Helix Corp monitors everything. Communication traffic. Routing anomalies. Encryption signatures. The message itself wouldn’t matter. The signal would.
The instant it appeared on their network, they’d follow it.
And if they followed it, the two people at the other end of that channel would stop being my parents and start being leverage.
I built the channel because I needed it to exist. I keep it silent for the same reason. The ache behind my sternum folds itself into acompartment I don’t open during working hours. I turn back to the keyboard, and another face surfaces before I can stop it.
Younger than me. Wide brown eyes fixed on mine. The last expression she ever gave me frozen somewhere between confusion and trust, still believing someone would fix what was happening.
I shove the memory down. It goes, but not quietly. The guilt never does. Neither do the bills.
I open the client queue and scroll through the jobs I’ve been tracking, the ones that might pay enough for me to eat and breathe. An identity build for a Korvathi trader who wanted a clean background check has been sitting at the top for four days, and I pull up the details again. Hoping the listing has changed is the closest I come to recreational activity.
It’s gone. Awarded to someone else, cancelled, or never real in the first place. The queue refreshes, and the gap where the listing sat feels like a hole punched through a budget that can’t absorb another loss.
I lean back, and the chair frame protests beneath me. Cheap metal creaks in sympathy with the ache in my lower back from too many hours in the same position. I refresh the client queue again.
Nothing.
No new jobs. No new credits.
On Percy’s tertiary display, I pull up the files I’ve assembled over the last two weeks. The ones I’ve been calling research, because research sounds professional and deliberate. It sounds a lot better than admitting I’ve been building a final list of options and trying not to think about why.
House Sethrak’s network architecture spreads across the screen in layers I’ve mapped during the hours between client jobs. Most of what I’ve uncovered sits beneath the public-facing infrastructure, buried in the framework that supports the real operation underneath.The Sethrai build gorgeous networks. Their encryption shifts configuration in real time, adapting to traffic patterns and user behavior, and whoever designed the system has an aesthetic sense that borders on artistic.
I’ve spent enough time inside corporate architectures to appreciate good work when I see it.
They’re good.
Just not good enough.
A vulnerability sits three tiers below the operational layer, buried inside a junction where an automated sweep-and-flag cycle hands off to manual monitoring. The transition creates a processing delay measured in fractions of a second. Most systems compensate for it. This one doesn’t.
I sit closer to the screen, suddenly alert. The gap is tiny, but it’s there.
And beyond it sits intelligence data valuable enough that rival houses would pay more credits than I’ve seen in years. Enough to buy six months of respiratory supplements. Enough to stop counting cartridges.
Enough to give Vahiri Prime the middle finger and never come back.
Percy flashes an amber caution alert, the warning pulse bright against the blue glow of the credit display.
“I hear you.” I rest my fingers on the keyboard without pressing a key. “I’m doing it anyway.”
I tap his casing in the spot that means trust me, part of the strange language we’ve built over four years together.
I’m prepared for an opportunity like this. The proxy chain is in place. The handoff delay is mapped. I’ve timed the opening within a margin of twelve milliseconds. If my calculations are right, I’ll be inand out before their monitoring systems register anything unusual,and I’ll be off-planet before the day is through.
If I’m wrong, House Sethrak will trace the intrusion to The Splits, to this corridor, to this room. After that, my credit balance won’t matter very much.
It’s a gamble, but I’m desperate enough to roll the dice. “Okay, Perce. Let’s go rob a crime lord and prove exactly how valuable I am.”
Chapter Three
MIRO
The first security layer peels away without resistance. Then the second. Then the third. The familiar rush of a live intrusion settles into my blood, sharpening my focus until the room fades into the background and all that remains is the system in front of me and the path waiting to be carved through it.
Percy’s display expands to full projection, data streams spilling across the room in colors I’ve assigned by priority. Blue for structural mapping. Green for clear pathways. Amber for caution. Red for monitoring nodes I need to avoid. The shifting light paints my skin as I work, and the room narrows to the width of the display, the hum of Percy’s processors, and the rhythm of my fingers moving through architecture that belongs to someone very dangerous.
