Massive Disaster III-20

Zedd flicked through the quarterly numbers without really seeing them, just letting the projected data blur and stack and slide. Profit margins. Efficiency upticks. Yield conversions. Stuff that mattered but didn’t matter. VEST unit production had broken target by over forty percent, which was nice, sure, but not enough.

Not when eyes were starting to crawl over his work from above, sideways, underground—and he could feel it, in that back-of-the-neck way that didn’t show up on threat assessments or quarterly reviews.

The office was everything he alwyas dreamed of as a kid. Glass walls, hidden shielding, tailored airflow calibrated to the half-degree. Clean lines, black and blue, the lighting cold enough to bite but never harsh. The whole thing looked like something you’d see on a tech startup infomercial back on Earth. The kind of place you built after you’d stopped apologizing for taking up space.

David called it “aggressively modern.” Whatever. It kept him from overheating when his brain ran too hot and gave him something to focus on.

“Boss,” ADAM said, tone perfectly clipped. “David Shen-Abraham has arrived with Captain Anderson.”

Zedd didn’t look up. He didn’t need to. Just closed the chart in front of him with a flick of his fingers and let out a breath he hadn’t meant to hold. Figures. Two weeks of dodging this meeting, and now it was happening today, unasked, no buffer.

“Tell David I’m in the middle of—”

“They’re already on their way up.”

Of course they are. He dragged a hand down his face, bones cracking as tension finally acknowledged itself. He hadn’t even gone over the cover notes David sent him last week. Something about “increased scrutiny from Alliance oversight” and “discreet diplomatic observation.”

Which translated, roughly, to they think you’re doing too much.

He adjusted his jacket, smoothing out the shoulders, before needlessly adjusting his aviators. Then, he set the temperature point down two degrees and closed the holomonitors. No point pretending he wasn’t irritated, but he could fake civil. He was good at civil. You didn’t survive what he did without learning how to smile with teeth.

The office door hissed open. David stepped in first, every inch of him smoothed and presented. That smile—half cordial, half hold still, please don’t say anything insane for five minutes–never changed, but Zedd caught the shift in his eyes. Tight at the edges. Calculating. This wasn’t an introduction. It was a test.

Anderson followed right behind. He looked like someone who’d spent too many years doing real work and only recently got stuck behind desks. Late forties, maybe early fifties. Broad frame, still fit. N7 posture. Minimal movement. Hands at his sides, but not relaxed. Zedd didn’t need a threat analysis to know this guy was sharp.

He didn’t come to talk. He came to see.

“Zedd,” David began, sliding into it like it was theater. “Thanks for making the time. This is Captain David Anderson, Systems Alliance Navy.”

Zedd stood, and offered the man a handshake. 

Short, firm. Measured. No grip games. “Captain. Welcome to Victory.”

Anderson matched him. No squeeze, no pull. Just pressure, met and returned. His voice was calm. “Appreciate you seeing me. Governor Shen-Abraham’s said a lot about your work.”

Zedd gestured toward the chairs opposite the desk and sat as they followed. “Bet he has.”

Anderson didn’t crack a smile. He didn’t need to. He looked around once—just once—and Zedd could feel him clocking everything. Angles. Sightlines. Vents. Positions. The man had combat awareness like most people had muscle memory.

Zedd hated that. Hated that kind of presence in his space when it wasn’t on his side like Kai Leng usually was. Especially when Kai Leng wasn’t at his side. It was far too quiet, too deliberate. 

It felt like a threat.

Not an obvious one like a Krogan, but a quiet one like a Turian. Not as slippery as the Asari, though. That was for spooks like that Melanie woman from Cerberus.

He leaned back slightly, letting his voice flatten as he offered both of them a smile that David could tell wasn’t real by the way his own shrank. “The Governor’s a flatterer. Don’t listen to him on that,” Zedd winked at Anderson. “We just fill market gaps.”

Anderson tilted his head. Not quite smiling. Not quite not. “Big gaps, from what I’ve seen. Barrier systems. Alternate propulsion. Anti-grav solutions. And not a scrap of element zero in any of it. That’s… impressive.”

There it was. Not a sniff-around visit. Not a soft probe. 

This was a veiled compliance audit with a handshake.

Zedd shrugged. “R&D’s all we really do here. Speed helps, with the governor handling marketing and most of public relations and output issues. We just design and build, making the theoretical practical. Sometimes you just need fresh eyes on old problems.”

