Chapter 26 50,000 Credits
The bounty announcement changed the texture of Ashfen.
Caius felt it before he could see it. The System traffic increased, players opening interfaces, running searches, communicating through channels that all carried the same subject. Fifty thousand credits, unregistered entity, surface Tier. The information moving through the player community the way fire moved through dry grass, fast and self-sustaining and impossible to stop once it had started.
His Glitch energy burned faster. Not dramatically, just measurably. The increased System activity around him meant more processes brushing against his concealment, more traffic that his architecture had to deflect rather than ignore. He could feel it the way you feel a crowd pressing against you from all sides, not painful, just constant.
Renne moved them through Ashfen's back routes with the efficiency of someone who had been navigating this city for six years and knew which streets the serious players used and which ones they didn't bother with. Narrow, less rendered. The kind of passages that existed because cities always developed connective tissue between their main arteries, small capillaries that carried locals and nobody else.
Orven was the problem. Not his movement, he moved well, Level 98 and sixty-three years of survival instinct reasserting itself fast. The problem was his name tag. ORVEN DRASKE. LEVEL 98. Floating above him in clear System text, visible to every player they passed, attached to an identity that fifty thousand credits had just made very famous in a very short time.
"Your name tag," Imra said quietly, falling into step beside Orven. "Can you do anything about it?"
"No," he said. "Players can suppress display in certain zones, not in open terrain."
"Then we keep you away from main routes," Renne said without turning around. "Anyone who recognizes the name and connects it to the announcement will report it immediately."
"How many people would recognize it?" Caius asked.
"It was on a guild announcement from the Mid Tiers' largest faction," Renne said. "So everyone."
Orven said nothing. He kept moving and kept his eyes forward, he carried the specific expression of someone who was accounting for a mistake without letting the accounting slow them down.
They turned into a passage between two of Ashfen's older buildings, narrow enough that they had to move single file. Renne first, then Caius, then Imra, then Orven.
A figure stepped out of a doorway at the passage's midpoint. Renne stopped. Her hand went to her blade in the same motion, not drawing it, just putting her hand there. The rest of them stopped behind her.
The figure was young. Or rendered young, the System didn't age people, but there was something in his face that suggested youth in the way that had nothing to do with years, a quality of not yet worn down. Bland features, the kind that didn't stick in memory. Average height, average build, average everything. He wore mid-tier gear that had been chosen for functionality rather than appearance, nothing that drew the eye, nothing that said look at me.
He had his hands up. Both of them, empty. The deliberate gesture of someone who wanted that fact to be the first thing everyone noticed.
He looked at all of them in turn. His eyes moved to the space where Caius was standing with the specific directness of someone who knew exactly where to look.
"I know what you are. I know where you've been and I know who sent that announcement." He said.
Nobody moved.He kept his hands up and his voice level and his body very still, the posture of someone who had rehearsed this moment and was executing it carefully. "My name is Padrin Holt." He let that land. "I placed the first bounty on Renne Oskar three days ago."
Renne's grip tightened on her blade. She didn't draw it. But the grip tightened and her weight shifted forward and Padrin saw both things and did not step back.
"I'm here," he said, "because I was wrong to do that. And I'd like to not be wrong about the next thing."
The passage was quiet. Somewhere at its far end, Ashfen's ordinary noise continued. Footsteps, voices. The city not knowing this was happening.
Imra was watching Padrin the way she watched everything, with the focused analytical attention of someone building a model in real time. Her eyes moved over him slowly, taking inventory.
Orven had gone completely motionless. Not the motionlessness of someone frozen by surprise. The motionlessness of someone who had spent sixty-three years learning when to be still and was applying that skill right now.
Caius looked at Padrin. At the bland face and the careful posture and the hands still raised and the eyes that had found him without any visible uncertainty about where to look. He asked the only question that mattered.
"Who do you work for?"
Padrin's expression didn't change, not a flicker. "The same person who sent that guild announcement in Orven's name." He held Caius's gaze steadily. "And I'm done working for them."
The passage held that for a moment.
"Done," Renne said. Her voice was flat and specific. "You placed a bounty on me three days ago and now you're done."
"Yes."
"What changed in three days?"
"I started paying attention to what happened to the people I reported." He lowered his hands slowly, watching Renne's blade hand as he did it. She let him lower them. "I've been an information broker for four years. I pass along what I see. I don't usually follow up on what happens after." He paused. "I started following up."
"And?"
"The players I reported anomalies on. System irregularities, unusual behavior and corrupted zone activity." He paused. "They got erased. Not immediately. A few weeks later but consistently." He looked at Caius. "Every anomaly I reported, every single one. The players involved ended up permanently gone within a month." He said it without drama. Just the flat accounting of someone who had done the math and did not like the answer. "I've been helping cull witnesses for four years without knowing it."
The passage was very quiet. Renne's hand came off her blade, not because she trusted him. Caius could see that clearly, because she was recalculating.
"You know who sent the announcement," Caius said.
"Yes."
"Name."
"I don't have a name. I've never had a name. That's how they operate." Padrin looked at him. "I have a network node. A communication point. The channel I report through." He paused. "And I have something more useful than a name."
"What?"
"A location." He held Caius's gaze. "Their network has a physical anchor in the Surface Tier. A point where their System processes are tied to this zone's architecture." He paused. "I've been building toward that information for six months without knowing why I was building toward it, turns out I was preparing to do exactly this." He glanced over his shoulder, back toward the passage entrance, a quick checking movement. "But none of that matters in the next ninety seconds."
Renne looked at the passage entrance behind him. "Why ninety seconds?"
Padrin looked back at her. "Because the people they sent to follow me will reach this passage in approximately that time." He looked at each of them in turn. "They sent them when I stopped reporting. When I went dark instead of confirming your position the way I was supposed to." He paused. "They knew I knew where you were. They want to know what I told you before they clean up the situation."
"Clean up meaning." Imra muttered.
"Meaning all of us," Padrin said.
Renne looked at Caius. One look, fast. The look that contained an entire conversation compressed into a second. He gave her nothing back because it was her call. She knew this world and its people better than he did.
She looked at Padrin. "If you're lying, I will find you wherever you go in this world and the conversation will be different."
"I know," Padrin said. "That's a risk I've decided to take."
She looked at the passage entrance one more time. At the ninety seconds that were now closer to sixty.
"Move," she said.
She went forward, past Padrin, taking point. Orven followed without being asked. Imra fell in behind him.
Padrin turned to go with them. Caius stopped beside him for one second.
"The location," he said quietly. "The network anchor."
Padrin looked at him with the specific expression of someone who had committed to something and was not going back. "It's under Duveth's shop," he said. "Directly beneath the error handler."
Caius looked at him, then he walked.