Nera’s eyes flick. “You froze the Orpheline Route.”
“I did,” I say. “And they responded with bullets.”
Orin’s mouth curls. “So we respond with bullets.”
I shake my head slowly. “No. We respond with hunger.”
The room quiets.
I lean forward, elbows on the table. “We’re going to sting their channels. Intercept shipments. Track handlers. Strip their comfort. Make them spend resources defending their own stomach.”
Nera studies me. “You’re turning us into a counterintelligence outfit.”
I shrug. “Call it evolution.”
A captain to my right—old guard, scarred—asks quietly, “And civilians?”
I glance at him. “We shield them. We keep the Nine from turning Gur into a stage again. We don’t give governments easy propaganda.”
Orin scoffs. “That’s going to slow profits.”
“Yes,” I say. “It will.”
He opens his mouth?—
“And if you can’t handle slower profits because you’re addicted to expansion,” I add, voice flat, “then you can follow Jasker into exile.”
The table goes still.
Good.
Message delivered.
I stand. “Sting starts tonight. I want the Nine’s next supply shipment intercepted before it reaches its drop.”
Senn looks up from his slate. “We have three suspected high-volume transfers in the next twenty-four hours.”
“Pick the one they’re most confident in,” I say. “The one they think we won’t touch.”
Sable steps out of the shadows near the door. “Dock Nine. Industrial ring. Disguised as medical freight.”
I nod. “That.”
Nera exhales slowly. “If this fails?—”
“It won’t,” I say.
Because Jordan is part of this now, whether they like it or not.
And Jordan makes systems scream.
The shipment arrives like a rumor.
A plain cargo container, scanned and cleared through too many “official” channels for a criminal package. It’s escorted by men who wear dock uniforms but move like soldiers. Their eyes don’t linger on distraction. Their hands never leave their line-of-sight.
My team takes it in a quiet corridor between warehouses—no firefight, no screaming. Just doors sealing, comms cutting, and a controlled takedown that lasts forty-two seconds.
When the container’s seals finally pop, the air inside is cold and sterile, the smell of preservative and foam packing.
