Chapter 25 Jordan
JORDAN
Gur’s morning air tastes like rust and sweet oil—like the planet woke up chewing on machinery.
I’m hunched over a table in a back room of the Defrocked Nun that’s pretending to be a “suite,” but it’s really just a control box with curtains.
The walls are thick enough to muffle the casino’s heartbeat, yet I can still feel it through the floor—bass notes like distant thunder, coins clinking, laughter with teeth in it.
My compad’s hologram floats above the tabletop, layered windows stacked like a frantic thought spiral: Morazin’s relay chain, Nine-coded transaction routes, the Alliance node cluster, and Clint’s secure channel blinking impatiently in the corner.
I rub my eyes with the heel of my hand. My fingertips smell faintly of solder and lemon cleanser and—underneath—stress sweat.
“Okay,” I mutter. “Let’s do paperwork that could get me executed. Fun.”
I accept Clint’s call.
His face pops up, tight-jawed, eyes bloodshot. He looks like he’s been sleeping in a chair and losing.
“Jordan,” he says, no greeting. “Talk fast.”
“Love you too,” I say automatically, then wince because the humor comes out brittle.
He doesn’t smile. “We have a narrow window.”
My spine straightens. “Define narrow.”
“Two hours,” he says. “Maybe less. There’s a scheduled custody ‘transfer review’ in the system—routine bureaucratic garbage. If I can slip a transfer order inside that noise, I can move Morazin off-book.”
Off-book. My stomach clenches.
“That’s… insane,” I say, though my brain is already running ahead, mapping pathways. “How do you even—”
“By writing it like the kind of thing nobody reads,” Clint says. “But I can’t just yank him. I need a credible legal justification that survives the first ten minutes of scrutiny.”
I exhale slowly. The air smells faintly like expensive wood polish. It makes me want to gag.
“You want me to give you an excuse,” I say.
“I want you to give me a weapon,” Clint corrects. “Something that forces both IHC and Alliance to keep him alive long enough to talk.”
My jaw tightens. “They don’t want him talking.”
“I know,” Clint says, and his voice drops. “Which is why we have to make it impossible for them to kill him without admitting they did.”
I swallow. My mouth tastes like dry metal.
“Okay,” I say. “Okay. Give me your constraints.”
Clint flicks his eyes downward like he’s reading a list. “It has to be jurisdictional. It has to justify a cross-agency hold. And it has to be something that makes Morazin a live intelligence asset, not just a prisoner.”
I stare at the floating evidence map above my table. Morazin’s chain glows, a web of transactions and relays, each link a quiet crime.
Then my brain clicks into that old, familiar gear—the one that doesn’t panic, just builds.
“He’s not a murderer,” I say slowly. “Not in the legal framing. He’s a systems-level actor.”
Clint frowns. “Go on.”
“He used Alliance-controlled infrastructure,” I say, voice sharpening. “That means cross-jurisdiction access. He ran biometric forgery and financial triggers through shells tied to intergovernmental markets. That’s not just war provocation—it’s cyberterrorism.”
Clint’s eyebrows lift. “Cyberterrorism.”
“Systems-level,” I say, more certain now. “He didn’t just kill people, he attacked institutional stability. He weaponized the holonet’s trust layer, jammed comms, forged biometrics. Then he used staged spectacle to trigger political destabilization and market volatility.”
I pull up a specific relay header and flick it toward Clint’s holo feed.
“Look,” I say. “This relay hop goes through Alliance node infrastructure. That’s not supposed to be touchable by him.
Which means either someone inside is complicit, or the network’s compromised.
Either way, he becomes a live intelligence asset because he’s the only bridge between funding, access, and authorization. ”
Clint stares at the data, then nods slowly. I can almost see his mind recalibrate from dread to action.
“That’s… good,” he says. “That’s very good.”
“I’m not done,” I say, because adrenaline is now a river. “Frame him as a cross-jurisdiction financial sabotage operator. Not a political prisoner. Not a war criminal. A cyberterrorist with active links into Alliance and IHC infrastructure. That forces a joint intelligence custody hold.”
Clint’s lips part. “We can cite the interstellar counter-sabotage statutes.”
“Exactly,” I say, and the word tastes like a win I don’t trust yet. “Make it so if either side tries to quietly erase him, it looks like they’re destroying evidence.”
Clint exhales hard. “Okay. Draft it. Now. I need language I can paste into the order.”
“On it,” I say.
I cut the call and start typing like my life depends on syntax.
Because it does.
My compad projects a document window in front of my face. The cursor blinks like it’s impatient with me. I can almost hear Morazin laughing somewhere, thin and brittle, convinced he’s untouchable.
