"Let them try house arrest," Daeng muttered from deep inside the chassis of the vintage television, his voice muffled by the metal frame before he yanked his head back out and wiped a smudge of black soot across his forehead with the back of his forearm. "House arrest doesn't mean much when the company’s entire asset pool has been frozen by federal injunction and the board of directors is busy pointing fingers at each other like schoolchildren caught stealing from the pantry. Somphone isn't going to a hilltop estate. He’s going to trial, and if Sombat’s second wave of prints hits the streets tomorrow morning, the judge won't even dare grant bail."Ketsana reached over, picked up the micro-tweezers he had abandoned moments ago, and adjusted a delicate copper wire inside the modified radio transceiver they were rebuilding for Noi’s courier network. His fingers were steady. The old tremor—that phantom vibration that used to seize his hands whenever he thought about the corporate servers

"Salary lines don't mean much when your prefrontal cortex is being overwritten by a proprietary background process you didn't consent to," Ketsana said, finally putting down the micro-tweezers and lifting his gaze to meet Noi’s cynical stare across the cluttered workbench. "And as for the public memory having the lifespan of a housefly, maybe it does. But Sombat isn't letting this drop. He’s already working on a follow-up piece about the subsidiary shell companies Somphone used to funnel the experimental funding."Noi let out a sharp, incredulous bark of laughter that bounced off the grease-stained walls of Daeng’s repair shop. "Shell companies? Ketsana, every mid-level tech conglomerate in this district uses shell companies to hide experimental R&D from tax auditors. If the public cared about corporate tax evasion and offshore accounts, half the skyline would have been nationalized a decade ago.""It’s not just tax evasion this time, and you know it," Daeng interrupted, grabbing a ca