The submersible’s hull groaned under the pressure of the deep, a sound that vibrated through the ferroconcrete pylons of Pacifica Platform. Sineus watched the rusted belly of the freeport grow in his viewport, a chaotic geometry of stacked freighters and modular habitats lashed together with thick, weeping cables. The Kausal Compass was cold and inert in his hand, its purpose served for now. The data fragment he’d pulled from the collapsing bunker off the Norwegian coast was a hard knot of encrypted potential in his suit’s dry-pouch. He had a piece of the truth; now he needed the right-of-way to use it.
Pacifica Platform was a city built on the principle of mutual distrust, a neutral ground floating in international waters where every faction could trade as long as they left their armies at the door. The air on the landing pad tasted of salt, ozone from failing conduits, and the faint, greasy smell of nutrient paste from a thousand food stalls. He moved through the throng, a ghost in a plain grey enviro-coat, his face obscured by the collar. The noise was a physical presence, a wash of a dozen languages and the constant hum of generators fighting the decay of the sea.
The negotiation hall was a repurposed cargo bay, a vast, hollow space whose curved trusses rose into the gloom like the rib cage of some long-dead leviathan. The air was colder here, the noise of the platform muted to a distant, industrial heartbeat. A single grimy oculus high above let in a disc of overcast grey light, illuminating the dust motes dancing in the air. Fifteen figures were present, arranged in a loose semicircle. Ambassadors and their aides. He recognized the sigils on their collars: the Baobab of the African Bloc, the Petro-Crescent of the Mideast Coalition, the Sun-Stone of the LatAm Concord. They were the non-aligned powers, the ones who owned the sovereign bandwidth he needed to cross.
He took his position at the center of the floor. No table, no chairs. Just a man standing before the representatives of a third of the world. A woman from the African Bloc, her face a mask of calm authority, stepped forward. Her name was Imani Okoro. Her file marked her as a pragmatist.
— RosNova asks for much, — she began, her voice clear and carrying in the echoing space. Her eyes were dark, analytical. — You want unrestricted passage through our sovereign data-space. A ghost lane from pole to pole. The price for such a thing is not paid in credits.
— We demand security guarantees, — a man from the Mideast Coalition added, his fingers steepled. His name was Tariq Al-Hamad, a former financier. — If we grant you this corridor, we become party to your conflict. We become targets for the Archive State, for Shenzhen Ascendant.
— And for what? — the LatAm ambassador, a woman named Sofia Reyes, asked quietly. — For a RosNova asset to chase a ghost signal? We require a share. Data futures. A percentage of whatever asset you secure at the end of this vector.
Their terms were a wall. They wanted insurance against a war he was about to escalate, and a profit from a truth they didn't even know the shape of. They saw him as a corporate agent seeking a resource advantage. They were operating on the old logic, the lie of a world governed by markets.
Sineus let the silence stretch. He could feel the faint, persistent flicker of a Palimpsest Phantom in the far corner of the hall, a grey, silent shape of a man shaking his head in a loop of refusal. The ghost of some past deal gone wrong. It was a useful anchor, a reminder that this place was built on failure.
— You are correct, — Sineus said, his voice low and even. The admission caught them off guard. — I cannot offer you security. There is no security. I cannot offer you data futures, because the asset I pursue cannot be quantified on a balance sheet.
He saw their expressions harden. He had refused their opening terms. This was the moment the negotiation would collapse.
— Your distrust of RosNova is logical, — he continued, meeting Imani Okoro’s gaze. — So do not grant access to RosNova. Grant it to a neutral party. All data I transmit will be routed through the Vatican Datarium's sanctified servers. Their archivists will hold the raw data in escrow. They will be the arbiters. You will have a verifiably neutral record of my findings.
The tension in the room shifted. He had addressed their core problem: trust. The Vatican Datarium was the one faction no one dared to attack directly, their belief in the sanctity of memory a strange, unassailable shield in a world of memetic warfare. He had offered them a lockbox held by a priest.
— And what do we get from this record? — Tariq Al-Hamad pressed, his voice sharp. — Historical footnotes?
Sineus took a step forward. The movement was small, but it held the focus of the entire room. He was no longer a supplicant. He was an instrument of a coming storm.
— The Chronos Shard is not a corporate asset. It is a causal pointer. A line of pure, uneditable truth in a world that has been lying to itself for a century. The factions you fear are not racing to acquire it. They are racing to contain it, to bury it, or to erase it. Their actions are already destabilizing the script. You have seen it in your markets, in the glitches on your public feeds.
He let his words hang in the cold air. He was offering them nothing but the truth, a commodity so rare it had become toxic.
— I offer results, not protection, — he stated, his voice a flat, hard fact. — The storm is coming. You can have a wall, or you can have a compass.
He saw the understanding dawn in Imani Okoro’s eyes. He wasn't asking for a favor. He was giving them a choice, and naming the price. A wall was safety, a retreat into the controlled lie. A compass was a tool to navigate the chaotic truth that was about to break over all of them.
The ambassadors exchanged glances. A silent, high-speed negotiation passed between them in a flurry of micro-expressions and subtle gestures. They were weighing the risk of inaction against the risk of alliance with him. The Palimpsest Phantom in the corner continued its silent, looping refusal, a ghost of the old way of doing things.
Imani Okoro turned back to him. The calculation was complete.
— We will grant you the corridor, — she said, her voice firm. The axis of the world tilted a fraction. — The data will be held in escrow by the Datarium, as you proposed. We receive the raw, unedited feed. That is our price.
— Agreed, — Sineus said. It was a single word, but it sealed a fragile coalition that would either save the world or burn it down. He had paid for their trust with the only currency he had left: the promise of a truth more dangerous than any lie.
The deal was done. A string of code flashed in his personal terminal, confirming the opening of the sovereign bandwidth corridors. A green light in a world of grey.
The low, resonant hum began then. It was a vibration felt more than heard, a deep thrum that vibrated up through the ferroconcrete floor of the platform.
A flash of brilliant orange lit the grimy oculus for a fraction of a second, followed by the distant, tearing roar of a coilgun discharge.
The war for the truth had found them.