“Nineteen-year-old eyes with no record of higher education or reported levels of technical skill prior to leaving Earthspace,” Anderson replied casually, like he hadn’t just dragged the whole mood six feet closer to the edge.

Zedd didn’t flinch, not even a blink, even as the room got quieter in that way that had nothing to do with volume. He leaned back in his chair, slow and loose, a smile spreading across his face, again one that was mostly there for show.  “Age is just a number, Captain.”

Anderson didn’t miss a beat. “So is 2.7 billion, apparently. By that I mean, credits. Your company’s current valuation, I hear? Remarkable, considering Victory didn’t exist twelve months ago.”

“Nine,” Zedd said. Casual as anything, his gaze flat.

Anderson blinked. “Pardon?”

“Two point nine. Sorry to say your numbers are a little stale, Captain,” he tilted his head at the man. “We’re tracking to break three by New Year’s.”

Anderson gave him a long look, nodded once. “My mistake. Even more remarkable.”

David shifted then, just a bit. The way people do when they feel something veering off script. “Victory Innovations has done more for colonial expansion in the past half-year than the last five years combined. Mining safety, emergency infrastructure, disaster relief—”

“And tactical application,” Anderson cut in. Still looking at Zedd. “Defense contractors are watching, as is the Alliance. The Council thinks you’re a fraudster of some sort but we are aware you’re building more than gadgets.”

So we’re dropping the bullshit now. Fine. Zedd tapped his index finger against the desk once.

Once.

“We build what people need, Captain. If some of it crosses over into security, that’s on the end user.”

Anderson shifted, eyes unmoving, something changing in his posture as he leaned forward ever so slightly. “Non-regulated non-eezo tech. Spreading into space we don’t fully monitor. You can see the problem.”

“Monitoring,” Zedd echoed, voice flat. The word tasted wrong in his mouth. “The hell are you monitoring? Last I checked, the Alliance doesn’t run the frontier.”

Governor Shen-Abraham smoothed in again. “The Council and Alliance builds regulations to slow change. That sort of friction can cause… misunderstandings, you understand, Captain?”

Zedd didn’t look at him. “Misunderstandings don’t happen as long as you don’t overreach.”

“We’re not here to police you,” Anderson said, the man’s voice still calm with that same  unshakable evenness that came from too many years dealing with people who thought they were smarter than him. “We’re here to understand.”

Bullshit. But he didn’t say that, because he still had two brain cells worth using.

“Fine,” Zedd said. He leaned forward and rested his elbows on the desk, like he was settling in to talk specs instead of dodge threats. “The field generators aren’t mass effect based. No eezo, no drive core, no Council leash. They run on quantum vacuum manipulation. Totally separate pathway, totally different energy footprint. The Citadel can’t regulate what they can’t understand.”

Anderson nodded again, slow, the man clearly tracking every word even if he didn’t properly understand. Zedd hated how little it gave him to work with. “Convenient workaround. For oversight, for export laws.”

“For colonial survival,” Zedd snapped, voice harder now. “I have no interest in exporting to Citadel or Alliance space. This isn’t about loopholes. It’s about autonomy. We’re building tools that don’t need permission slips from people who’ve never stepped foot outside the core.”

Anderson let that hang, the Captain letting the temperature drop even further as he spoke the next words. “Those tools can still be turned into weapons. Whether that was your goal or not.”

Zedd’s eyes narrowed behind his glasses. “Unless the Alliance has proof someone’s done that, I don’t see the point of this conversation.”

David cleared his throat, just loud enough to turn attention back his way. “The Alliance isn’t making accusations. They’re just clarifying intent, Zedd.”

Anderson nodded at that. “We believe in what you’re doing. The colonies have need of someone like you and what you can do. More than that, your tech… and your actions have already saved lives. That matters to us.”

Zedd waited. There was always a hook after a compliment like that.

“But for now,” Anderson continued, “we advise you stay deep in the Traverse. Maybe the Terminus. Keep your distance from Citadel and Alliance interests for the next few cycles.”

There it was.

“Why?” Zedd asked, though his stomach already knew.

Anderson didn’t flinch as he simply lowered the last card onto the table. “Because the Alliance received a dossier linking you to the death of Matthias Wills. Two days before he was found, you were reported leaving. To the day. On a ticket recorded as being purchased last minute at upcharged prices.”

And of course, it was a trump.

The name cracked something open.

