Chapter 23 Jordan
JORDAN
The surveillance node smells like burnt dust and cheap solder—like someone tried to fix a problem by yelling at it.
I’m crouched on a maintenance ledge above the Nun’s back corridors, one knee jammed against a rib of steel, fingers deep inside a black box the size of my head while a holographic schematic hovers in my face like a smug little ghost. The building hums around me—casino bass thudding faintly through layers of reinforced wall, ventilation breathing warm air that tastes like smoke-filtered perfume and fried sugar.
Down below, two Kaijen guards pretend not to watch me.
They’re terrible at it.
Their eyes keep flicking up every time my tool kit clinks. Like I’m going to turn around and bite them. Like human teeth are suddenly a syndicate threat.
I don’t look down. I don’t give them the satisfaction.
“Node thirty-seven,” I mutter, half to myself, half to the machine. “You had one job.”
The node flashes a weak red diagnostic ping. It’s been “one job”-ing badly since the warehouse hit last night.
Everyone’s acting like the Nine’s scorch mark is just a message. Like it’s a flex. Like it’s about pride.
I can feel it in my gut that it’s about timing.
Which is worse.
I pop the panel open farther. The inside is a mess—microfractures in the fiber coupler, a power regulator that’s been overdriven hard enough to warp, and a security shim that doesn’t match Kaijen standard. That last part makes my stomach go cold.
Someone touched this.
Not clumsy sabotage. Something more surgical. Like they wanted it to fail at a specific moment, in a specific way.
“Cute,” I whisper.
I pull my compad closer, run a sweep, and start bypassing the damaged coupler with a temporary splice. My hands steady as soon as I’m in the work. My brain knows this. Wires don’t lie. Signals don’t pretend they’re your friends.
People do.
A shadow blocks the light from the corridor below.
Then another.
The guards straighten like they’ve been yanked by strings.
I don’t need to look to know who it is. I smell him before I hear him—antiseptic clinging to scales, old blood underneath, and that sharper scent of pain medication that never quite masks reality.
Fyr.
His voice reaches me rough and dry. “So this is what the famous little human does. Fixes cameras.”
I keep my eyes on the wiring. “Also rewires your security network so your enemies can’t stroll through the back door. You’re welcome.”
He snorts. The sound is a cough pretending to be humor.
I finally glance down.
He’s standing with one arm still braced close to his torso, posture stubbornly upright like gravity’s an insult. Bandages peek under his dark coat. His eyes are bright with that specific kind of anger that comes from waking up to a world that kept moving while you were unconscious.
And he’s looking at me like I’m a loose nail in a foundation.
“You’re bleeding into our systems,” he says, as if that’s a diagnosis.
I lift my chin. “I’m fixing your systems. There’s a difference.”
“Is there?” Fyr asks. He takes a step forward. The guards shift subtly—protective of him, wary of me. “Or are you just embedding yourself deeper so when the time comes, you can pull the knife out clean?”
I let my tool pause in my hand. My pulse ticks once, hard, behind my eyes.
“Wow,” I say slowly. “You wake up and immediately choose to be exhausting.”
His mouth tightens. “You’re not family.”
“No,” I agree. “Thank God.”
His eyes flash. “You think you’re funny.”
“I think if I don’t joke, I’ll start screaming,” I say, and my voice comes out lighter than I feel. “And that makes people uncomfortable.”
Fyr’s gaze drops to my hands inside the node. “You’re using him.”
The words hit the air like a thrown stone.
The corridor goes quieter. Even the ventilation seems to hold its breath.
I set my tool down carefully. Slowly. Like I’m handling an explosive.
Then I look him straight in the face.
“You don’t get to say that,” I tell him.
He bares just a hint of teeth. “I get to say whatever I want. This is my house.”
“It’s your house because you were born into it,” I snap back, the heat rising fast, surprising even me. “I wasn’t born into anything except a government facility with fluorescent lights and a file number.”
Fyr’s expression doesn’t soften. He doesn’t care about my origin story.
So I don’t offer it gently.
“I watched my parents die,” I say, and my voice goes cold. “I watched institutions tell me it was necessary. I watched ‘leaders’ shake hands for cameras while kids like me got shoved into the corners to be managed.”
Fyr’s eyes narrow, but he doesn’t interrupt.
I lean forward, feeling the edge of the ledge against my thigh. “So yeah—survival is transactional for me. Trust is earned, not inherited. And if you think I’m ‘using’ Lonari, you’re missing the bigger picture.”
“Oh?” Fyr says, sarcastic.
“I’m not the one who tried to kill him,” I shoot back.
The guards stiffen. Fyr’s nostrils flare.
