“You caught one,” she says, breathless.
“Yeah,” I reply.
Her gaze flicks over the merc’s face, then back to mine. “Talk.”
I watch her for a beat—this human woman who should’ve been dead on a prison moon, now standing in my empire’s hallways turning infrastructure into a weapon.
“He says Morazin is alive,” I tell her.
Jordan goes very still.
Then her face hardens like steel. “Of course he is.”
The merc flinches at her tone, like her anger is more frightening than mine.
Jordan steps closer, voice low. “Who’s funding him?”
The merc swallows. “Shells. Tags. Baragon-linked. I don’t know names.”
Jordan’s eyes narrow. “But you know the routing.”
He nods quickly. “KZ-443. Cinder Vault.”
Jordan’s gaze snaps to me, and in her eyes I see the same realization that’s sitting like a stone in my gut: this isn’t just Kaijen drama. This isn’t just the Nine squeezing tribute. This is a network reaching beyond Gur, beyond the Alliance, beyond the Coalition—something old and patient and wealthy enough to buy massacres like they’re advertisements.
I exhale slowly, tasting smoke and rage.
“This is bigger,” Jordan says quietly.
“Yeah,” I answer, voice rough. “It is.”
She looks at the corridor behind me, toward Kel’s office, toward the seat of power that’s been compromised. “So what now?”
I tighten my grip on the merc’s collar.
Now?
Now I do what I should’ve done the moment I stepped back into the Nun: I stop thinking like a convict who wants to survive and start thinking like a goddamn Kaijen who wants to win.
“We trace the money,” I say. “We break the shells. We find who’s pulling strings. And if Kel’s too scared to let me chase Yatori, then I’ll chase the thing that scares him.”
Jordan’s mouth tightens. “You’re going to start a war in your own house.”
I glance at her. “Honey, the war already started. They just fired the first shot through my window.”
Jordan’s eyes flick, and for the first time since Yatori I see something shift inside her—not trust, not yet, but recognition. The understanding that the world isn’t divided into neat columns labeled “good” and “bad,” “Alliance” and “Coalition,” “law” and “crime.” It’s divided into predators and prey, and someone out there is trying to turn the whole galaxy into a feeding ground.
I drag the merc onward, toward a secure room where screams can’t reach and cameras can’t lie.
Behind us, the Nun’s lights pulse faint red along exit routes as civilians flee, and above us, in the penthouse levels, tribute accounts keep scrolling upward like the price of silence.
And in my chest, beneath the anger, something colder and sharper settles into place.
Purpose.
Because this is no longer about family politics.
This is about whoever thinks they can buy reality—and get away with it.
