That means intimidation first.
Then destruction if intimidation fails.
My fingers move faster now, rerouting my terminal through a shadow relay to avoid Alliance surveillance pings. Old reflex. Muscle memory drilled into me by people who smiled while they taught me how to disappear.
I start logging the intel to an encrypted cache for later dissemination.
Then I stop.
The cursor blinks at the end of the line, waiting.
The word later sits in my skull like a bad joke.
Alliance conditioning snaps awake inside me like a shock collar tightening.
Stay hidden.
Stay small.
Do not intervene.
Intervention equals exposure.
Exposure equals containment.
Containment equals erasure.
I close my eyes for half a second, breathing slow through my nose, counting heartbeats the way they taught me.
One.
Two.
Three.
I can already feel the old pathways lighting up in my head, the mental scaffolding of restraint and self-denial that has kept me alive for decades in Alliance space.
Log it.
Archive it.
Walk away.
Not my territory.
Not my problem.
The Glimner syndicate does not care about collateral damage. They care about optics. They care about making surethe next person who thinks about saying no to them remembers what happened to the last one.
I should not care who that last one is.
I should not care.
I pull the curtain aside with two fingers and glance at the weapons rack anyway, my reflection faint in the matte metal.
“Don’t,” I tell myself under my breath.
The terminal chirps again.
