Chapter 21 Jordan #2
“No,” I repeat, voice hard. “They came for me. I’m not letting you negotiate me like cargo.”
Renn mutters, “Boss—”
Lonari holds my gaze for a beat, then nods once. “Fine. But you stand behind me.”
“Behind you is not my aesthetic,” I snap.
“Jordan,” Lonari says, voice low and dangerous, “you’re injured.”
“And you’re bossy,” I shoot back.
He bares his teeth. “Yeah. Because I want you breathing.”
My throat tightens. I swallow it down and nod once.
“Fine,” I mutter. “But if they try to separate us, I’m going feral.”
Renn’s mouth twitches. “That’s… already happening.”
We move.
The lobby has shifted again.
The merchants have been pushed back into organized clusters, guarded by Kaijen enforcers with calm eyes and visible weapons. The fountain glitters under casino lights, throwing water droplets into the air like tiny diamonds that don’t deserve to exist in a place this tense.
At the front entrance, the Coalition patrol stands in a clean line, armor polished, helmets tucked under arms like they’re trying to look human. Their faces are neutral, but their eyes are sharp—trained.
Their leader steps forward, a woman with a scar along her cheekbone and a Coalition crest pinned to her collar. She looks at Lonari, then at me.
“Jordan James,” she says.
I keep my face blank. “That’s me.”
“We’re here to ask questions regarding the broadcast and your involvement in destabilizing market confidence,” she says smoothly.
“Market confidence,” I echo, deadpan. “Wow. Glad we’re prioritizing the important stuff.”
Her jaw tightens. “You will come with us.”
Lonari steps forward, voice like stone. “No.”
The patrol leader’s gaze snaps to him. “This is Coalition jurisdiction.”
Lonari’s teeth flash. “This is Kaijen territory.”
The leader lifts her chin. “We have legal authority—”
“Then present it,” I cut in, because I’m not letting this become a testosterone contest while I get quietly bagged.
The leader’s eyes narrow. “Excuse me?”
“I said present your legal basis,” I repeat, voice steady. “Warrant. Writ. Treaty clause. Anything. Because ‘we’re here for questioning’ isn’t authority, it’s intimidation.”
A ripple of murmurs moves through the merchants behind me.
The patrol leader’s expression cools. “Your broadcast caused—”
“My broadcast revealed a false-flag massacre and financial routing tied to Baragon shells and Nine channels,” I interrupt. “If your priority is my tone instead of Morazin’s crimes, that’s… telling.”
One of the patrol officers shifts, hand twitching near their weapon.
Lonari’s body goes subtly tense beside me. I can feel the heat of him, the coiled threat.
The patrol leader exhales slowly. “We can do this politely or we can do this forcibly.”
I smile without humor. “You can try.”
Her eyes harden. “Jordan James, you are requested—”
“No,” I say sharply. “I’m not a requested item. I’m a witness. And I’m injured. And you’re not separating me from the person who kept me alive until you show a legal basis.”
Lonari’s voice rumbles, low. “You heard her.”
The patrol leader’s gaze flicks between us, calculating. The lobby is full of cameras. Full of civilians. Full of merchants who now know what it looks like when institutions show up to “question” the inconvenient.
She doesn’t want a shootout on a casino floor with market panic already lit.
She wants leverage.
So she tries another angle.
“This is for your protection,” she says, voice softer.
My stomach flips with old fury. “Don’t.”
The word comes out like a blade.
Her eyes narrow. “What.”
“Don’t say that,” I snap, heat rising in my throat. “IHC used to say that right before they locked doors. Right before they filed kids away. Protection is what you call control when you’re ashamed of it.”
Silence slams down.
Even the casino music seems quieter for a second.
The patrol leader’s expression shifts—something like discomfort, quickly buried.
She clears her throat. “We will return with formal documentation.”
I tilt my head. “Do that.”
She looks at Lonari. “This isn’t over.”
Lonari smiles, all teeth. “Nothing ever is.”
The patrol turns and leaves in disciplined silence, boots clicking on polished floor.
Only when the doors hiss shut behind them do I realize my hands are shaking.
Lonari glances at my hands. His jaw tightens.
