"Stop deflecting, Mavren," Vaelric snapped, his hand shooting out to grip the older man by the collar of his soot-stained coat. He shoved Mavren hard against the ribbed metal wall of the maintenance duct. "You knew the Firm’s contingency protocols before we ever set foot in the Sump. You helped write them back when you were sitting in the glass towers counting dividends. Don't sit there and play the horrified humanitarian to me now."Mavren didn't flinch. He let his head loll back against the cold plates, a bitter, humorless smile twisting the corners of his mouth. He raised his hands, palms open, surrender in every loose line of his posture."I wrote the logistics of suppression, yes," Mavren rasped, his voice dropping to a gravelly whisper that cut through the low-frequency hum of the district's failing power grid beneath them. "I knew they would clamp down. I knew the algorithms would calculate that sealing three square miles of residential housing was cheaper than deploying a prot

"A reckoning for them," Mavren hissed, his voice trembling with a sudden, sharp intensity that forced Vaelric to pull back. "You think the Firm cares about these people? You think they ever did? Every drop of synthetic water, every gram of caloric slurry that flowed into the Sump was a loan. A loan with compound interest that was never meant to be paid off. I didn't create this hell, Vaelric. I just pulled back the curtain so you could finally see the rot you helped architect."Vaelric spun away, his boots skidding on the rusted grating of the maintenance duct. The air in the crawlspace was thick, tasting of ozone and incinerated waste. Outside, the silence of the lockdown was punctuated by the rhythmic, mechanical thuds of a heavy-duty suppression walker pacing the street below. Each step sent a shudder through the infrastructure, rattling the pipes like a death knell."You didn't show me the rot," Vaelric growled, his voice tight, stripped of its usual analytical detachment. "You we

"They aren't just statistics, Mavren! They were people who believed the grid was coming back on because I promised them it would." Vaelric slammed his palm against the corrugated bulkhead. The metal gave way with a screech, revealing a sliver of the street below, bathed in the harsh, rhythmic strobe of a Firm searchlight.Mavren didn't flinch. He leaned against a cooling vent, his breath hitching in a ragged, wet sound. "People believe anything when they’re starving, Vaelric. You fed them hope. I just fed them the truth. The Firm was going to purge the Sump regardless. Your little 'sabotage' just accelerated the timeline. You provided the necessary friction to force their hand before they were ready to finalize the clearance.""You make it sound like a logistical optimization," Vaelric retorted, his voice dropping into a dangerous, low-frequency tremor. "You used the lives of four thousand laborers as a smoke screen for your own vendetta against the Board. And the worst part? You conv

"You didn't need to sign off on the martial law decree for your name to be on the manifest, Vaelric," Tazrek Dhal’s voice sliced through the gloom of the maintenance corridor before the boots even finished their rhythmic, heavy clanking against the steel grating.Vaelric released Mavren’s collar instantly, stepping back as the older man slumped against the cooling vent with a wet, ragged cough. Vaelric whipped around, his hand instinctively dropping to the heavy steel wrench tucked into his belt, his eyes straining against the amber glare of the emergency beacons flashing overhead.From the shadows of the secondary access shaft, Tazrek stepped out into the flickering light. He wasn't wearing his standard corporate enforcement armor; instead, he wore a worn, salt-stained trench coat over a heavy ballistic vest, his face half-shadowed by the brim of a utility cap. But the sidearm at his hip—a standard-issue Firm magnetic pulse pistol—was pristine, fully charged, and pointed directly at

"Asset recovery is all about tracking down missing value, Vaelric," Tazrek replied, taking two slow, deliberate steps forward, his boots clicking rhythmically on the grating. "And right now, you and your little anarchist friend are the most depreciated, over-leveraged assets in the entire sector. The Board isn't desperate. They're just balancing their books."Vaelric shifted his weight, his eyes darting from Tazrek’s steady hand on the magnetic pulse pistol to the dim exit tunnel behind the enforcer. "By turning the Sump into a slaughterhouse? Martial law, blockades, civilian casualties—your ledgers are dripping with blood, Dhal, and no amount of corporate restructuring is going to wipe it clean.""Blood is just a red entry in the margin, and you taught me that formula yourself back on the third floor," Tazrek countered sharply, stopping ten paces away. He didn't raise his weapon any higher, but the muzzle remained locked dead on Vaelric’s chest. "You spent five years optimizing shipp