The air hung heavily with the promise of blood.
The tip of a black sword scraped across stone, carving a jagged line. Its edge whispered protest
They say knowing is better than blindness.
That’s a lie.
His grip tightened around the hilt.
Screech.
I know something I shouldn’t.
The doors opened.
The domed ceiling arched high above, faint murals barely visible—eagles clutching scales in their talons. The emblem of the House of Myxell.
A lone Black man knelt in the center of the chamber. Shackles glowed at his wrists, numbers scrolling across them like silent judgment. He trembled on the black marble dais, forehead pressed to the stone.
Surrounding him, nobles sat in a semicircle, their silence oppressive. They were a tapestry of cultures—Yoruba, Portuguese, Chinese—woven into the fabric of empire. The women wore layered silks, some with veils to conceal their unease.Gloved fingers twitched. Pearls clacked. Cuffs trembled.
Now, I carry the weight of knowing.
And I like it.
Daryon stood before the man, deep-brown skin shadowed under the torchlight, a frown carved into his face. He despised their kind—their endless appeals to gods and ancestors, their superstition, their weakness. It was pathetic.
"? j?, ?ba mi!" the man cried, voice cracking. "Please, my king! I beg you, in the name of all that is sacred!"
Tears streaked his cheeks.
Daryon resisted the urge to sigh. The dialect grated on his ears. Why was Yoruba so common in his jurisdiction?
"?ba mi, please!" Hoarse now. Desperate.
"I beg you—not for myself, but for my wife. For my son. If I die today… they die too."
He pressed his forehead further against the dais.
This was my first time. It won’t happen again.
Daryon stepped closer.
The nobles leaned forward.
A woman in a sapphire gown turned her head, eyes clenched shut, as if the sight itself might scorch her soul. Another noble covered her mouth with a gloved hand to stifle a gasp. Only the hooded figure beside the makeshift throne remained unmoved, face obscured in shadow.
Daryon bent down, his breath warm against the prisoner’s ear.
"You could have lived, you know. All you had to do was kneel sooner."
The blade fell.
Steel met flesh.
A sickening thud.
Blood arced through the air, splattering the dais in a crimson spray.
Gasps rippled through the crowd. Whispers followed—frantic, hushed.
The scent of iron flooded the room.
Daryon stood still, sword dripping. He flicked it downward; blood splattered onto the dais.
"Clean this up," he said—calm, almost bored. Daryon’s eyes never left the corpse.
He turned to the hooded figure at the edge of the chamber—his Effector. The figure had not moved, a shadow cast against stone, cowl heavy over their face.
"Paul."
Silence.
"We have more pressing matters."
He sheathed the sword with slow, deliberate motion.
"Let’s move."
The Effector inclined his head and stepped away from the throne. He followed as Daryon strode across the chamber, his black cloak trailing behind him like smoke. Nobles parted without a word, avoiding his gaze.
Behind him, attendants dematerialized the body. The crimson eagle of Myxell shimmered in the blood-stained marble.
Daryon didn’t look back.
The echo of his boots filled the corridor—sharp against obsidian stone. Flames in the sconces flickered as he passed, shadows coiling like snakes along the walls.
His expression remained unreadable. But inside, something simmered.
A chipset was missing.
Not stolen. Removed—with intent.
The man he executed hadn’t taken it. That fool had merely let it slip through his fingers. A failure of duty, not deception.
Boots approached behind him—soft, measured steps.
Paul.
He moved like a weapon freshly cleaned: precise, unhurried.
“We picked up the Code’s general notification,” Paul said, voice crisp like a soldier’s, yet softened by control. “The new Effector came online some days ago.”
Daryon didn’t look at him. His mind churned elsewhere.
“That fool’s family,” he murmured. “Eliminate them quietly. I won’t have loose ends.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Daryon stopped walking.
Paul raised his hand. A single drop of blood slipped from his palm—
And before it struck the floor, they were gone.
IDENTITY: Paul
CASTE: [CLASSIFIED]
CHIP STATUS: ? VERIFIED
LINK TYPE: PERSONAL-BUILT // Direct Neural Sync Established
CORE AFFINITY BRANCH: | DEATH |
SIGNATURE FUNCTION: [REDACTED]
MEMORY STATE: Fragmented
REALITY SYNC: Partial
→ Detected instability during time-locked operations.
POWER SOURCE: VOID THREADING
→ Draws strength from absence, void states, negative space.
→ Peak power expression during daylight nested within night cycles.
SUBROUTINE:
ALL MUST DIE // Terminal Override Thread
→ Fatalities initiated under this subroutine cannot be avoided.
