When Steve finally set the packet free, it was almost anticlimactic: a slip of data into the noise, a breadcrumb dropped into the river of commerce. The immediate response was thin: a security feed alert, a lawyer's terse email, a comment buried under a hundred other posts. Then the second wave hit—an investigative thread in a small independent paper that followed the money. It spread like a burnt scent through the city's underlife. By morning, a dozen voices demanded answers. By noon, someone in the council stood to speak in a forum and used the word "transparency" with the comfortable conviction of a man who had already planned his talking points. Cain watched the tone shift on the monitors. He did not cheer. Exposure was not the same as justice. It was a pressure applied, yes, but pressure could be diverted. It could be absorbed by a committee, sold to the highest bidder, or softened with a speech. Still — for the first time in days — Cain felt the weight lift from his chest by a fraction. They had set something loose. "What then?" Susan asked, voice flat. "When they answer, what will we do?" "We keep moving," Cain said. The answer came out simpler than he felt it. "We force them to move first. We don't allow them the comfort of a scripted response with scripted safety. We make their reaction costly." Hunter nodded. "Then we cut their allies from the inside." Roselle's grin returned in a tilt of satisfaction. "Then we watch the towers choke on their own scaffolding." They did not celebrate. There was no taste of triumph in the air. Only the cold logic of the next step. They were gamblers, and the city was a house that had always been rigged. Tonight they had forced one lever to balk; tomorrow other levers would have to answer. Men with money and men with oaths would react in ways they could not fully predict. That uncertainty was a blade they intended to wield. Outside the safehouse window, the city breathed in shallow, uncertain gusts. Somewhere on a rooftop a flag flapped. People woke and thought of coffee and bread and whether the morning's news would make their day easier or harder. For them, a war in the arteries might be a rumor. For Cain and the rest, it was a map with new ink. Cain stood and tightened the strap on his blade. "We move at dusk," he said. "All of us. We follow the paper trail. We break what helps them rebuild the lie." They prepared then, as they always did — with practical coldness, with lists and backups and a gratitude for the small, human weapons of distraction. They would not win clean. They would not win forever. They would, for now, turn the city's gaze and see who flinched first. When the door shut behind them, an old man in a window on the next street saw the movement and told his neighbor something about strange men and worse nights. The neighbor shrugged and went back to his bread. Life continued. The city bent with both the weight of living and the new contours of truth; the space between them would be where Cain's plans either found purchase or were ground to ruin. They had made a cut. They would watch it bleed and learn from what came next. They left at dusk like a funeral procession dressed for war. Cain moved first, not because he wanted to but because movement relieved the itch of waiting. The city slid past them—shops closing, men leaning on doorframes, a child chasing a loose dog—small lives that had no idea which pulleys were being pulled above them. They threaded through alleys and over service bridges until the towers felt like cliffs above their heads. Steve navigated with a tablet and raw cunning. His makeshift packet had done its thing; now they were following breadcrumbs that smelled of paper and bad faith. "Salvage firm on Halberd Dock," he said, tapping a screen. "Registered in three names, operated by one proxy. Money flows through salvage contracts into private security invoices. After that, it goes quiet. But there's a ledger print on a server farm at the old textile plant." Hunter nodded. "We take the plant. We find the ledger. We make the quiet noisy." Roselle's gun was a flat shape at her hip. "Or we make the quiet messy." They arrived at the plant by shadow, slipping through a chain-link gate that used to keep thieves out and now only slowed them. The building smelled of mothballs and grease, the kind of smell that keeps memories for the stubborn. Windows had been boarded, but there was a service entrance the staff used for deliveries—now unlatched. Cain put his shoulder to the door and it opened like an invitation. Inside, the air was cool, machinery asleep in lines like teeth. Server racks hummed in the back, their LEDs like distant beacons. Steve went to work with a quiet concentration that made the hair on Cain's arms lift. They did not expect long resistance. They expected papers to be found, names to be traced, a clean story to hand to the morning. What they did not expect was the hand on Cain's shoulder before the lights had fully gone low. "You don't have to do this," a voice said. It was female, and there was an accent you heard at the docks, salt in her vowels. Cain turned. A woman stood under a hanging lamp, face half-swallowed by shadow, a clipboard held out like a shield. ɪꜰ ʏᴏᴜ ᴡᴀɴᴛ ᴛᴏ ʀᴇᴀᴅ ᴍᴏʀᴇ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs, ᴘʟᴇᴀsᴇ ᴠɪsɪᴛ 𝘯𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭•𝘧𝘪𝘳𝘦•𝘯𝘦𝘵 Roselle tightened her grip on the pistol. "Who are you?" She smiled without humor. "I am the woman who signs invoices. I am the one who counts the hours the vans run. You'd be surprised how many people prefer counting to thinking." Hunter stepped forward, diplomacy soft on his tongue. "We're not here to—" "To talk?" she finished. "You'll find words are expensive and evidence is cheaper. I can make this stop. For a price."