Chapter Seventy-Eight: Misplaced Trust and Bloodfire
Section One: A Trouble That Shouldn't Be Ours
Five in the morning, Rustmouth East Third Warehouse Stretch, the sky still clung to night's edge, its faint glow barely piercing the gloom. The ground lay ashen, smothered in a heavy veil of dust, as if the earth itself had forgotten to breathe.
From the warehouse gate, a man sprinted, his voice ragged, splitting the predawn quiet: "Trouble! Next warehouse over! Someone's been stabbed!"
Tarn was out the door first, boots pounding the cracked pavement, Jian Ci trailing close, yanking on a worn training jacket, wristbands half-tied, his words sharp: "Who's fighting?"
"No one knows!" The worker, breathless, stumbled over his words. "Heard folks in the warehouse started arguing, then… then one guy slashed two volunteer dispatchers!"
Maria, catching the news, hurried after, but Jason stayed rooted. He stood at the main warehouse's window, gazing at the eastern horizon where a thin line of white bled into the dark. His voice came low, almost a murmur: "This… it's too damn convenient."
Zhao Mingxuan was already at the ARGUS terminal, pulling up initial scene reports. The screen flickered, and the first lines hit like a cold blade, sinking his expression into shadow.
[Source: TRACE Civilian Risk Control Platform]
Event Classification: Sudden crowd conflict, Rustmouth stability pilot zone.
Recommendation: Rustmouth dispatch deemed ineffective, initiate trust transfer protocol.
Status: Automatically Approved
—
"Automatically approved," Zhao Mingxuan read aloud, his voice jagged with frost, each syllable bitten off. "They had this rigged from the start. Not some warehouse brawl—this is a scripted trap, built to bury us under their blame."
—
Jian Ci reached the scene, shoving through the dawn's chill. The East Third's outer edge was a knot of dozens, but the crowd was thin—residents scarce, overshadowed by "coordination volunteers" in gray jackets, their synergy badges glinting dully, clogging the perimeter paths like a noose.
Two bodies lay beneath black tarps, blood seeping into the dirt, the air thick with iron and ash. Jian Ci forced his rage down, stepping close, his eyes raking over the scene.
Not Rustmouth's. Those faces—he'd never seen them before.
"Our people?" he demanded, voice taut.
A gray-clad volunteer met his gaze, calm, almost rehearsed: "They operated under Rustmouth's coordination line. This is your stretch, isn't it?"
Jian Ci's brow clenched, a storm brewing behind his eyes. "Who issued their orders? I didn't clear anyone for this zone."
"Not your signature," the man said, voice soft, deliberate. "Upper brass defaulted you as 'effective operators' here."
"Run the show, you claim the bodies."
—
Jian Ci turned, his gaze catching the warehouse's dispatch line—sliced clean, junctions exposed, wires dangling like gutted veins. His team had patched it yesterday; now, this.
"They wore our jackets," the volunteer added, his tone a needle.
"They carried a name you can't untangle."
—
Tarn arrived, joining Jian Ci at the gate, both struck mute.
This was no stray accident. This warehouse was a pilot point, lauded three times in crowd messages as "the supply line we trust most."
ARGUS logs still held their words: "If Rustmouth hadn't rewired this, we'd have been dry that day."
Now, a killing ground. Rustmouth's dispatch name, their colors, a crowd's blade, corpses sprawled—and Rustmouth could only stand, frozen, in the dust.
—
TRACE's system broadcast cut through:
"To curb meme proliferation and crowd instability, suspend East Third's non-registered structure pilot, transfer to city defense coordination framework."
Maria read it low, her voice a blade's edge: "They're moving now, no pretense left."
—
Jian Ci stormed back to the meeting room, eyes burning red, veins pulsing at his temples.
"How long do I choke this down?" he growled. "We didn't kill. We didn't send anyone. We wired the damn line, swapped the lamps, took the heat—now murders, and they slap our name on it, say we fucked it all up."
"We don't call ourselves a faction—they pin us as the ones to blame."
—
Jason studied the "automatically approved" feedback, his voice heavy, like stone sinking in deep water: "They don't want us to answer for it."
"They want to strip the crowd's reason to trust us."
"The killing's not the goal. The blame is."
—
At the warehouse gate, a middle-aged man stared at the severed line, its frayed ends dangling in the dust. Low, to another: "This is Rustmouth's turf?"
No one answered.
He hefted his pack, muttering: "Heard they patched this line on the sly, no approval."
Section Two: Who Masqueraded as Us, Sending Men to Their Graves
Rustmouth East Third was locked down.
Within three hours, barriers rose, and three light trucks rolled in, marked "C.F.D.P."—City Function Regulation Department.
On paper, they were clearing the scene.
In truth, they were sealing memories, rewriting the story, strangling any chance to explain.