“Server spine,” I mutter quickly, because if I stay in the lobby, I’ll start spiraling.
Lonari nods. “Go.”
Back in the server spine, I slam the door shut harder than necessary and lean against it for a second, breathing through the sting in my side.
The cold air bites my skin. The fans roar. The blinking lights look indifferent.
Good.
Indifference is soothing.
I push back to the terminal and pull up my Yatori archive subset—the chunk I kept offline, the stuff I haven’t fully sifted because I’ve been busy not dying.
I start digging.
Not the obvious logs. Not the biometrics I already flagged. Not the docking overwrites.
I look for structural inconsistencies—the kind that happen when someone higher touches a system.
And there it is.
A fragment buried in an authorization package: a partial key string, truncated, shoved into a header field like an afterthought.
I freeze.
Because the style is wrong.
Morazin’s encryption is neat—corporate clean, predictable patterns, standardized padding.
This fragment is different. Military-grade. Sparse. Efficient. The kind of key structure used by people who don’t need to hide their authority because their authority is the lock.
My throat goes dry.
“Lonari,” I call, voice tight.
He appears in the doorway almost instantly, like he was waiting for the sound of my panic.
“What,” he demands.
I point at the screen. “This.”
He steps closer, eyes scanning the data like he’s trying to read a foreign language.
“Explain,” he says.
I swallow. “Morazin didn’t sign everything. He couldn’t have. This is a partial authorization key embedded in the operation header—someone with military-grade clearance touched the false-flag infrastructure. Someone higher approved access keys.”
Lonari’s eyes narrow. “Higher than Morazin.”
“Yes,” I say, voice rough. “Morazin was an operator. Not the architect.”
Renn steps in behind him quietly, like he sensed the gravity.
Lonari’s jaw tightens. “Who.”
“I don’t have a name,” I admit. “Not yet.”
Lonari’s gaze locks onto mine. “We get one.”
I nod, pain flaring as adrenaline spikes again. “Yeah.”
Silence stretches, thick with implications.
Because “higher” means institutional.
It means someone in Alliance. Or IHC. Or Coalition. Or all of them, braided together with Baragon money and Nine leverage.
It means this isn’t just a syndicate war.
It’s a system.
Lonari exhales slowly. “That patrol—”
“Wasn’t just curious,” I finish. “They’re pressure. They’re containment.”
Lonari’s eyes go cold. “They’ll try again.”
“I know,” I whisper.
He studies me for a long beat, then says, “You’re getting protection.”
I straighten, pain and pride rising together. “No.”
Lonari’s brow ridges lift. “Jordan—”
“I’m not doing damsel treatment,” I snap. “I’m not getting tucked into a safe room while men with guns decide my life.”
Lonari’s mouth tightens. “You almost died.”
“I keep almost dying,” I shoot back. “It doesn’t mean I stop moving.”
Renn clears his throat awkwardly, clearly regretting being present.
Lonari’s voice drops, dangerous. “Then what do you want.”
I force myself to breathe. “Partnership.”
Lonari stills. “Define.”
I step closer, meeting his eyes so he can’t pretend this is just logistics.
“I take point on tech and evidence,” I say. “I build the comm hubs, track ghost pings, dig the keys, feed the truth into the world where it can’t be scrubbed.”
Lonari’s gaze stays on mine, unblinking.
“And you,” I continue, “take point on muscle and leverage. You handle crews, captains, arrests, negotiations, making sure nobody bags me and calls it ‘protection.’”
Renn mutters under his breath, “That’s… actually clean.”
Lonari ignores him. His eyes narrow, assessing.
“And what,” he asks slowly, “do you do if someone tries to grab you again.”
I don’t flinch. “I fight.”
Lonari bares his teeth. “With what. Your mouth?”
“With whatever’s in reach,” I reply, voice flat. “And with redundancy. And with the fact that if I go missing, the dead-man protocols don’t stop at civilian journalists anymore.”
Lonari’s jaw tightens. “You set new dead-man triggers.”
I nod once. “I learned.”
A beat.
Then Lonari exhales, controlled, like he’s making a decision he hates and respects at the same time.
“Fine,” he says. “Partnership.”
