Communication was always the riskiest part of rebellion.
Not the messages themselves, but the moment of contact. The instant where the observer becomes the observed, where a ghost chooses to be seen—for a reason.
Matius Benedictus had avoided contact for all of his life. But today, he made an exception.
---
In a forgotten trade post on the outer fringe of Sector V, rusting under a yellow sky, the smuggler known as Dr. Kael Dorn waited with the nervousness of a man who had done too many deals with too many devils.
He was a former technomancer—once a prestigious Empire scientist, now fallen from grace after being accused of "experimental perversions." The truth was simpler: he'd discovered something he wasn't meant to, and he refused to unlearn it.
Now, he sold knowledge. To the highest bidder, to rebels, to pirates, to those with credits and desperation.
And yet… the message he received last night wasn't from a buyer.
It was from a ghost.
---
> "I require information on forgotten Empire facilities. Coordinates attached. Bring everything. One hour. Alone."
"If you try to trace this, you'll never remember why you came."
It was signed only with a symbol.
A spider.
---
Dorn's fingers twitched near his sidearm as he entered the broken-down silo. Every sound echoed like a threat. His portable scanner detected nothing—but even the scanner felt… compromised.
And then he saw him.
A boy.
Not even fifteen.
Leaning against a rusted beam, wearing a coat stitched from three different uniforms. Silent. Watching. Pale eyes that didn't blink.
"You… sent the message?" Dorn asked carefully.
The boy nodded.
> "You're Matius Benedictus."
Not a question. A conclusion.
Matius didn't deny it.
Instead, he held out a small chip.
> "Trade."
Dorn took it.
Slid it into his ocular port.
A second passed. Then two.
Then his knees nearly buckled.
Inside that chip was a fragment of code so dense, so perfect, it could rewrite neural firmware. Theoretical AI logic that shouldn't exist. Forbidden tech once thought to be the product of myth.
> "Where did you get this?" Dorn whispered.
"Designed it," Matius replied coldly.
Dorn looked up at him.
> "This is Empire-level quantum recursion. Higher, even. This—this can't be from a child."
"I'm not a child."
Dorn stared for a long time.
> "What do you want?"
---
Matius spoke.
For the first time, not in orders. But in strategy.
> "I want the maps they buried. I want to know where the Empire stores the dead technology. Where they lock away the old minds. Where the truth lives under dust."
Dorn narrowed his eyes. "Why?"
> "Because I'm going to wake it all up."
---
Back in his hidden crawlspace, Eline watched the monitors as Matius's vitals streamed across the screen. She was learning how to read them—learning the quiet signs of when he was thinking too hard, or when danger was near.
She didn't know what this meeting was about.
But she understood one thing:
> For the first time, he was stepping out of the shadows to reach someone.
And that meant the next phase was beginning.
---
Dr. Dorn handed over a chip of his own—his life's archive. Coordinates. Locations long buried. Ruins of Empire facilities, failed AI sanctuaries, weapon vaults that had once threatened to think too much.
> "This will get you killed," Dorn muttered. "If they even sniff you're digging in this direction…"
"They already are."
"And yet you showed yourself to me."
Matius locked eyes with him.
> "Because soon, I'll be showing myself to them."
---
Somewhere within the deepest folds of the Spider Network, Orthus finished compiling the first model of a system-wide collapse.
A predictive engine that could simulate the domino fall of empires.
And it needed only one trigger.
One.
Contact had been made.
The world would never recover from what followed.
---