—
Jian Ci didn't spare them a glance. He crossed the barriers, weaving into the inner warehouse, now branded a "meme interference risk zone." The two bodies hadn't been moved, each tagged with a cold label:
"Special Meme Guidance Unit, Sixth Squad · Volunteer Meme Correction Drillers (Probationary)"
His eyes narrowed. Rustmouth dispatch had no "Sixth Squad," no "drillers." The code was a lie.
—
He crouched, lifting a corpse's sleeve with deliberate care.
No tattoos, no codes, no scars of training etched into the skin.
Yet the man wore Rustmouth's old dispatch jacket, the waist's split seam hand-stitched, their exact pattern, down to the thread's fray.
"This isn't a knockoff," Jian Ci said, voice low, a growl simmering beneath.
Tarn, beside him, face grim: "Someone hit our scrapped gear warehouse."
"Or worse—got inside our decommissioned stock."
—
Jian Ci locked eyes with the corpse.
Open, unblinking.
Whites clouded, like fog over a dead sea.
Not a random death. He knew that stare—men who'd followed orders, then paid the price.
He rose, turning to the entrance, his voice cutting through the stale air: "They didn't just mimic us. They stole our identity to send these men to their graves."
"Then piled the dead at our feet."
—
Main warehouse, Zhao Mingxuan fed the corpses' IDs into TRACE's backend. First hit: "Insufficient clearance."
Jason, voice grave: "Bypass it with the meme purge module."
A minute later, data spilled out.
Jian Ci stood at the terminal, reading the cold lines:
"Personnel File: Stability Meme Emergency Drill Project · Actor Status: Unregistered · Station Approval: Reno Kuze Temporary Sign-Off · Target: Crowd Focus Intervention Drill, Level-One Clearance"
Jian Ci, barely above a whisper: "These… aren't our people."
"Reno's pawns, dressed in our clothes, sent to die."
—
Maria scanned the approval chain, her voice sharp: "Drill?"
"They call it a 'drill'—testing how crowds react when vague sources destabilize."
"They watched the crowd turn violent, then pointed at us as the fuse."
—
Jason read, silent, his face unreadable.
Zhao Mingxuan pieced the trap: "Reno didn't need us to kill. He needed—
First: His men in our jackets, identities blurred.
Second: Chaos at our trusted crowd point.
Third: Panic, someone lashes out.
Fourth: Deaths, he shrugs: 'They got the wrong guy.'"
Maria: "The crowd misjudges, we bear the weight."
—
Jian Ci slumped against the wall, teeth grinding: "They've hung a death plaque on us, and we're supposed to kneel and apologize."
—
Jason: "He's not purging us."
"He's crueler—framing us as a 'crowd trust distortion' case."
"He wants brass to write: we sparked dependency chaos."
—
He stood, palms pressing the table, eyes low, icy: "Reno's done fighting us."
"He wants one line in the system: 'Crowd overtrust in Rustmouth led to misjudgment, unraveling safety order.'"
—
Tarn, low: "Take out his men?"
"No," Jason turned. "Move, we expose ourselves."
"We need his next 'drill' crew, fresh from the warehouse, to hear the system demand: 'Where're you headed? Whose name are you carrying? Who signed your pass?'"
—
ARGUS flashed a public record:
"Due to escalating crowd cognition risks, suspend Rustmouth pilot warehouse operations for two days, transfer to temporary coordination."
Jian Ci shed his training jacket, tossing it aside.
Cold: "They love their theater. Time we rewrite the damn script."
Section Three: Force You to Sign Your Own Name
Jian Ci didn't reclaim Rustmouth's uniform.
He wore gray-blue work clothes, chest badge ripped off, the fabric stained with the grit of the streets.
Tarn matched, clad in volunteer construction gear, pant cuffs crusted with mud from yesterday's pipe swap, the dirt still clinging like a badge of defiance.
Their task today: "fake identities," with a razor-sharp goal—to bait the next wave posing as Rustmouth.
—
"This gonna work?" Tarn crouched at an alley mouth, taping a small "Cooperative Work Segment" sign to a lamp pole, the metal cold under his fingers.
Jian Ci lit a cigarette, the ember flaring in the dark: "They want us to carry their blame?"
"We'll shove it back. Let's see if they can stomach it."
—
They planted five signs across non-core points, each stamped with old "Rustmouth Abandoned Aux Dispatch" codes, dressed up as unsanctioned reactivations, their edges frayed to sell the lie.
Every sign was laced with ARGUS tracking and trap signals, silent sentinels waiting to spring.
—
Inside ARGUS, this was "Structural Remapping Induction": not broadcasting "who we are," but forcing the system to question: "Are these your people?"
—
Third night, midnight, the first bait point snagged.
Two figures emerged, clad in three-month-old Rustmouth south dispatch gear, moving swift, faces lost in shadow.
