My stomach tightens.
“Tagged how?”
Sable’s voice goes quieter. “High Lantern.”
The words land like a blade sliding between ribs.
So it’s real. Not just a title. Not just a rumor. A key signature embedded in a dead-man packet carried in a soldier’s jaw.
I stare at the implant and feel the shape of the war shift again.
Not just syndicates.
Not just bribed officials.
This is an intergovernmental bridge. A conduit between the Nine and something Council-tier. Something that can sign procurement orders and route comm keys and deploy trained operatives like they’re moving chess pieces.
I straighten slowly.
“The bait worked,” I murmur.
Fyr’s voice, sharp. “And now you kill him.”
“No,” I repeat, tired of saying it and still unwilling to change it.
Fyr growls. “You keep collecting liabilities like trophies.”
“I keep collecting leverage,” I snap back.
I look at the agent. His eyes are still burning with hatred, locked on mine like he’s trying to memorize my face for the afterlife.
“You won’t talk,” I say.
He doesn’t blink.
“Fine,” I reply. “We don’t need your mouth.”
Sable pings again. “I’m seeing embedded directives in the packet. I can’t decrypt, but I can read the top-level header.”
“Read it,” I order.
Her voice is tight, reverent in the way people get when they touch something above their pay grade.
“Directive: deliver proof to Alliance High Command liaison.”
I go very still.
My tongue tastes like metal again.
Alliance High Command liaison.
So Morazin didn’t just have a handler. He had a pipeline. And the Nine isn’t merely cooperating with corruption—they’re exchanging deliverables with someone inside command structure.
We can’t just expose the Nine.
We have to expose the bridge.
The intergovernmental throat that keeps feeding them.
