But I feel it: a micro-vibration, a slight warming shift in the casing.
The device is awake. It’s just refusing to show me.
I breathe out slowly and shift my bound hands so my fingers can reach the underside port. I find the tiny diagnostic pinhole and press it with my thumbnail.
A faint chime—internal only, like a heartbeat.
Now I’m in service mode.
Not full access. But enough to run a subroutine.
I whisper under my breath, not because anyone can hear me through the collar field, but because words help my brain stay anchored.
“Okay, Jordan. Think ugly. Think boring. Think like an orphan trying to hide in plain sight.”
I build the trigger in my head first: a diagnostic routine that monitors for a specific broadcast frequency pattern—Morazin’s execution feed will have a signature, even if masked. When detected, the routine initiates a “maintenance handshake” to the Yatori corporate satellite grid—harmless on paper—embedding a payload inside the handshake’s checksum field.
Payload: a burst packet containing Morazin’s own audio stream as it goes live, plus the confession fragments I can force him into repeating if I time it right. And—most importantly—a routing instruction to push that payload into civilian entertainment data nodes I seeded earlier.
Hide it in music. In holo ads. In silly filters.
Make it spread faster than they can scrub.
I can’t transmit now.
But I don’t need to.
I just need the hook ready, waiting, patient.
I start programming through the diagnostic layer—no GUI, just tactile code blocks I trace with my fingertips against the screen’s dead glass. It’s muscle memory from work-study nights, from servers that didn’t care if you were thirteen as long as your hands were useful.
Every action is careful. Minimal. No suspicious spikes. No obvious send attempts.
And when the trigger is built, I test it without tipping my hand.
A micro-ping.
So small it’s almost nothing.
The compad warms slightly. The rig’s overhead panel doesn’t react. No alarms. No footsteps.
Then—faintly, like a distant echo through thick walls—a tiny acknowledgment returns through the satellite grid: a checksum confirmation.
It works.
My lungs finally let go of air.
I have a backdoor.
Nineteen minutes.
My wrists ache. My shoulders burn from tension. My mouth tastes like fear.
But I have a hook in Morazin’s own infrastructure, and hooks are how you land monsters.
The rig shudders slightly as the ship changes vector. The ceiling lights dim, then shift to a cooler hue—broadcast lighting. Camera-friendly.
Footsteps approach. Two sets. Calm. Professional.