I write:
SUBJECT: MORAZIN VALEER — SYSTEMS-LEVEL CYBERTERRORISM / CROSS-JURISDICTION FINANCIAL SABOTAGE
BASIS: Unauthorized access and exploitation of Alliance-controlled relay infrastructure; biometric identity forgery at military-grade encryption; coordinated suppression of emergency transponders; instigation of intergovernmental armed conflict via staged communications; execution of market destabilization through contingent asset triggers tied to Nine-affiliated shells.
My fingers fly.
I cite the relay headers. The payment chains. The Nine-coded encryption fragments. I frame him as a living breach point—an active threat actor whose knowledge is necessary to patch the vulnerability.
A live intelligence asset.
A witness.
A human-shaped key nobody can smash without breaking the lock in public.
I finish and send it to Clint.
The message goes with a soft chime.
And then, for one second, everything in me trembles—like my body just remembered what it means to be scared.
I press two fingers to my pulse point at my throat and force myself to breathe.
Then I glance at the evidence vault window.
Time to test the dead-drop.
Because if I’m about to start playing games with governments and syndicates and the Nine, I need to know my insurance policy is real.
Not comforting fiction.
I open the vault protocol and step through the layers of encryption like descending stairs into a bunker. The interface asks for biometrics—retina flicker, pulse signature, micro-sweat pattern. The Kaijen tech is paranoid and elegant. I respect it.
I trigger the test mode.
A countdown appears.
SIMULATED BIOMETRIC FAILURE — INITIATE PUBLIC RELEASE?
My mouth goes dry.
I tap YES.
The vault initiates in silence. No dramatic flare. Just a cascade of mirrored pings as shards of my evidence package replicate into civilian cloud mirrors, Kaijen servers, and dead-storage nodes. Then the auto-release packet arms itself—an ugly little digital grenade.
CONFIRMED: AUTO-RELEASE ACTIVE UPON BIOMETRIC FLATLINE.
I stare at the words until my eyes sting.
“So if they kill me,” I whisper, “the truth detonates anyway.”
It should make me feel safe.
It doesn’t.
It makes me feel like I’ve just put a collar of explosives around my own neck and called it freedom.
My compad buzzes—security ping from the corridor outside. A message from one of Lonari’s people: MARKET RUN APPROVED / ESCORT IN PLACE.
I stare at it, debating.
I need components. I need a fresh encryption key chip for the vault. I need physical items that can’t be printed from paranoia alone.
And I’ve been hiding in the Nun’s walls long enough that my skin feels itchy.
“Fine,” I mutter. “Crowds. Normal people. Surely nobody will try to murder me in a crowded market district. That would be rude.”
I grab my jacket, tuck the compad inside the inner pocket where it rests against my ribs like a second heart, and head out.
Two Kaijen escorts flank me as we move into Gur’s market zone—an open-air sprawl beneath flickering neon canopies and rusted steel awnings.
The district smells like spice and exhaust, like roasting meat and chemical solvents, like wet stone and sweat.
Voices overlap in a chaotic symphony: vendors barking prices, kids laughing, someone swearing in a dialect I don’t recognize but understand emotionally.
My senses sharpen. Too many angles. Too many hands. Too many people who could be nothing—or could be knives.
“Keep your eyes open,” I tell my escorts automatically.
One of them grunts. “Always.”
We weave through stalls selling black-market nanite patches, counterfeit Alliance ration bars, weapon parts hidden beneath fabric bolts, jewelry that probably belonged to someone dead.
I try to look like I belong.
I do not.
The moment a human walks through a Coalition market with Kaijen muscle on either side, the air changes. People notice. Curiosity, fear, interest—like I’ve become a rumor with legs.
I reach a tech stall under a blue tarp canopy. The vendor, an older Alzhon with delicate hands and skeptical eyes, looks me up and down.
“You buyin’ or sightseeing?” she asks.
“Buying,” I say. “Encryption hardware. Clean.”
She snorts. “Clean doesn’t live here.”
“Cleaner than dead,” I say, and that makes her laugh once.
I start negotiating, because negotiating is easier than thinking about being hunted.
And then—my skin prickles.
Not fear in general. Specific. Directed.
The kind that comes when a gaze locks onto you like a scope.
I glance sideways, scanning the crowd.
People. Movement. A man in a gray coat. A woman with a hood. A kid darting between legs.
Nothing obvious.
But my pulse picks up anyway.
My escort on the left shifts. His nostrils flare. He smells something too.
“Jordan,” he murmurs, barely audible.
“What?” I whisper.
He doesn’t answer.
He just moves—fast—placing his body half between me and the crowd.
The vendor frowns. “What’s—”
A sharp pop splits the air.
Not a gunshot. Something smaller. Like a suppressed discharge or a micro-charge.