The Extra's Rise - Chapter 727

727: Espionage (1) 727: Espionage (1) The devices Jin and Kali pulled from the walls shouldn’t have existed here.

I paged through the teardown in my office, hovering schematics beside photographs and cross-sections.

Grain-of-rice transmitters with quantum-grade ciphers.

Adaptive frequency hopping tuned to slip between our tripwires.

Remote wake-on-signal.

Compression ratios that only make sense if your target can analyze at scale.

“Micro-transmitters with quantum encryption,” I read aloud, and the words tasted like another life.

“Adaptive modulation, remote activation, lossless compression on the uplink.” I shouldn’t have been able to name half of it.

But I had seen cousins of these packages before-only cruder, less elegant, built by agencies that never admitted their labs existed.

A quiet, unwelcome recognition slid under my ribs.

Reika stepped in without waiting to be announced, violet eyes hard with the kind of worry she only showed when her people were being touched.

“It isn’t just hardware,” she said.

“We’re seeing soft probes.

Anonymous messages to former guild employees-personalized, targeted.” She flicked her wrist and the air filled with screenshots: messages that knew too much.

A father worried about a son’s tuition.

A mid-level engineer offered a dream lab-elsewhere.

A shift supervisor reminded that her mother’s care plan depended on a certain insurer.

“The voice is friendly,” Reika said, too calm.

“The pressure isn’t.

They reference details we never published.

The pattern matches… what I imagine government psyops would look like.” “Good instinct,” I said.

“This isn’t corporate.” She nodded once, a promise forming behind her eyes.

“I’ll go through the networks we built during integration.

Quietly.

If anyone is wavering, we’ll get to them first.

Not with threats.

With people who know their names for the right reasons.” “Do it,” I said.

“Protect them from the story being written for them.” My desk pinged.

Western secure.

Jin and Kali resolved waist-up from a converted substation-consoles stacked, fiber like ivy, a half-disassembled panel on a gurney between them.

Jin’s black eyes were focused the way they get when there’s too much to think and he’s enjoying the weight.

Kali stood with her hands on the gurney’s edge, expression level, movements precise.

“We’ve finished the first pass,” Jin said.

“What we found doesn’t map to any guild doctrine we’ve seen.” Kali tapped the open panel with a nonconductive probe.

“Professional kit.

Passive RF harvesters disguised as inspection covers.

Laser mics in mirrored decor.

Supply-chain tags hidden in fasteners-silent until they cross a geofence, then chatty.” She looked up.

“Install pattern says recent.

Someone started placing these after Auristrade’s announcement.” “How many facilities?” I asked.

“Four confirmed,” Jin said.

“Three more showing symptoms.” His gaze flicked to Kali.

“It’s not random.” “It’s not,” she agreed.

“This is a deep-penetration network.

Whoever did it has doctrine.

And patience.” I let the quiet hold for a beat.

“Assessment of scope?” “Continental,” Kali said.

No hesitation.

“Resources, tradecraft, and the time horizon suggest a player with state-level habits.

They’ve been watching since at least Auristrade.

Likely earlier.” Jin leaned closer, the intensity in him sharpening.

“They’re not just collecting.

They’re studying our method.

This isn’t reactive.

It’s preparatory.” They had gotten there fast.

Good.

“Counter-intelligence,” I said.

“Together.

Jin, build a map of who could be supplying sources and safehouses.

Kali, build the kill chain for the network: detection, deception, neutralization.

I want their uplinks starving or swallowing what we feed them.” They exchanged a look that would have been invisible to anyone who didn’t know them.

Then-friction, small and useful.

“We start with disclosure,” Jin said.

“Quietly.

Bring key teams inside the threat envelope so leaks look like betrayals, not surprises.

We make loyalty an active posture.” Kali’s mouth tightened.

“Disclosure increases surface.

We lock the air first.

Clean rooms, hardware attestation, environment hashes, never trust the wall.

Then we tell people what they need to know.” “If we treat them like liabilities, we’ll make them into one,” he countered.

“You can’t secure a building by turning off all the exits.” “And you can’t secure people by giving every door a window,” she returned, voice still even.

“We do this wrong, we teach our opponent what bait we like.” I lifted a hand.

“Third path.” The phrase had become a shorthand none of us needed explained.

Kali rolled the idea between her fingers, then nodded once.

“We stage transparency,” she said.

“Tiered.