My chest tightens. Relief and fear in equal measure, because partnership means trust, and trust is dangerous.
Lonari points a claw at me. “But you take one guard.”
I roll my eyes. “One guard is not a partnership, it’s a babysitter.”
“One guard,” he repeats, voice steel.
I glare. “Can the guard be quiet.”
Renn coughs. “I can assign—”
Lonari cuts him off. “I’ll pick.”
I mutter, “Of course you will,” but I let it go because this is the kind of compromise that keeps me breathing.
Lonari leans closer, voice low. “You don’t get to die.”
I scoff. “Bossy.”
He smiles without warmth. “Strategic.”
Later, when the casino settles into a tense rhythm—merchants guarded, crews rotating, ghost pings trapped in honey nodes—I sit back at the server spine and open a secure channel.
Not to an institution.
To a person.
Clint.
I use the rotating handshake keyset again, the one that feels like old scars.
The channel takes a moment, then his face resolves—tired, eyes strained, ship lighting dim.
“Jordan,” he says immediately, voice rough with relief and guilt. “You back on Gur?”
“Yeah,” I reply. “Don’t lecture me.”
Clint exhales. “Wasn’t gonna. You sound like hell.”
“Still,” I say. “Listen—new problem.”
Clint’s posture sharpens. “Go.”
I pull up the authorization fragment on my screen and angle it toward the comm feed.
“I found a partial authorization key buried in the Yatori package,” I say. “It doesn’t match Morazin’s encryption style. Military-grade clearance structure. Someone higher signed off on access keys.”
Clint’s expression tightens. “Higher how.”
“Not corporate,” I say. “Not merc. Institutional.”
Clint’s jaw clenches. “Jordan—”
“I know,” I interrupt. “I know what that implies. That’s why I’m calling you.”
Clint’s eyes flick—pain, anger, recognition. “You want a name.”
“I need a name,” I say, voice low. “Because Morazin was the hand, not the brain.”
Clint goes quiet for a long beat, looking off-screen like he’s pulling up mental files he wishes he didn’t have.
Then he looks back at me, eyes hard.
“Send me the fragment hash,” he says. “Not the whole file. Just the hash and the key structure. I’ll cross-reference against clearance patterns I’ve seen.”
I nod, fingers already moving. “Done.”
Clint’s voice drops. “Jordan… you’re stepping into something ugly.”
I give a humorless laugh. “Clint, I’ve been in ugly since IHC work-study.”
His mouth tightens. “Yeah. But this is—”
“Bigger,” I finish. “I know.”
Clint exhales. “Okay. I’ll dig. But you need to stay alive.”
I glance toward the doorway where Lonari’s silhouette passes briefly—big, watchful, pretending not to watch.
“I’m working on it,” I say quietly.
Clint’s eyes narrow. “Who’s with you.”
I sigh. “Lonari.”
Clint’s face tightens. “Of course.”
I smirk faintly. “Yeah. Of course.”
Clint leans closer, voice low. “Jordan, I don’t trust him.”
“I don’t trust institutions,” I reply. “So we’re even.”
Clint’s jaw works, but he doesn’t argue.
“Ping me when you get a lead,” I say.
Clint nods once. “You too. And Jordan?”
“Yeah?”
His voice softens just a fraction. “Good job.”
I roll my eyes because if I accept praise I might cry, and I’m not doing that today.
“Ew,” I mutter. “Bye, Clint.”
He snorts. “Bye, kid.”
The channel cuts.
I stare at the dark screen for a long beat, listening to the server spine hum, smelling cold ozone and warm circuitry, tasting the bitterness of adrenaline still clinging to my tongue.
Then I look at the authorization fragment again.
A small piece of code.
A tiny thread.
The kind of thread that unravels empires when you pull it hard enough.
And somewhere upstairs, the Defrocked Nun keeps pretending it’s just a casino while the Nine probes our walls and the Coalition patrol plans its next “questioning,” and Lonari Kaijen tries to build legitimacy with blood still drying under his fingernails.
I flex my fingers, wincing at the stiffness in my wrists where cuffs used to bite.
“Okay,” I whisper to the server spine, to myself, to whatever stubborn god keeps refusing to let me die.
“Let’s go higher.”