“That’s not what happened,” he says, voice low.
“It is what happened,” I say, louder now. “You can paint it however you want in your syndicate bedtime stories, but from where I’m sitting? You were ready to make me disappear because I was inconvenient. And he stopped you.”
Fyr’s jaw works. Pain flickers across his face, quick and involuntary. He hates that my words land.
I soften my tone just enough to be crueler.
“Lonari didn’t choose me because I’m useful,” I say. “He chose me because he’s done pretending. And because he’s willing to bleed for the truth.”
Fyr’s eyes sharpen. “And you?”
I don’t flinch. “I’m bleeding for it, too.”
Silence stretches. The casino bass thumps faintly, oblivious.
Then Fyr laughs—one rough exhale. “You talk like you’re righteous.”
“I talk like I’m tired,” I say. “And I’m not leaving.”
That last part hangs between us, bright and dangerous.
Fyr studies me for a long moment, like he’s trying to see where I’d crack if he put pressure in the right place.
Finally, he says, “He’ll regret you.”
I shrug, a little too casual. “He can regret me after we’re alive.”
I turn back to the node before my hands start shaking. I refuse to give him the satisfaction of seeing me rattled.
Fyr steps back. “Fix it,” he says, as if granting permission. Then he turns and walks away, the guards falling into place behind him.
But his parting shot lands anyway, tossed over his shoulder like a knife meant to stick.
“Just remember, human—when power shifts, you’re always the first thing people trade.”
I swallow hard, jaw tight.
“Yeah,” I mutter to the wiring. “I know.”
And that’s exactly why I’m building redundancy like my life depends on it.
Because it does.
I finish the splice, reseat the panel, and the node pings green.
One camera back online.
One blind spot sealed.
And still, the building feels like it’s breathing around me—watching, waiting for the next punch.
Back in my workroom—technically a “guest suite,” which is hilarious because the last time I was a guest anywhere, someone was pointing a rifle at my chest—I lay out my evidence chain again.
The room smells like citrus cleaner and expensive fabric. It’s the kind of scent meant to make you feel safe.
It does not work on me.
I project the network map above the table: Morazin’s payment paths, shell accounts, biometric forgery nodes, comm routing anomalies.
Threads of light crisscross in a three-dimensional web, and every time I stare at it long enough, my head starts to ache with the sheer scale of coordination it implies.
Morazin didn’t do this alone.
That’s not a theory anymore. It’s math.
I zoom in on an off-world relay identifier I caught in the Yatori archive—buried inside a transmission header like a splinter someone forgot to pull out.
At first glance it looks normal. Generic routing. Standard subspace hop.
But the deeper I peel, the uglier it gets.
The relay isn’t IHC.
It’s not Coalition.
It’s Alliance-controlled infrastructure.
My mouth goes dry.
“No,” I whisper. “No, no, no.”
Alliance relays are not supposed to be accessible to some half-Vakutan operations foreman on a private prison moon. Those networks require military-grade credentials, or at minimum a political handshake so formal it probably comes with a ritual chant.
I pivot the map, isolate the path.
Yatori → Corporate satellite grid → Ghost hop → Alliance relay node cluster (Vakutan sector) → Dead-end proxy that vanishes into encrypted darkness.
I stare at the relay cluster name until my eyes sting.
The scent of ozone from the repaired node still clings to my fingers, mixing with the room’s false citrus.
This isn’t just proof Morazin had help.
This is proof someone inside Alliance infrastructure either let him in or got hacked in a way that should terrify them.
And if that’s true, then Morazin is not just a criminal.
He’s a key.
A key everyone wants to control.
A key everyone wants to silence once it’s served its purpose.
A cold thought slides under my ribs.
Morazin’s “arrest” won’t hold.
Not because he’s clever. Not because he’s strong.
Because both sides have incentive to make him disappear quietly and call it justice.
The IHC gets to bury institutional complicity.
The Alliance gets to avoid admitting their infrastructure was touched.
And if anyone asks questions?
They’ll point at me.
The unstable contractor.
The “threat actor.”
The girl who broadcasted sensitive data across the holonet like a bomb.
I breathe in slow, trying to steady my pulse.
The air tastes faintly of metallic dust from Gur’s industrial sky.
My compad buzzes.
A secure ping.
Clint.
My stomach tightens before I even open it.
I accept the call and his face appears in a holo projection, grainy but clear enough to read the tension in his eyes.
He looks older than the last time. Like sleep lost a war.
“Jordan,” he says without preamble. “We’ve got a problem.”
I force my voice casual. “Just one?”
He doesn’t smile. “Internal IHC security flagged you.”
My fingers go numb. “Flagged me how?”