Not sharp, not sudden. Just a dull collapse, like weight against rotten wood. Matt. His name still hit like it hadn’t been stored in an airlock somewhere in the back of Zedd’s skull. It hit in pieces: flicker of a basement light, knuckles going slick, sound of someone choking on their own tongue. Hands that wouldn’t stop shaking, not from fear, not exactly. From impact. From the part of him that hadn’t stopped hitting even after the body dropped.

Zedd didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink. He just kept his eyes on Anderson, let the silence spool long enough to land somewhere between disbelief and carefully-rehearsed shock. “Matt’s dead? I… I can’t believe it.”

Anderson didn’t bite. His gaze was steady. Not cold, just… methodical. “The fact that he was covered in your DNA is also rather unbelievable, I’d assume.”

Zedd tilted his head slightly. Not defensive. Just enough to pretend confusion, like he hadn’t seen this coming from the minute the man walked in. “We shared a lotta shit. Clothes, couches, blood. That was the vibe back then. You grow up on the street, you bleed near the people you trust.”

Anderson’s reply came with the weight of a man who’d already sorted through every excuse and found them all lacking. “That wouldn’t explain skin cells and blood caught under his fingernails.”

And there it was. Not a hunch. Not a rumor picked up from a lazy intel scan. He had specifics.

He knows. Not just the vibe. Not just the timing. He knows.

Zedd’s hands were flat on the desk now, fingers pressed just tight enough to feel the bone. He didn’t look at David, didn’t need to. The man had frozen beside him, diplomatic mask locked in place. No tells, but Zedd could feel it—that precise kind of stillness you only got when someone was reprocessing what they thought they knew.

Anderson waited until the silence stretched just past the point of comfortable, then spoke, tone still infuriatingly calm. “I’m not here to arrest you. That isn’t my jurisdiction, and frankly, it isn’t my concern. A street fight between two teenagers in Baltimore doesn’t fall under Alliance command.”

Zedd’s mouth twitched. That word again. “Street fight,” he said, almost to himself. His voice stayed flat, like the air had gone stale. “Right. Then why bring it up?” The words came out quieter than intended, but no less sharp.

Anderson didn’t blink. “Context. I like to understand the people I work with. And you—” he paused, just enough to make the moment uncomfortable, “—you’ve created something that could fundamentally reshape human power in the galaxy. That puts you on a very short list. But it also means I need to know whether you act out of vision… or instinct.”

There it was. Not a threat. Not quite. But the weight of it hung in the room anyway, heavy as pressure dropping before a storm.

“You ran right before the body was found, Mr. Victors. You don’t have to admit anything for that to stay with you. And it will. It follows people, that kind of thing.”

Zedd gave a humorless exhale, almost a laugh. “Yeah. That much is clear.”

Anderson nodded slightly, reading him without leaning too far in. Never pushed, just guided. “The Alliance isn’t looking to bury you. We want the colonies safer and growing. Your tech’s been helping with that. VESTs, kinesis generators, portable arc-capture arrays. They’re saving lives. That matters.”

Zedd leaned back in his chair, expression unreadable, but his mind was sprinting. Calculating. Mapping fallback points, pressure angles, how many people knew, how much could be buried, how much was just leverage waiting to be pulled.

“So what’s the catch?”

Anderson didn’t answer immediately. When he did, his voice was measured. “We want to make sure Victory Innovations isn’t building toward something destabilizing.”

Zedd scoffed before he could stop himself. “You mean independent.”

“I mean destabilizing.” Anderson didn’t let the word shift. Didn’t lean into it either. Just let it sit there. “Tech that shifts the balance too fast, without oversight. That kind of thing has a cost.”

He wanted a reaction. Zedd didn’t give him one. Just stared flatly and said, “My only interest is progress. Tools that make colonies safer. Faster terraforming. Independent energy grids. Stuff that matters.”

He let that hang, then added, “If the market shifts because of that, well… guess that’s a side effect.”

Anderson studied him again. No judgment. Just the quiet assessment of a man who knew the stakes and didn’t bother pretending otherwise. “I believe you.”

Zedd didn’t reply.

Anderson continued, “Just make sure progress doesn’t involve the kind of breakthroughs the Alliance would need to respond to. Stay in the Traverse. Keep helping people. Don’t force us to rethink the rules. That’s all we’re asking.”

That’s not all you’re asking. Zedd didn’t say it out loud, but the tension across his shoulders didn’t fade. Anderson was warning him with a smile and calling it a handshake.

What followed was all noise. Polite corporate filler. Enough surface diplomacy to be quoted later without saying anything real. David stepped in when needed, smoothing out the edges with practiced deflections. Zedd said what he had to, nothing more.

