“That’s not ours,” Vrok says immediately.
“No.”
The footage shows a dockside execution. Three men on their knees. A shadowed figure behind them. Frame distorted. Voice filtered.
The silhouette is wrong.
The stance is wrong.
The blade angle is wrong.
But the tag’s been applied anyway.
“Butcher.”
I scrub forward.
Another file.
This one is a riot suppression clip from a mining colony I’ve never visited. Chaos. Fire. A body falling from an upper scaffold.
Overlayed text:
NO MERCY. NO WARNING.
The Butcher.
My stomach twists.
“Fabricated?” Vrok asks.
“Some of it,” I say. “Some of it repurposed. Real violence, wrong attribution.”
I pull up the metadata. These aren’t random rumor drops. They’re coordinated. Timed.
Each release correlates with a Hooves withdrawal.
Each story lands exactly where Marj’s influence used to sit.
“She’s not just spreading fear,” I say slowly. “She’s stabilizing her absence.”
Vrok frowns. “Explain.”
I zoom out to the pattern map.
Hooves assets pulled from Kaerva.
Simultaneous rumor spike in three neighboring sectors.
Another withdrawal.
Another rumor.
“She’s filling the vacuum with me,” I say.
He goes very still.
“She pulls out publicly,” I continue, tracing the lines with my finger, “but leaves a predator behind in story form. Something worse. Something unpredictable.”