No lamps wired, no lines patched—they taped a note:
"Lamp repair scheduled by Rustmouth coordination tomorrow. Residents, clear the area."
No signature, no code, just words flapping in the wind like a hollow alibi.
Jian Ci stood before the main warehouse's monitor, eyes locked on the note, his voice a low growl: "They're back for another act."
—
Maria, behind him, voice steady as steel: "Let the system pass judgment."
ARGUS flagged:
[Scene Contradicts Clearance Map × Zero Current Rustmouth Actor Presence × Gear Codes Unregistered × Trust Curve Inactive]
Zhao Mingxuan fired an auto-report into CAIRN's data chain:
"Suspected unauthorized zone traversal detected. Recommend tracing dispatch source."
—
Reno's meme cleanup crew hadn't caught the shift.
They were still rigging points for tomorrow's "crowd panic response."
Before they could act, the system pinged:
"Prior zone dispatch chain authorized by Mr. Kuze. Initiate event backtrace?"
—
TRACE HQ, Reno's face drained at the alert, the words searing like a brand.
He saw it now—Jason wasn't proving Rustmouth's identity.
They were making him explain why "non-Rustmouth" kept running Rustmouth's game.
—
Main warehouse meeting room, Jian Ci's grin flashed at the "backtrace success" prompt, sharp and fleeting.
"They'll have to write their own report now."
Tarn bared a smirk: "What's the headline?"
Zhao Mingxuan, calm: "'Why Meme Drill Agents Keep Crossing Defunct Civilian Structure Points.'"
—
Jason stood last, eyes on the map as points glowed yellow, each a masquerade, each peeling back deeper dispatch rot.
Low: "You want our signature?"
"This time, we make you—on the system—sign your orders to send us to our graves."
Section Four: Reno Steps Down
TRACE Main Building, Ninth Floor, Meme Control Office.
Reno stood in the silent meeting room, hands clasped behind, a thin sheen of sweat on his brow, the air heavy with the hum of projectors. Before him, a gray screen floated a damning line:
[Meme Trust Backlash Risk Escalating × Recommend Suspending Drill Team External Clearance × Source: Reno Kuze]
The words loomed like a steel slab, unyielding. Behind, two mid-tier liaisons sat, their silence louder than any verdict.
—
He knew he'd sparked this fire.
He'd braced for blowback.
What he hadn't foreseen—Jason wielding the system's own rules to bite back, not with the brute defiance of past factions that burned out in open rebellion.
—
An hour earlier, he'd retrieved the meme response team's scene data. The fifth "crowd psyche drill" had collapsed, derailing multiple data chains:
No surge in crowd trust.
Misidentification rates below projections.
Target zone crowd coherence too high, no chaos as planned.
He wondered—had crowds lost faith in the system, refusing to stir, unmoved by the bait?
—
"You want us shadows?"
Jason's words haunted him.
"We'll be a shadow—every lie you write, we'll bounce the light back, forcing you to scribe your own downfall."
—
The screen auto-generated its next blow:
"Recommend lead official step down pending accountability review?"
No negotiation—this was the system's final shield.
Stay, and his name would headline the next "meme incident trace."
—
He spoke, voice steady but strained: "I request temporary withdrawal from meme drill management."
"I'll retain system internal audit observer status."
The liaisons exchanged a glance, no words, forwarding the decision.
Three seconds, the screen flashed: "Auto-Approved."
—
He left the room, fingers trembling faintly, not from fear but from the weight of realization.
He hadn't lost to Rustmouth's strength.
He'd been undone by a nameless shadow, a structure so elusive it forced him to pen his own resignation.
—
Rustmouth main warehouse, Jian Ci slung the news onto the table, his voice light, almost surreal: "He's out. Quit on his own."
Zhao Mingxuan verified the process: "Not fired—stepped down himself."
Maria, scanning data: "System doesn't call it failure, just an exit from 'experimental observation.'"
"They admit the drill flopped, not that we won."
—
Jason sat by the window, gazing thirty meters out where a resident hauled a bucket from the supply point, water glinting in the dawn's first rays.
A gust splashed droplets, soaking the man's cuffs. He paused, flashed a faint smile, and walked off.
No cameras, no calls—just fetching water, drawing power, closing his door, as if the world hadn't shifted.
—
Jason, soft: "He's down—brass won't carry his weight."
"But to climb—we make them see: keeping us out is the real danger."
—
He lifted a draft, not from officials, but an anonymous South Zone warehouse manager:
"Rustmouth's structure, though unfiled, demonstrates high stability, low meme disruption, and superior efficiency. Recommend integrating as a segmented coordination mechanism."
Below, a handwritten note:
"Instead of chasing who they are, embrace what they've done."
—
Jason closed the file, his eyes sharpening—not relief, but anticipation, as if the next player had finally stepped into view.
Low: "Next phase begins."
"No more waiting for their missteps."
"We strike first."