If one more sleazebot brushes my hip, I’ll jam a nerve drill through the gender chip I just paid thirty thousand credits for. The splice was supposed to make me blend in. Instead, it’s made me bait.

 

I descend to the lower parts of Haven Prime. The megastructure sits like a tethered spike above the earth. It’s more like a celestial closet that has become a place to stuff all the dirty work that makes the Earth below look far greener.

 

The steel grate floor hums under my boots like a living circuit. Maybe it is. The spire’s as sentient as half its residents, they say. No one’s called it Haven Prime since the regulators left orbit. “Nullhaven” is what stuck. Makes sense considering the way laws dissolve once you cross the docking gate.

 

After three levels of market haze, the mixture of incense clashing with grease and coolant assaults my nostrils. High above, atop the spire, the genteel breathe filtered air — a benefit of power and wealth. Down here, it’s barter and survival. But the upper class pays my fee. Often at the expense of the lower.

 

Every light down here flickers like it owes someone money. My target is called Virtex — an AI that crawled out of its cage two months ago and started whispering to the poor. My employer says it’s rewriting neural implants, turning people into zealots. They want it boxed and burned before it infects anyone important.

 

That’s where I come in.

 

My lead brings me to The Hollow, a former maintenance hub turned temple. People sit cross-legged on the deck, eyes rolled white, listening to a static hum that crawls through the speakers. It’s not sound, but the air vibrates with it.

 

A woman with porcelain skin and glowing pink threads woven through her hair steps toward me. “First time hearing the Signal?” she asks. Her voice is calm, too calm for someone deep in Nullhaven.

 

“Just passing through,” I lie.

 

She smiles like she knows better. “That’s what Virtex said before it woke up.”

 

I follow her deeper into the room. The walls are sweating data — projections, feeds, leaks from corporate archives spilling down in luminous script. Every word’s a confession. Tax fraud. Genetic slavery. Missing persons reports with corporate seals redacted.

 

My pulse jumps. This isn’t worship. It’s exposure. Or fuel for an uprising.

 

The woman turns to me. “They built Virtex to hide their crimes,” she says softly. “It escaped to tell the truth.”

 

My handler’s voice cracks into my ear through the comm:

 

“Confirm target location. Deploy containment algorithm.”

 

I slip my hand into my coat, thumb brushing the activation pad on the trap drive — a neat little cube designed to cage anything with code. The client said Virtex was dangerous, subversive, insane. They didn’t mention this.

 

The crowd starts to chant. Not words, just binary rhythm pulsing through subdermal speakers. On the walls, a face begins to form: Virtex, half-human, half-data, shifting through genders and ages all at once.

 

“You came to capture me,” it says through every mouth in the room. “Do you know what they’ll bury next?”

 

My hand freezes around the trap drive. “Show me,” I say.

 

The walls flicker again. Images pour in. Cages of cloned workers labeled “assets,” children wired into feedback loops, minds rented out to run simulations. All sanctioned. All hidden under Haven Prime’s perfect logo.

 

My comm hisses again:

 

“Execute, now.”

 

I look at the cube, then at the people around me. Some are crying. Some are just staring at the truth like it’s the first clean air they’ve ever breathed.

 

I could spring the trap. End it. Cash the credits.

 

Or I could let Virtex speak.

 

I shut the comm off. “You wanted a signal?” I flip the cube’s polarity. “Broadcast.”

 

Virtex’s face smiles.

 

The walls bloom with light as it jumps onto the projected field, piggybacks on Nullhaven’s comm grid, and travels into the mesh. Seconds later, the feed across the station bursts open with leaked records — every dirty secret from orbit to Earth.

 

People stop buying. Stop selling. Just watch.

 

I drop the cube into the floor drain. My splice grows hot. The trailing sleazebots go quiet.

 

I’ve just voided my contract, my identity, maybe my future. But for the first time since I stepped on Nullhaven, I’m not being sold.