He moved through a maze of pipes and conduits, the brass key a cold, hard weight in his pocket. The path forward was clear, but now it was crowded. Shenzhen Ascendant knew his face. The cognitive load from the combat analysis sent a spike of sharp pain behind his eyes, his vision flickering with static. It was the price for running his systems that hot. He leaned against a damp, cold pipe, letting the pain subside into a dull ache. He needed a secure node, a quiet corner to process and plan.
He found it three levels down: a disused comms-relay junction, little more than a closet of blinking, obsolete hardware. The space was tight, smelling of dust and burnt circuits. He slid the door shut, the sound lost in the constant drone of the habitat’s generators. He ran a quick diagnostic on his personal terminal, the screen’s green glow painting his face in the dark. The pain in his head receded. He was operational.
A priority alert chimed, cutting through the quiet. It was not a RosNova signal. The encryption was layered, complex, and unfamiliar. He traced its origin. The signal was being bounced through a dozen dead satellites, but its source was unmistakable: a directorate-level server deep within the New York Arcology. The Archive State. He let the connection request hang for a full minute, analyzing its structure. It was clean. Too clean. He accepted.
The terminal screen cleared, replaced by a face. It was unnaturally smooth, the skin without pores or lines, the product of expensive biomodifications and a lifetime spent away from real weather. The silver hair was perfect. The eyes were a pale, cold blue, a specific model of cybernetic implant that betrayed no emotion. Augustus Paxton, a senior director for the Archive State, looked out from the screen. His backdrop was a seamless white wall, a void of sterile perfection.
— Sineus, — Paxton’s voice was smooth, media-trained, a stark contrast to the grit and noise of Float-Hab 7. — I trust you are somewhere… functional. We’ve been monitoring the chaos surrounding the Chronos Shard. A dangerous signal, wouldn’t you agree? Unmanaged truth has a tendency to destabilize markets. It corrodes consensus.
Paxton’s objective was clear: establish a baseline of shared concern for order. His tactic was to frame the truth as a disease. Sineus remained silent, his face impassive. He let the director talk, his own objective to gather intelligence.
— This race to the bottom is inefficient, — Paxton continued, a faint, condescending smile playing on his lips. — RosNova’s brutalism, Shenzhen’s brute force. It’s all so… kinetic. The Archive State prefers a more elegant solution. We don’t seize assets. We manage narratives. Join us, Sineus. We can manage this truth. We can fold it into the public record so gently that no one even feels the seam.
The offer hung in the air, a proposal to turn his war into a clerical task. To Sineus, it was an offer to become a janitor for lies. He saw the flicker of a Palimpsest Phantom at the edge of the screen, the ghost of a man staring at his own empty hands, the same one from Jax’s stall. A reminder of the cost of erased truth.
Paxton seemed to sense the silence was not agreement. He leaned closer, his voice dropping to a more intimate, conspiratorial tone. His status play shifted from a corporate pitch to a personal appeal.
— We’ve studied you, of course. We know about your… condition. The noise you see. The ghosts. It must be a burden, carrying the weight of every sloppy memory-edit and back-alley Neurotome procedure. A constant, painful static.
As Paxton spoke, Sineus saw it. A new phantom, faint and transparent, flickered over the director’s own face. The ghost of a woman with terror in her eyes, her mouth open in a silent scream. It was there for a fraction of a second, a glitch in the feed, a ghost in Paxton’s own machine. A truth his perfect system couldn’t completely hide. The offer was not just a lie; it was delivered by a man haunted by his own.
— We can remove that burden, — Paxton offered, his voice a silken promise. The phantom vanished. — Our technology can filter your perception. We can give you peace. A clean slate. You keep your skills, your function. We simply remove the pain. We keep the narrative. You get your life back.
The temptation was a cold, sharp thing. The offer of silence. An end to the constant, grey flicker of the world’s unhealed wounds. The price was simple: surrender. Become a tool for the very system that created the wounds in the first place. Institutionalize the lie he was fighting, in exchange for personal peace. His internal decision matrix registered the variables. The analysis was instant. The conclusion, absolute.
Sineus didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. His answer was an action. He reached out and hard-cut the channel.
Paxton’s face vanished, replaced by the terminal’s default green text. The sudden silence in the small room was immense. The low hum of the habitat’s machinery rushed back in to fill the void. He had refused the devil’s bargain, the easy way out. The choice was made, the price of a potential, powerful ally discarded for the sake of the mission’s integrity.
But the contact was not a waste. He immediately set to work, his fingers flying across the terminal. He isolated the ghost signature of Paxton’s quantum-entangled communication packet. It was a unique, untraceable key, a direct line to the director’s personal systems. He logged it, tagged it, and stored it in a shielded partition of his data-deck. Paxton had offered him a cage. Sineus had stripped it for parts. The director’s attempt to control him had just handed him a future weapon.
The rain had stopped. The air outside the junction box was clean, washed by the storm.
He stood, the key from Jax a solid weight in his hand. The race for the Aletheia Kernel was now causing fractures at the highest levels, and the political fallout would be his next battlefield.
