulders. The cold of the server room had seeped into my bones during our investigation. "Specifically, the director." I glanced at my phone - 8:47 AM. "Should be here by now, right?"

  "Dr. Proti? usually arrives around nine." Goran finished the file transfer and closed his laptop with a decisive click. "But given last night's events..."

  A notification pinged on my phone. Jovan had sent a message: 'Game stream traced to a server in Romania. Same pattern detected in all other government buildings that were targeted. Guards all watching same stream. Looking into archive's catalogue usage records.'

  "Smart," I remarked, showing Goran the message. "Use people's betting habits against them. Basketball game as a Trojan horse."

  "Let's head upstairs." Goran tucked his laptop under his arm."

  We retraced our steps through the basement corridor, my phone's flashlight casting long shadows ahead of us. The magical residue on the network cables had faded significantly since our arrival, now just a faint shimmer visible in my peripheral vision.

  "You know," I said as we climbed the stairs, "for someone who's supposed to be in charge of archive security, the director seems surprisingly absent during a crisis."

  "Dr. Proti? is... traditional." Goran's diplomatic tone spoke volumes. "He believes in physical security more than digital. Probably doesn't see this as a real threat. Also he is… let's say appointed."

  "Ah, another useful member of the establishment." I grimaced, reflecting on the countless useless bureaucrats appointed to head institutions across the country. "Not a threat, indeed. Wait until we inform him that hackers accessed classified magical documents through a basketball game stream."

  "That conversation should be interesting." Goran's lips twitched. "Just... let me do the talking."