We brief core teams on the threat with embedded watermarks in every document and slight variants in the phrasing.” “And we build amnesty,” Jin added, already moving with the new angle.

“A whistleblower program with real shields, real payouts, and a single number to call that doesn’t go through management.” “GLASSHOUSE and ALETHEIA go live in the west today,” I said.

“You own the playbook.” Kali clicked the panel shut and rested her palms on it for one second longer than necessary.

When she looked back into the camera, something unarmored moved behind her eyes.

“One more thing,” she said.

“If I miss a trap and someone gets hurt because I didn’t lock us down hard enough-” “You won’t,” Jin said, immediate.

She didn’t look away.

“If I do.

I don’t recover from that.” He exhaled.

“If I treat a team like suspects and push too hard, I break people instead of protecting them.

That’s my edge of the cliff.” He reached without thinking and adjusted the wire behind her ear, a small, practical touch.

She let him.

That, more than anything, said enough.

“Make the road between those cliffs,” I said.

“Together.” “Copy,” they said, and the feed blinked out as they went to work.

I stood at the window and let the city throw its grid onto the glass.

Somewhere in those lines, someone had decided to end this with silence, not spectacle.

The previous guild masters had thrown weight.

This one-these ones-would throw doubt.

Rose interrupted the thought, hair pulled back in the “slept at the console” way that only appears on days the markets matter.

“Arthur, we’ve got a narrative forming,” she said.

“Not a hit piece.

Worse.

Reasonable analysis.” She flooded my wall with headlines.

Is Ouroboros Moving Too Fast?

The Hidden Costs of “Free” Energy.

Teleportation’s Maintenance Curve-Who Pays in Year Five?

The copy was clever: caveated, sourced, almost right.

They quoted numbers they shouldn’t have had, paired with models that assumed a world where Aetherite didn’t exist.

“Distribution?” I asked.

“Coordinated,” she said.

“Five outlets across three blocs, each with its own voice.

And some of the internal figures are correct to the decimal.

Someone fed them partial truths.” Information warfare done by someone who knew the difference between shouting and whispering.

You don’t accuse.

You imply.

You repeat.

You let people do the math wrong themselves.

“Go big,” I said.

“Comprehensive transparency.

Show our cost curves and the physics behind them.

Explain why the maintenance curve flattens with scale.

Publish error budgets with the parts we already undercut.

We’re not hiding a thing.

Bury them in true.” “On it,” Rose said.

“And I’ll get surrogates in front of cameras who can explain math without sounding smug.” When the wall cleared, the office felt larger for a heartbeat.

Then a call cut into the room with maximum encryption and no calling card.

The projection that formed didn’t have a face-just a silhouette, light eating the edges, voice masked with professional care.

“Arthur Nightingale,” it said, calm as weather.

“Let’s have the real conversation.” “Happy to,” I said.

“Though I prefer to know who’s buying the time.” “Names don’t move markets,” the voice said.

“Results do.

Consider me a voice for those who prefer results achieved in the correct order.” “Umbrythm,” I thought, and didn’t say.

Shadow liked their stage.

“You’ve been impressive,” the voice went on.

“And you’ve been predictable.

Aetherite to lower cost.

Gates to erase distance.

Micro-grids to erase leverage.

You win, then you explain.

It has worked four times.” “Because it works,” I said.

“Until someone models you,” they countered.

“Patterns are useful until opponents learn to sail them.

You have impossible prescience, Arthur.

You build technologies that land exactly where the appetite will be a quarter later.

You reposition before a market breaks.

You close doors before most people see the hallway.” The room didn’t move, but something colder did in me.

They weren’t pointing at tools.

They were pointing at reasons.

“Good planning looks like magic from far away,” I said, keeping my pulse out of my voice.

“Good intelligence looks like prophecy to the under-informed.” “It does,” Shadow agreed, almost warmly.

“Which is why I’ve been curious about your sources.

Curiosity is my vice.” The silhouette leaned in, but gave nothing.

“Let me be clear: I don’t need to know why you know.

Only whether you can keep knowing when professional opposition applies pressure at the level you’ve avoided.

You have built a machine that assumes public adoration and bureaucratic cooperation.

What happens when both are bent, quietly, in the wrong direction?” The line cut before I could answer.

Not a threat, not a pitch.

A diagnostic.

In the reflection on the window, Avalon’s morning shifted.