When Anderson finally left, David trailing behind with some comment about infrastructure planning, Zedd stayed seated, elbows on the desk, jaw locked.

They knew. DNA-level knew. Not just circumstantial. Physical. Under-the-nails level. Which meant if the Alliance wanted to shut him down tomorrow, they wouldn’t need a legal case. They had leverage.

“ADAM,” Zedd said, already pulling the secure panel open. “I want every fucking file we’ve got on David Anderson. Background, military record, every mission tag since he was enlisted. Deep dive it. And prep the conference room for a full breakdown with David when he gets back.”

“Already on it, boss,” ADAM answered. “Should I include his connection to Commander Kahoku and Admiral Hackett?”

Zedd froze mid-motion. “What connection?” The room was still thick with the aftertaste of Anderson—quiet, but not clean. 

“Captain Anderson reports directly to Admiral Steven Hackett,” ADAM’s voice was crisp, almost too sharp against the lingering quiet, “and has been working closely with Commander Kahoku on special assignments for the past fourteen months.”

Zedd didn’t move for a second as he let that name sit in his head. Hackett. Anybody who knew anything about the Alliance knew the top guy. That wasn’t just a knock on the door, that was someone pushing a gun barrel under it and waiting to see if you’d flinch. 

“ADAM, you Include every damn thing,” he muttered, already switching tracks. Fingers already moving, already punching in the next pull. “And bring up the Terminus buildout files. I want full financials, all five.”

The holos flared up before he was done speaking, overlapping project data washing the desk in soft blue light. Locations, budgets, staffing projections, current throughput models—all of it layered, half-finished, deliberately cluttered. Too much at once, because that was the point.

Control the chaos, own the tempo. Make decisions before they finish asking questions.

By the time David walked back in, Zedd had moved to the conference room, one foot hooked around the chair leg like he’d been there for hours.

David was all stately lines and neutral expression, navy blazer unbuttoned like he hadn’t just walked out of a pressure cooker conversation where his mentee effectively admitted to murder in front of him. But the skin under his eyes was tight.

“Interesting choice,” David said as he crossed the threshold, voice carefully bland. “Springing that kind of intel on you first thing. Normally you’d hold card like that closer to chest in case someone got out of line”

Zedd looked up and sighed, lowering his aviators down his nose for a second. “Wasn’t a reveal. It was a move.”

David sank into the seat to his right, legs crossed neatly. “You think that was a test?”

“No,” Zedd said, shifting one of the charts into sharper focus with a finger, the production rollout for Eutanta. “I think it was a shove. See which way I fall.”

“And?” David tilted his head, watching him. “How’d you fall?”

Zedd gave a half-shrug. “Like someone who just found out an old friend got murdered.”

“Convincing,” David lied, but didn’t press. Zedd could appreciate that.

They sat in silence for a few seconds, blue light crawling across the table between them, the sharp edge of the financial overlays reflecting off David’s own glasses. Zedd flicked his hand, swapping the current display for a full regional overlay.

“Five locations,” he said, dragging his fingertip along each node. “Eutanta, Zatorus, Gei Hinnom, Thorne, Noveria. Redundancy across all lines—manufacturing, R&D, supply.”

David’s gaze ticked to the last one. “Noveria’s a gamble.”

“It’s a shell corp,” Zedd replied, already bored of that argument. “They’ve got enough legit research operations to cover noise. Besides, we need a place the Council doesn’t feel brave enough to look at too hard.”

“And if they do?”

“Then they’ll find out they don’t own the future.”

David exhaled slowly. “How many new colonies?”

“Fourteen,” Zedd said. “Seventeen by Q3 if Thorne hits schedule.”

He brought up the VEST field penetration graph. Dozens of tiny points lit across the screen, each one a colony that didn’t rely on eezo mass shift anymore. Each one a data point the Council couldn’t track. Every time one of those dots turned blue, Zedd won.

David scanned the data, his fingers steepled in front of his mouth, brow creased. “He rattled you.”

Zedd didn’t look up. “He confirmed we’re past the line. We’re not guessing anymore. They’re watching.”

David nodded, silent.

Zedd rotated the interface again, pulling up production throughput models. “So we accelerate. Push harder. Build faster. One goes down, two pick up the slack.”

David didn’t speak. His silence wasn’t passive, though. He was calculating, cataloging variables Zedd didn’t bother naming.

