Legacy Protocol

MISSION UPDATE: PRIORITY INCREASED. INVESTIGATE CORIN MARR.

Arin found her in the conservatory, standing over a tray of small plants. She looked at him without surprise.

“You looked through the archives,” she said.

“I found a note,” he admitted. “Tessera. House 47.”

She nodded, slow and resigned. “The Daros run several coded shipments. Tessera has been a word in their ledger for a while. People trade shards for leverage. If you were near House 47 you might have been a courier, a mark, or a target.”

“Or collateral,” he said. It was a word he had not used aloud before. Saying it made the room smaller.

“You need allies,” she said. “Not just in this house. People who know the docks, who move through those alleys without being marked.”

Arin thought of Corvin, of Lucan’s network, of the strange careful people who kept the house functioning. He also thought of the man in the picture who had smiled like a hawk. He had to find a way to cross borders without making them bleed.

The Protocol updated quietly. SUB-MISSION: IDENTIFY DARO CONTACTS. TIMEFRAME: 5 DAYS. It offered a selection of options. He could bribe, seduce, threaten, or ask. The choices felt like a set of tools with blunt handles. He had never needed many of them. The reward was listed below: BLUEPRINT TOKEN ×1. He was learning to count the currency that mattered here.

In the fourth night after he woke, someone tried the manor door.

The sound came like a question at low volume, a skinned knot of noise that did not belong. Corvin’s footsteps were already in the corridor, the Voss guard’s response precise, and the staff moved into practiced positions. Arin was still sitting up when a soft knock fell against his private door, an irritating, small sound.

A whisper from the other side: “Arin, it’s me.”

The voice was thin, unmuscular, and frightened. He knew it even before he recognized the word. Protocol pinged an alert: INTRUSION DETECTED: UNKNOWN VOICE. Corvin moved quietly and opened the door with a key. There, shoved into the threshold like a dirty thought, was a figure cloaked in a low hood.

Words tumbled out, hurried and apologetic. “I am sorry. I could not wait. I thought you might be awake. Forgive me for the trouble, sir. I bring news from the docks.”

The hood fell back when Corvin’s hand found the man’s shoulder. He was young and thin, with hands that shook. Salt and diesel clung to him like an apology. Arin saw his face and felt the sudden spike of recognition that was not memory. The man’s eyes were raw and familiar, like a photograph held too close to light.

“How did you get in?” Corvin demanded.

The man looked at Arin. “You were near House 47. You were not alone. A shipment changed hands. They brought something called Tessera. They had men watching the Voss route. I saw you fall.”

Arin’s breath stopped. Every street image he had in his head stacked into a new picture. The docks, the delay, the shard, the watching men. The Protocol registered a new data point. EVIDENCE: WITNESS: DOCKS INFORMANT. It suggested trust calibrations and gave him a hidden option: reveal, withhold, or interrogate.

He made a decision that felt more necessary than brave. “Tell me everything,” he said.

The man swallowed and began to speak in a fast, broken way. He said the name of a dockmaster, mentioned a small syndicate that moved shipments under the Daro banner, and described a violent exchange that had left a courier dead and a package missing. At one point he lowered his voice and spat the name of a person who had been at House 47 that night: Corin Marr.

Arin’s skin tightened. Corin, his handler, had the same surname as the man the informant named. Whether it was coincidence or betrayal, the information felt like a match struck against flint. Evelyn’s face went unreadable. Lucan’s chair creaked in the hall where he had paused to listen.

Protocol chimed. ALERT LEVEL: MEDIUM. ADVISE: VERIFY SOURCES.**

Arin kept his voice steady. “You said you saw men watching the Voss route. Who were they working for?”

The young man bowed his head. “They said they were clearing the docks for a private client. They said the client paid well and wanted no witnesses. After the handoff there was trouble. Someone pushed a man from the dockside into the water. I took the rest to the alley.”

“You followed?” Corvin asked.

The informant nodded. “I saw a man take something. Not much time. He looked at the sky like he was afraid. He had a tattoo on his wrist. A small lattice like a circuit.”

The Protocol hummed in Arin’s head as if it were thinking. The word lattice matched one of the ledger symbols in the archive. The symbol meant access. The symbol meant permission.

Arin was counting. Seven days until the gala. Five days for identification of Daros. Four days to verify the informant. He had a list that fit like a map with missing bridges. He knew, as cleanly as any fact, that someone had arranged the attempt on his life. He knew that the attempt had involved something called Tessera, and that men in the docks had watched the route.

He also knew, with a hard edge of certainty, that the Voss house had just found a new problem to solve. The house was adept at solving problems with other people’s lives. Now one of those problems wore his face.

The informant trembled. Corvin looked away. Evelyn folded her hands so tightly that her knuckles went white. Lucan said nothing. The Protocol, steady and cold, logged everything.

MISSION UPDATE: PRIORITY INCREASED. INVESTIGATE CORIN MARR.

REWARD: BLUEPRINT TOKEN ×1.**

Arin set his jaw. He had fewer privileges than the family’s real children, and he would have to earn each inch. But the list the system gave him had weight. It gave him options he could measure and execute.

Outside the manor windows the river ran on, patient and indifferent. Inside, the house drew inward around its new charge. Arin understood in a new way that being alive here meant being in a room where everyone watched the clock and listened for the thinnest sound. He felt the pressure like a hand on his back, guiding him forward.

“Tell me everything,” he said to the informant again. This time he meant it the way someone means it when the answer decides whether they will be erased or remembered.