The impossible advantage I carried-the thing that had kept us ahead of storms-demanded invisibility.

Shadow wasn’t proving they could expose it.

They were proving they could look for it in the right place.

I called Reika back.

“We go soft, then hard,” I said.

“Whisper network first.

Your people talk to our people.

Identify who got a message, who answered, who hesitated.

Offer help, not judgment.

Then GLASSHOUSE everywhere.

Personal devices attested at the door, environment hashes, chain-of-custody notarized by the lattice.

Publish the policy like it’s boring.” “Done,” she said.

“And I’ll seed canaries in every internal file that foundations care about.

If someone bleeds, we’ll know what color.” “Make the canaries useful,” I added.

“If they leak, the world learns something true.

We win even when we’re bitten.” She smiled, quick and dangerous.

“I like it when we weaponize honesty.” I pinged Jin and Kali with a private channel.

They came up on split screens, still moving, still mid-operation.

“New line,” I said.

“Shadow just tried on a voice in my office.

They want to prove we can’t keep knowing under pressure.

I want you to give them a test in return.” Kali’s eyes sharpened.

“Bait.” “Not the obvious kind,” I said.

“We’ll stage a multi-facility maintenance window with three routes to ‘accidentally’ learn about it.

Each route gets a slightly different detail.

We staff for a hit on any of them.

If they try to touch it, we tag the route.” Jin was already there.

“And we wrap it in a public initiative so any move against it looks like sabotage of clinics, schools, or unions.

Force them to reveal what they’re willing to hurt.” Kali glanced sideways in a way that wasn’t doubt so much as careful constraint.

“We draw a line on collateral.

If they take a swing, the only thing that can break is something we built to break.” “Agreed,” Jin said, softer.

“No civilians as message boards.” She returned to the console.

“We’ll call the window ‘clean glass.’ Anyone who asks will get the usual scheduling spiel.

Anyone who shouldn’t know and suddenly does gets my full attention.” “Third path,” I said.

“Third path,” she echoed, and he smiled at the sound.

I killed the channel and watched the room breathe-teams moving like an orchestra tuning to a pitch only they could hear.

Out in the city, the collars hummed; in the river, barges cut silver; on the far ridge, a school’s rooftop unit threw a thin ghost of heat into the morning.

The next hours were busy in a way that makes crisis feel like a hobby.

Rose rolled out radical transparency with the bored precision that makes anchors read numbers like stories.

Chen wove lattice tripwires into the Aetherite fields-sensitivities set to mouse, not dust.

Elias stapled GLASSHOUSE into policy binders with a smile he only wore when paperwork was poetry.

Reika’s maps of people filled with green and yellow dots-conversations had, kindnesses offered, one scared manager handed a lifeline that looked like a lunch.

By late afternoon, the first beacon from the west tripped: a false wall in substation G-14, a whisper of RF where none should be.

Kali didn’t spring.

She breathed on the signal until it thought it was alone, then mirrored it back across the line it preferred.

“Origin triangulating,” her update read.

“Looks like a leased node behind an arts nonprofit.

Cute.” Jin’s overlay annotated the nonprofit’s board.

Two names we expected, one we didn’t.

A vector out of Umbrythm’s quiet.

The stories against us kept printing too-careful, calming prose designed to make doubt feel like civic virtue.

Rose’s counter was not arguing; it was showing.

Flow diagrams, cost curves, narratives about how maintenance actually works when the physics are different.

When the day closed, the market had moved a centimeter, not a mile.

That night, under a sky Avalon had not had to beg for power to light, Shadow’s call did not return.

Good.

Let them watch.

Let them wonder whether we would flinch.

Let them learn that we change the method the moment someone memorizes it.

I stood at the window until the hum in the building and the hum in my head matched.

The dangerous part of this war wasn’t whether we could outbuild them.

We already had.

The dangerous part was whether we could outlast their patience without losing ours.

In the glass, a ghost of a different city flickered-the one from before this world, before Aetherite, before I had a name here.

A city where devices like the ones in my report had burrowed into apartments and offices and hearts.

Where information was a weapon used against people first and truths second.

We were not going to be that city.

I turned back to the desk and began to write the next set of orders, the ones that sounded boring when read aloud and saved lives when followed.

Out in the west, two people I trusted were building a road between their cliffs, one step at a time, without looking down.

Shadow thought the darkness was theirs.

We had built a lattice that glowed.