Finally, “What do you think he wanted?”

Zedd leaned back, one elbow resting on the chair arm, fingers against his temple. “He wanted to size me up. See if I’m a wild card or a tool.”

“And your read?”

“Too early,” Zedd said, then smirked, slow and tired. “But if he thought I was harmless, he wouldn’t’ve mentioned Matt.”

David blinked at the name, but didn’t flinch. “So you think he’s offering leash length. Not amnesty.”

“Exactly.” Zedd dismissed the map with a flick, fingers twitching from the leftover static hum. “Stay in the Traverse, don’t make waves, keep the colonies happy, and they let me play god in the backyard.”

“Until the Council decides the backyard matters.”

“They’re already late,” Zedd said, voice low. “By the time they start clawing at relevance, we’ll have outpaced them threefold.”

David was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke again, his voice had that too-careful note he used when he wasn’t sure if he was offering advice or a warning.

“Just remember,” he said, “Anderson’s not some career politician in a uniform. He believes in humanity. Deeply. And if he decides you’re a threat—”

“I won’t give him time to decide,” Zedd cut in, standing, palm already moving to bring up another system schematic. “We don’t slow down. We go big enough that they can’t shut us down without setting half the frontier on fire.”

He glanced down at the console, where the Noveria overlay pulsed in waiting. His reflection stared back, fragmented in the corner of the glass.

“We need to be too big to shut down before they decide we’re too dangerous to allow.”

The conversation drifted, but never really settled. Logistics, expansion models, secondary staffing contingencies—it was all noise layered over tension neither of them named. David handled it like he always did, smoothing the sharp edges Zedd couldn’t be bothered to file down, weaving political cover into technical aggression like that was normal. Like this was still just business. It wasn’t. Not anymore.

The conference room hummed low with active projections, layered three deep across the air in front of them. Floor-to-ceiling display nodes filtered soft blue light across Zedd’s face as he tracked supply chain redundancies with the same intensity other people reserved for loaded weapons. His eyes didn’t move so much as flick, registering pipeline timestamps and cargo node fault tolerances while his fingers manipulated the datastream like it was an extension of his nervous system. Nothing faked. No gloss.

David sat to his right, jacket off but tie still knotted, sleeves rolled like he might have to step into a reactor mid-debate. His face stayed neutral, but the lines around his eyes had settled deeper since Anderson left. He hadn’t said much at first. Just watched. Waited. Probably to see if Zedd would spiral or snap.

“Springing that kind of information in a first meet,” David said eventually, breaking the silence without looking up from the floating logistics tree. “Not Alliance standard. Anderson doesn’t show his hand unless he’s already played it.”

Zedd didn’t stop working. “He wasn’t early. He was exact. That was a stress test.”

David’s fingers tapped once on the table, a subtle tell. “And?”

Zedd let a half-smirk curl at his mouth, though it didn’t touch his eyes. “I passed.”

He didn’t elaborate. Didn’t need to. David wouldn’t press—he knew the boundaries. That was part of why he was still here, still trusted. Even now, after Anderson had cracked a hole in the narrative clean through to the bones of Zedd’s past. David wouldn’t ask what it meant. He’d adjust projections. Reshape the narrative. Patch whatever needed patching to keep the machine moving forward.

“We’re accelerating Terminus,” Zedd said, swiping to bring up the orbital layout over Thorne.

“That fast?”

“Faster.” He snapped to a quadrant map of Gei Hinnom. “New R&D shell on Zatorus is live. Eutanta’s ready for VEST spooling. Thorne gets the station within eight weeks. And Noveria—”

David’s brow twitched. “Noveria’s a Council zone.”

Zedd tilted his head. “Through shell fronts and blind assets. Nothing that traces back. We need to be where oversight gets foggy.”

“You realize they have Spectres embedded in the board there.”

“They also have forty-seven active patent disputes and a corruption case against their planetary customs chief. They’ll blink first.”

He blew past David’s silence, sweeping the map wider. Dots populated like a slow detonation. Blue for current reach, green for active expansion, gold for projected. The screen bloomed with color. Colonial sectors lighting up like a virus spreading.

“Fourteen new colonies get VEST drop-in over the next quarter. Twelve of those get kinesis fields as secondary loadouts. I’m pushing ahead with the zero-point stabilizers too.”

David exhaled slowly, not quite a sigh. “Anderson got to you.”

Zedd shook his head. “Anderson confirmed what we knew. He just did it in person. That changes the urgency. Not the threat.”

