The file crackles to life with a flicker of warning text:
REDACTED // DO NOT TRANSMIT
EYES ONLY // TRIDENT CLEARANCE OVERRIDE
SUBJECT: D. VARN / OPERATION FOLDLINE
And then it starts.
First, it’s reports. Boring on the surface. “Combat Loss Summary Reports.” “Resource Recycling Efficiency Logs.” “Unitized Armor Allocation Tables.”
Until I dig deeper.
The names on the logs aren’t units. They’re fighters. Champions. The people Valtron sweats beside every morning and drinks with every night.
And the “resource recycling”? Not armor or tech.
It’s bodies.
Every combat death in the last six months—every "unrecoverable" corpse—was tagged for internal disposal by Varn’s private cleanup crew. And within seventy-two hours, duplicate serial numbers for Alliance-issued armor, weapons, and biotech show up in civilian export manifests.
They’re stealing from the dead.
They’re laundering it through “accidental” kills in the ring.
And Valtron?
He’s the main draw. The magnet. The gladiator everyone tunes in to see bleed, smash, and conquer.
Every match, every camera angle, every betting spike—feeds the pipeline.
He’s not a fighter.
He’s a fucking distraction.
I shove the compad away, disgust boiling in my throat.
Footsteps echo outside the room. Heavy. Familiar.
I wipe my face again and slide the compad into my coat just before the door hisses open.
Valtron steps in, sweat slicking his collarbones, breath still a little heavy from whatever beast he just body-slammed into orbit. He looks at me, and something in his golden eyes goes sharp.
“You found something.”
It’s not a question.
I nod, throat too tight for words.
He crosses the room in three strides, pulling a towel from his neck and tossing it onto the console.
I pull out the pad and load the main screen.
“Here,” I say, voice rough. “Start with this one.”
He reads fast. Too fast. His eyes scan the first report, then flick to the next, and the next. When he gets to the disposal manifest, his jaw tightens. When he sees the name Drayxon Varn, he curses in three languages—only one of which I recognize.
“Varn,” he growls. “I should’ve known. That smug bastard’s been too clean. Too... untouched.”
