Novaria is a pleasure world on paper, a neon bruise in practice, and survival here belongs to people who notice small changes before they become large ones. I’ve lived long enough to understand that patterns are predators. They circle. They test. They strike when you assume the quiet means safety.
I don’t assume anything.
The cot behind me is narrow and perfectly made. The blanket is folded into a military rectangle at the foot. The room contains nothing personal. No photographs. No clothes that aren’t dark and utilitarian. No evidence that a living thing occupies this space instead of a weapon waiting to be picked up.
The weapons rack is bolted into the wall to my right, covered by a matte-black curtain that eats light. Three plasma pistols. One collapsible shock baton. Two monofilament blades sealed in anti-corrosion sheaths. A coil of Reaper-era cable I shouldn’t still have.
I pretend I don’t need any of them.
The terminal chirps softly as another packet resolves and dissolves.
I flick two fingers in the air, expanding the feed lattice into a layered heatmap of syndicate traffic across the city. Pulses of color bloom and fade over districts like a living nervous system. Most of it stays within predictable parameters.
Then a flare punches up out of the restaurant district.
Bright.
Sharp.
Wrong.
My spine tightens before my brain finishes processing it.
I lean forward, forearm sliding off my knee, and pinch the air to isolate the anomaly.
“Show me source clustering,” I murmur.
The terminal responds in a neutral synthetic voice. “Clustering displayed.”
Encrypted chatter condenses into a dense knot of overlapping traffic nodes, all tagged to Glimner syndicate routing codes. The compression ratio is extreme. Whatever they’re transmitting, they’re burying it under layers of noise and dead protocol the way you hide a knife inside a loaf of bread.
That alone is enough to make my jaw lock.
Glimner doesn’t move like this unless he’s planning something theatrical.
I drag the knot open with a two-handed gesture, letting my filters chew through the outer layers.
Static resolves into fragments.
“…authorization confirmed…”
“…target refusal escalated…”
“…example protocol greenlit…”
My pulse ticks up.
Slow.
Controlled.
Professional.
“They’re preparing an example,” I say quietly to the empty room.
The words taste old in my mouth.
I expand the map again, watching Glimner-linked nodes light up along maintenance corridors and low-traffic access roads leading toward the restaurant district. The pattern is surgical. Quiet mobilization. No overt muscle yet.
