The green light from the Veracity Coil on his wrist felt like a fresh wound. It was the color of access, of survival, but it was a lie he had purchased, and it burned against his skin. He pushed through the beaded curtain into The Weft, and the change in atmosphere was a physical blow. The clean, rain-washed air of the street gave way to a thick soup of ozone, stale synth-alcohol, and the metallic tang of desperation that clung to the walls like grime. He was no longer a supplicant asking for scraps. He was a client. The thought changed the way he moved, straightening the ache in his back, hardening the line of his jaw.
Eva Rostova was behind the bar, a still point in the parlor’s chaotic hum. She was polishing a heavy glass with a gray cloth, her movements slow and deliberate. Her eyes, the color of a stormy sky, tracked him as he approached. They flicked down to the pale green glow on his wrist, then back to his face, a silent, complete assessment that missed nothing. She saw the money before he had it, saw the purpose that had replaced the exhaustion. She placed the clean glass on the bar and waited.
He didn’t waste time with words. He reached into his coat and laid the credit chips on the scarred, dark wood of the bar. Five thousand credits, stacked in a neat, black column. The money from OmniCore. The sound of the last chip clicking into place was soft, but it cut through the low thrum of the memory booths. It was the sound of a performance being sold to fund an authentic act. He was using their coin to buy the weapon he would turn against them.
— I need a clean Cortical Reel, — Kaito’s voice was low, stripped of the sarcasm he usually wore like armor. — And an untraceable line to an OmniCore engineer.
Eva’s expression didn’t change, but a flicker in her eyes acknowledged the shift in their dynamic. She wasn’t dealing with a drowning man anymore. She was dealing with a man who had decided to burn the ship.
— This is about the dead android, — she said. It wasn’t a question. It was a statement of fact, a confirmation that she understood the currents of the underworld, that a secret like Anya Sharma’s death couldn’t stay submerged for long. She looked at the stack of credits, then back at him, her gaze weighing the risk against the reward.
— The price is double, — she said, her voice a low, smoky contralto. — And you’ll owe me.
Ten thousand credits. He had five. And a favor. A blank check written on his future, held by a woman who never forgot a debt. This was the moment. The choice. He could walk away, try to piece this together with the scraps he could afford, and almost certainly fail. He would keep his money, his freedom from obligation, and his guaranteed path to erasure. Or he could buy a chance. He could trade the lie on his wrist and a piece of his future for the tools to hunt a ghost. The price was his isolation. He couldn’t do this alone.
He gave a single, sharp nod.
The deal was made. In the smoky, dim light of The Weft, the pale green glow from his Veracity Coil seemed to lose its power, becoming just a color, a piece of the lie he was now using as a mask.
Eva held his gaze for a long moment, and he saw that flicker again, something that might have been respect. She turned without another word, her movements economical. She knelt behind the bar, and a section of the floor hissed open, revealing a hidden compartment lined with gray, shock-absorbent foam. She retrieved two objects.
The first was a Cortical Reel, a portable forensic device for playing back raw sensory data. It was housed in a briefcase-sized, scuffed polymer case, its matte black surface cool and textured. It had no sleek interfaces, only a series of physical dials and heavy toggle switches that spoke of its illicit, black-market origins. It hummed with the low thrum of an internal cooling fan, and the air around it smelled of warm plastic and ozone.
The second object was the untraceable line. It wasn't a line at all, but a small, dense comm-link, a block of non-reflective ceramic no bigger than his thumb. It felt heavy, its weight promising layers of shielding and one-time encryption keys that would burn out after a single use. It was cold and utterly illegal.
Eva placed them on the bar but kept her hand on the Cortical Reel, her gaze lingering on it for a moment longer than necessary.
— If a den’s hot, the phrase is ‘The loom is tangled’, — she said, her voice dropping. She was giving him something he hadn’t paid for. A piece of jargon, a tool for survival. — Say it to the bartender. Don’t wait for an answer. Just leave.
She pushed the gear across the bar towards him. Her eyes were hard again, the mask of the pragmatist back in place.
— Stay alive, Kaito. It’s bad for business if you don’t.
He heard the words she didn’t say. The concern, buried deep beneath the layers of cynical self-preservation. He nodded again, a silent acknowledgment of the subtext, of the fragile trust being formed between them. He gathered the gear, the cold weight of the comm-link and the heavy bulk of the Cortical Reel feeling real, authentic, in his hands. As he stood there, a ghost in a room full of ghosts, he felt for the familiar, phantom shriek of the Severance Tone in his spine, the hardware’s rejection of his choices. But there was nothing. Only the low, steady hum of The Weft and the quiet in his own bones. For the first time in a long time, his actions and his intent were aligned.
He turned and walked out, leaving the stack of credits on the bar. He didn’t look back.
The alley was dark, the rain having washed the air clean. The neon signs of the city bled into the wet ferrocrete, their colors chaotic and beautiful. He had the tools. He had a partner. He was no longer just reacting to the System. He was hunting.
Now to see if the fearful architect would answer his call.
