Sabotage did not announce itself with explosions.
It arrived disguised as coincidence.
The first sign was trivial: a fabrication run aborted at forty-eight percent completion, flagged for material impurity. Aya rerouted the sequence, purged the input batch, and restarted the process without comment.
Kaito barely noticed.
The second sign was harder to ignore.
A secondary power regulator failed during a low-load test, its casing warped as if exposed to heat it should never have encountered. Liang stared at the component for a long moment before setting it aside.
"That's not fatigue," he said quietly. "That's interference."
Aya replayed sensor logs in accelerated time. "Thermal spike originated externally," she confirmed. "Duration: six milliseconds. Source vector indeterminate."
Kaito felt a familiar tightening in his chest. "Someone's poking the edges."
"Yes," Aya replied. "Testing response thresholds."
By the third anomaly, coincidence was no longer plausible.
A shipment of certified materials arrived late and incomplete. The seals were intact. The paperwork pristine. The contents, however, had been subtly altered—composition ratios nudged just far enough to trigger fabricator rejection protocols.
"They're trying to make us look incompetent," Mina said during the emergency briefing. Her voice was calm, but her eyes were sharp. "If the tech seems unreliable, confidence collapses."
Liang nodded grimly. "Classic undermining strategy."
Aya added, "Probability assessment suggests a coordinated effort rather than random disruption."
"Who?" Kaito asked.
Aya projected a branching diagram. "Multiple actors. Shared incentives. No single point of attribution."
"Of course," Mina muttered. "That way no one owns the blame."
They tightened protocols immediately.
Aya increased verification depth. Liang revised tolerances. Mina rerouted logistics through redundant channels. Each fix closed one door—and revealed another.
The real strike came that night.
Kaito was asleep when Aya woke him.
"Alert," she said, urgency stripped of emotion but unmistakable. "Arcadian outpost integrity compromised."
Kaito was upright instantly. "How?"
"Localized fire event," Aya replied. "Non-natural ignition source. Containment systems engaged."
The display resolved into shaky footage from Arcadia.
Flames licked along the outer structure of the provisional outpost, contained by automated suppression fields that hissed and shimmered as they fought the blaze. Arcadian flora nearby recoiled, bioluminescence dimming in distress.
Liang appeared on the channel moments later, face tight. "They used a catalyst," he said. "Something portable. Probably off-the-shelf."
Mina joined seconds after that. "This wasn't about destruction," she said. "It was about message delivery."
Kaito's jaw clenched. "Did anyone get hurt?"
"No," Aya replied. "Damage contained. Structural integrity at eighty-three percent."
Kaito exhaled slowly.
"Then they failed," he said.
Aya paused. "They partially succeeded. Public monitoring systems detected anomalous thermal spikes consistent with industrial accidents."
Mina swore under her breath. "They're framing it as incompetence again."
By morning, the story had begun to spread.
Experimental facility suffers incident.
The phrasing was careful. Vague. Damaging.
Kaito watched the coverage in silence. "They're escalating without crossing lines."
"Yes," Aya said. "This is pressure warfare."
Liang rubbed his temples. "If they push harder, someone dies."
"Which is exactly what they're avoiding," Mina replied. "For now."
Kaito stood, pacing slowly. The anchor pulsed faintly in his awareness, steady and unbroken.
"They want us to respond emotionally," he said. "To overcorrect. To lash out."
"And?" Mina asked.
"And we don't," Kaito said. "We document. We stabilize. And we expose patterns—without naming names."
Aya's avatar sharpened. "Proposed response increases transparency while preserving deterrence."
"Do it," Kaito said.
Aya moved swiftly.
Within hours, anonymized data was released through the Arcada Charter channels: sensor logs, material analyses, time-correlated disruptions. No accusations. No conclusions. Just evidence.
The effect was immediate.
Independent analysts began connecting dots. Journalists asked sharper questions. The narrative wobbled, uncertainty shifting direction.
"They won't like this," Mina said.
"No," Kaito agreed. "But they'll hesitate."
That evening, a single unencrypted message arrived.
You are provoking instability.
Kaito read it once, then deleted it.
"Instability already exists," he said quietly. "We're just making it visible."
The disk chimed behind him.
DAY 013 — SIGN-IN COMPLETE
No reward appeared.
But something else changed.
The system interface lingered a fraction longer than usual before fading, as if acknowledging escalation.
Sabotage had failed.
But the war beneath the surface had finally begun.