“Still… you added three new failovers to security this morning.”

“And activated two dormant supply relays and rerouted a fifth of our material flow through independent blacksite channels,” Zedd added. “You know. Just in case.”

David leaned back, arms crossed, the picture of reluctant understanding. “He thinks you’re both. Threat and asset.”

“Yeah. And if he swings one way too hard, I need to be past the point where pulling the plug won’t kill the patient.”

They sat in quiet, the hum of servers and holoscreens filling the space between them.

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –​

Hours later, faint movement stirred in the lab levels of his house.

Zedd’s attention pulled downward, automatic as Scot moved across the open floor in a slow circuit, arms at his sides, eyes flaring soft violet.

“He’s learning how to look at the world again,” came a low voice at his side.

Zedd didn’t flinch. Caleb always showed up without warning now, almost half as stealthy as Kai Leng.

Zedd glanced at him. Caleb was in civilian clothes—white cargoes, loose blue synth-cotton shirt. Even almost two months in, the guy couldn’t hide the way he held himself. This was a man that could rip through the window and jump down three floors before anyone blinked.

“Control’s better,” Caleb said, nodding to the lab. “He’s not going all out anymore. I taught him that one.”

“Good job,” Zedd muttered, then sighed. “But yeah. He’s ahead of schedule. Not up to you in terms of growth, but…”

“Different baselines, though, right?” Caleb answered back. “He’s tailored. I’m…”

“Prototype.”

“Right.”

Neither of them looked away from Scot. Zedd watched the way his head tilted, slow, calculating. The way he blinked—once every fifteen seconds, deliberate. Man, that guy’s hard to read.

“He’s holding up,” Zedd said, quieter.

“You’re pushing the timeline,” Caleb asked, this time not a question as purple eyes focused his way again. “His girl too?”

Zedd nodded. “As soon as her parents clear the waiver. We run drills once she’s stable. I want three functional operatives ready before Q2.”

Caleb made a small noise, not quite approval. More like understanding. “Because of Anderson.”

Not a question.

Zedd hesitated. “Caleb… you trust me, right?”

Caleb didn’t move, the super-soldier only raising a single eyebrow. “I let you mess with my genes.”

Zedd tilted his head to the side, admitting that was a fair point. “Fair. Let’s say some news comes out about me… that I did something bad in the past…” He licked his lips. “You got my back, right?”

Caleb just nodded. “’Course I do, Zee.”

Zedd looked at him sideways. “Just like that?”

“You’re a weirdo, but you’re a good guy. I know it.” Caleb patted Zedd on the back, hard enough that Zedd winced slightly even as he appreciated it all the same, before the blond walked off.

Seven.

That number stayed in his head.

Seven wasn’t an army. Not yet. But it was a start.

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –​

Night buried New Abraham in its usual hush, lights low across the spires, only the movement of sky traffic casting faint blue sweeps against the glass towers. Alliance shuttle drifted away from the platform, quiet as it climbed past orbit. Inside, Anderson sat straight-backed in the passenger seat, hands folded loosely, expression unreadable.

He didn’t dictate or pace or worry. The military man just tapped out his report, sentence by sentence. Each word calibrated for impact and deniability. The message to Hackett was short.

“Assessment of Victory Innovations complete. Recommend observation. High-value tech confirmed. Strategic risk high. Potential Council friction if applications expand into military space. Victors stable, but ethically unbound. High initiative. Requires containment by distance, not confrontation.”

Response came in under ten minutes.

“Acknowledged. Escalate surveillance. Confirm Terminus footprint. Prioritize counterintel. Maintain standoff range.”

Anderson read it twice, then archived.

The he muttered aloud to no one but himself. “At the very least… he’s not Cerberus.”

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –​

5k Words (100 FP)

FAIL: There’s An App For That (400 CP) [UQ Holder] {Skills – Magitech}: “Magic Apps are a recent invention, made to bring power to the people. They turn a magical spell into an electronic format that can be inserted into a Manaphone, a device to power the spells with electricity, and then freely use that magic without doing the training or energy normally needed. Amazing stuff and you’re at the forefront of that new science.

You’re quite effortlessly able to translate any magical spell or Ki technique that you know into a Magic App, provided you have the proper facilities, regardless of how strange or powerful the magic may be. You do still need to power the spell with something once you turn it into an App, but you’re well-versed in the creation of Manaphones and like devices too, so you can convert almost any kind of phone or computer to be able to cast apps too.”

Forge Points: 200