Every system breach carries a signature, a behavioral fingerprint that reveals the operator behind it. Code has habits. Code has tells. The way this intruder moves through our encryption, which layers they peel back first, which nodes they linger on and which they skip, tells me who they are before any trace algorithm could.
This intruder came in through a tertiary maintenance port, the kind of access point most attackers would overlook. That tells me they mapped the architecture before they breached it. They bypassed three redundancy locks without triggering the failsafe, which means they understood how those systems interacted and disabled them together. That’s not luck, and it’s not standard intrusion software.
I follow the alerts in real time. The intruder is moving deeper into the network, past the operational layers and into the administrativearchitecture. They’re good. Good enough that it takes me thirty seconds to separate their activity from legitimate traffic.
When I find the origin point, it isn’t because the trace catches them. It’s because I recognize the pattern and work backward from it, the same instinct that lets me taste a lie before the liar finishes speaking.
The signal originates in The Splits.
A single-point access terminal. Commercial grade. Cheap enough that most people wouldn’t trust it to maintain a stable communication feed. The bandwidth is borrowed from a relay node serving a block of refugee housing.
One operator from The Splits.
The Splits is a slum district. Human refugees. Off-world drifters. People scraping by on subsistence wages and black-market air supplements. And somehow one of them has cut deeper into House Sethrak’s defenses than any intelligence operation I’ve ever encountered.
Alone.
On hardware that should barely function.
The elegance of the intrusion is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
“I’ll handle this one myself,” I tell Resh, and I’m through the door before he can answer.
Chapter Two
MIRO
The identity scrub comes back clean, and Percy’s processors hum as he routes the data through a chain of proxy nodes while I bounce the output to a dead-end server three sectors away. It’s excessive for a job this small, but excessive is what keeps me breathing.
“Come on, Perce.” I tap the side of his casing. “Don’t stall on me now.”
The holographic display flickers, a brief stutter I’ve chosen to interpret as annoyance, and then the routing completes. Green confirmations scroll down the screen.
I close the client’s file without saving a copy.
No copies. No evidence. No trail.
The room is eight feet by ten. I measured it the day I moved in because knowing exactly how little space I was paying for felt important at the time. Now it’s just depressing.
It’s not safe. Not mine. Not…home.
My narrow bed is pushed against the far wall to maximize space. Three screens are wired into a salvaged processing unit that complains whenever I push it too hard. Cables snake across the floor in routes I’ve memorized so I can navigate them in the dark. The overhead light diedthree weeks ago, but replacing it costs credits, and credits are currently reserved for more important things.
Like oxygen.
The atmospheric modifier clicks through another cycle on the shelf above my workstation. Eight credits a day disappear just keeping the air breathable enough for a human body to function.
Technically, Vahiri’s atmosphere can support human life without assistance. Technically, it can also support a person living on nutrient paste and recycled water. The distinction between surviving and functioning matters more in practice than it does on paper.
Without the modifier, symptoms start slowly. Fatigue settles into my muscles first, turning every movement into work. Then come the headaches, a steady pressure behind the eyes that builds until concentration becomes impossible. Eventually the oxygen deficit catches up with everything else, and the problem stops being productivity and starts being consciousness.
There are six cartridges left in the storage compartment beneath the shelf. Each will last four days. I have twenty-four days of breathing, if I want to be honest with myself. I turn my attention to Percy’s display, reading the 312 credits I have in my account.
There were 340 yesterday.
I sigh and look away. The Splits earns its name. Corridors carved into rock branch and divide until the layout feels more accidental than planned. Housing units have been partitioned and subdivided so many times that the original floor plans might as well be mythology.
Someone argues in Terran Standard laced with Korvathi loanwords. A baby cries somewhere below. The ventilation rattles overhead, a system designed for a mining outpost and now expected to support thousands of humans packed into a space built for a fraction of that number.
