Ch. 76

The case stayed light all the way up.

Caleb had carried heavier groceries. He’d carried heavier wrenches. The titanium handle gripped his off-hand the way an empty toolbox gripped it, and that was the part he kept noticing on the climb out of the artisan level. Money looked like work he wouldn’t be paid for.

The corridor at the top opened into the main shift-change traffic. Mechanics with carts. A medic running the wrong direction. Two First Division aides moving with the kind of unhurried pace that meant they were where they needed to be already.

Elara was at the third pillar from the stairs.

She wasn’t waiting for him. She wasn’t pretending not to be either. He stepped out of the foot traffic and stopped at her shoulder, the case still in his off-hand, the harness over his right.

She looked at the case once. She didn’t ask.

"Walk with me," she said.

He walked with her.

She kept the pace slower than her usual stride, the kind of pace that read as a captain reviewing her sector to anyone watching from a distance. Her voice didn’t drop. It didn’t have to.

"There are three security tiers at this thing," she said. "Public floor, sponsor balcony, and the back rooms. The back rooms are not on any map. If you get walked into one, you call me on a private channel and you do not negotiate your way out before I get there."

"You’ll be on the floor."

"I’ll be near the brass. Formal escort. I won’t be in your eyeline most of the night, but I’ll be where I can move."

"You requested it."

"I asked for it."

The distinction sat between them for a few steps.

"There’s a name I want you to remember," she said. "Hadley Crayne. Mid-tier sponsor representative. He’ll introduce himself early. Be polite. Don’t drink anything he hands you."

"Why."

"Because the last person who took a glass from him went home and didn’t wake up for a week, and the report said it was overwork."

He logged the name. Crayne. He’d ask later about the family.

"What channel," he said.

"Three down from the public mil-band. I’ll send the key when you’re in the building. Don’t write it down."

"Got it."

She slowed at the next intersection. Two corridors crossed there, and the foot traffic split into the deployment yards and the Seventh’s residential block. She didn’t turn down his hallway. She turned down hers.

"Caleb."

"Yeah."

"What’s in the case."

He’d thought she wasn’t going to ask. 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

"What you’d expect," he said.

"I was hoping I was wrong."

"You weren’t."

She nodded once, the way she nodded when there wasn’t anything left to say that wouldn’t make it worse, and walked on. He watched her until the cross-traffic closed behind her.

He took the residential corridor.

Hassek was in the alcove outside Barracks 4. The bandage on his neck had been changed since yesterday. Two others were with him. One was a Rank D Caleb didn’t know by name. The other was a heavier man with an old burn scar running from his jawline down into his collar. He stood with most of his weight on his back foot, which was the stance of a man who’d been hit on the front foot once and learned from it.

They weren’t blocking the door. They were just close enough to it that Caleb couldn’t reach the handle without passing within arm’s length of all three.

He didn’t slow down.

Hassek looked at the case as he came up. Looked at the harness. Looked at Caleb’s face last, the way a man looked at the cheapest part of an inventory.

"Heard you got an invitation," Hassek said.

His voice was lower than Caleb had expected. There was no heat in it, which made it worse.

"Yeah."

"Three years on the line. I never got an invitation."

"I didn’t ask for one."

"That’s the part that’s funny."

The Rank D didn’t speak. The burn-scar man didn’t speak. Hassek didn’t move out of his arm’s reach. Caleb stopped a half-step short of the door and let the silence sit. The bypass module on his wrist was hot against his skin, and he wasn’t sure if that was the dagger in the harness or the proximity of three men who’d already decided what they thought of him.

"On the next drop," Hassek said, "the algorithm’s going to put me on your six. You should know that going in."

"Okay."

"I just wanted to be sure you knew."

"I know now."

Hassek stepped back half a pace. Not enough to clear the alcove. Just enough to let Caleb at the door handle. Caleb opened it without turning his back fully on any of them, stepped through, and closed it behind him.

The lock engaged. The barracks was quiet.

Hiro was at his bunk, threading new tape around the grip of his rifle magazines. The roll of tape was a different color than the one he’d been using yesterday. Black instead of gray. He’d bought it himself, then.

He looked up. He saw the case, and the tape slowed between his fingers.

Caleb set the case on his footlocker. He set the harness next to it. He sat down on the edge of the mattress and rested both elbows on his knees and let his hands hang.

"Roster posted," Hiro said, after a stretch.

"When."

"Twenty minutes ago. Joint operation. Industrial yard, sector six. Tomorrow morning."

"Squad."

"Us. Iharu. Two from Hassek’s squad as flank support."

He didn’t have to look up to know which two.

"You knew about the gala," Hiro said.

"Since last night."

"You weren’t going to tell us."

"I was going to figure out what it was first."

Hiro nodded. He didn’t push. He went back to the grip tape.

Caleb pulled his wrist module off the cuff and brought up the public feed dashboard. He hadn’t checked it since the perimeter sweep. The number sat in the corner where it always sat, and it was bigger than it had been the last time he’d looked.

Forty-seven thousand active subscribers.

The trending tag at the top of the panel was his name.

The thread under it was a livestream of speculation. Outfit predictions for tomorrow night’s gala. Investor brackets on which division captain he’d be photographed with. Odds on whether he’d dance, whether he’d drink, whether he’d be late. A subthread analyzing what his suit was going to look like, with three users who’d somehow gotten his measurements, debating whether the lapels would be peaked or notched based on his shoulder-to-chest ratio.

He scrolled until he found the screenshot.

Someone had posted his exact body measurements. Chest, shoulder, sleeve, waist, inseam. Numbers stitched in white thread on the inside of a jacket lining he was looking at right now.

The caption underneath read: seventy-eight thousand if anyone has the inseam confirmed.

The comment under that was an offer for the rest.

He set the wrist module face-down on the locker.

The text wrote itself across the back of his eyelids before he’d closed them. Bright purple, even in the dark.

His wrist buzzed.

He turned it over.

[UNKNOWN USER: Don’t get hurt tomorrow. I want you whole tonight.]