“You see?” he says, gesturing sharply. “This is exactly what destabilization looks like—chaos, panic, frozen supply?—”
Behind him, Baragon-aligned personnel are shouting at each other. A man in a sleek suit grabs someone by the sleeve andpoints at the financial overlay like it’s a weapon. Another person slams a fist on a table so hard the holo feed jitters.
Morazin’s eyes flick again to the ticker. His expression tightens.
He realizes what I realize:
The funding scaffolds are collapsing.
When markets freeze, when liquidity panics hit, when clearinghouses lock—Baragon can’t move money quietly. Nine channels choke. Merc invoices bounce.
You can’t stage a war cycle if your engine just seized.
And now everyone watching knows it.
Morazin’s mouth tightens into a hard line. He stops pacing.
Then he makes his choice.
“Enough,” he snaps, voice low.
He lifts his hand and signals off-camera—two fingers, sharp.
Shooters step into view at the platform edge—armored, rifles raised, optics glowing faintly. Execution squad, disciplined, quiet.
My stomach drops, but I keep my face blank.
Morazin turns back to the drone, voice like ice.
“Terminate her,” he says.
The shooters move closer.
Morazin barks to his tech crew, “Jam her feed. Hard. Cut the propagation.”
A frantic voice answers, “We can’t—sir, redundancy—there are too many nodes?—”
I feel a savage thrill under the fear.
Because my redundancy protocol is doing exactly what it’s supposed to. My proof is already in civilian nodes, in entertainment packets, in stupid meme relays that will keep replicating even if his core channel dies.
He can kill me.
He can’t kill the spread.
Morazin’s eyes dart to me for the first time in minutes with real hatred.
“You,” he whispers, and the mic catches it.
I smile, small and shaky, letting the audience see it like I’ve accepted martyrdom.
“Yeah,” I whisper back. “Me.”
The shooters raise their rifles.
My heartbeat pounds so hard it hurts.
Then the horizon trembles—not physically, but on the platform’s sensor display, which flickers in the corner of the feed.
