But I know him. Iknewhim. We burned through half the outer system archives together once, trying to map Obol’s signature code threads. He had theories no one else did. Connections I never dared to write down. He saw the system’s rot long before I did.
If anyone could’ve tracked the key, it’s him.
And if he’s resurfacing now…
It’s not a coincidence.
It’s a call.
And I’m the only one who can answer.
He knows.
The moment I step back from the console, I feel it. The room tightens around his silence like a vice. I don’t need to look to know that he’s watching, arms folded, weight shifted to one side like he’s trying not to say the first thing that comes to his mind.
But he says it anyway.
“What did he say?”
I bite the inside of my cheek. “You don’t want to do this.”
“Too late,” Tatek says, voice low and hard. “You got a message, and now you’re lit up like a flare. Don’t pretend it’s nothing.”
I turn, slow, and meet his eyes.
He’s not angry.
He’s scared.
But with Tatek, fear doesn’t show up in tremors or retreat. It shows up as that stone-set jaw, that quiet anchoring in his feet like he’s bracing for a hit.
“I got a ping from a backchannel I seeded a while ago,” I say.
He doesn’t blink. “Jax?”
My silence is his answer.
Tatek steps forward. “You told me he was burned.”
“He was.”
“Then how the hell is he pinging you from a Coalition-locked comm grid?”
I exhale through my nose and rub the heel of my hand against my forehead. “I don’t know. He must’ve slipped through some kind of access seam—he always knew how to ride the system’s blind spots.”
“That’s not an explanation.”
“No, it’s not,” I snap. “But it’s what I’ve got.”
He closes the distance between us in three long strides. Close enough that I can see the way the overhead light threads silver through the cut on his brow. His voice doesn’t rise, but it gets heavier.
“What did he say?”
I hesitate.
Tatek waits.
“He has it,” I say finally. “The override key. The final piece of the Obol net. Not just access—control. Command-layer overwrite capacity. The thing we weren’t even sure existed? He found it.”