System Class: Absolute
?? TRAIT ACQUIRED: [AWAKENED – OUTSIDE CONTEXT]
→ Trait classified as FORBIDDEN
→ Surveillance flag: Code Wardens (x3)
→ Observation Level: BLACK GLASS
***
New Africa
Suspended// The Box // Strongest Defense Zone.
Council Meeting Grounds.
The chamber was buried deep beneath the Capital Spire—stone walls humming faintly with protective wards, a circular table lit by solfare wiring. This was the Box. Ten seats. Ten figures cloaked in law and ambition. The true spine of New Africa, each representing a pillar of power: finance, faith, war, trade, arcana, espionage, law, labor, lineage, and shadow.
Tonight, they debated a single name—who would replace one of the Governors they’d removed from the Expanse. The Expanse’s government was unaware.
Daryon frowned.
Lord Afolake leaned forward, the dim light sharpening the high angles of her face. Her smile was thin—too thin to support the fragile silence that followed.
“Tell me, Lord Daryon, does punctuality wound you so?”
Daryon paused mid-stride, forcing stillness into his body. He let the moment stretch before exhaling through his nose.
“I apologize to the council for my lateness.”
His gaze flicked to Afolake. “And perhaps, Lord Afolake, you should concern yourself less with me, and more with your niece. Tell me—does she still entertain thieves? Or has she finally found one worthy of the family name?”
The air cracked as the voices of those seated clashed, ignoring the two.
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
“We need a hammer. We owe it to Lagos,” barked Lord Tauo Kaelvar, his voice like iron scraped on stone. He wore the sigil of the War Table, his broad frame still armored—even here, deep underground. “Someone who understands fear. The city bleeds because we coddle it. Put in a soldier. Someone loyal. Obedient.”
“Loyal to whom?” Lady Afolake Ekundayo cut in, her fingers steepled before painted lips. She represented the Ministry of Trade but held influence far beyond coin. “Obedience is wasted on brutes. We need elegance. Subtlety. Someone who can smile while they gut corruption and keep the city dancing.”
“Ah, there it is,” Kaelvar growled. “A smile. “Will a smile stop riots?
Will a curtsy hold back the sludge floods?”
“The city wouldn’t flood if your men hadn’t drained the aqueduct funds into ‘training drills,’” she replied, her smile barbed.
A few councilors laughed dryly, though none too loudly. Their Kola-infused synthwine kept’s mouth busy.
At the head of the table sat High Magister Rulen, ancient beyond counting. Skin like old parchment, voice like quiet rain. He had not yet spoken, but his fingers tapped, slowly, steadily, on the wood. The scent of kola-infused synthwine drifted faintly from the chalices placed near each seat—sharp, earthy, with a hint of honeyed spice.
Kaelvar exhaled sharply. “I don’t need to remind you how much Suspended will have to spend to move a file that sensitive. Electricity prices surged on the stock market. Are we talking billions just to send files? A transaction that big will leave paper trails, invite scrutiny, and the cowboys—oh, they could hack in mid-transfer.”
“The surface thinks the Ground governs itself,” came the brittle voice of Councilor Dey Lorn, master of law. “It must continue to think so. Whoever we place must be invisible. Unremarkable. Familiar enough to belong.”
“Then name a puppet,” Kaelvar said.
“Better to name someone who doesn’t know they’re a puppet,” murmured Councilor Ven Thay, the Shadow Pillar. He grinned behind a veil of shadowglass. “Those dance the best.”
“The quicker we choose a replacement, the sooner we bring order to the Expanse. Push back the crudes. Gryphons, machines, whatever it takes. The new Governor will put the pieces in place and commission everything back to us. Remember why we removed the old Governor—what’s there could cost us. We need it back,” Lord Daryon said as he sat.
Finally, Rulen raised a hand.
Silence spread like frost.
“You would all see the Expanse as a board to place your pieces upon,” he said. “But boards tilt. Pieces fall. And some crawl back up.”
“Then what do you propose?” Afolake asked. There was something cautious in her tone now. Even she didn’t always know where Rulen stood—only that he’d stood longer than anyone alive.
“A name none of you have spoken,” Rulen said softly. “Because you think him small. A laundress’s son. Former smuggler turned priest. Quiet tongue. Loud eyes.”
“You mean Trent Alister?” Afolake’s brow arched. “He runs a minor food route and a charity clinic.”
“And he’s loved,” Rulen said. “Loved in the Expanse. Which is rarer—and more dangerous—than feared.”
Kaelvar spat. “He won’t serve us.”
“He won’t know he does,” Rulen replied.
The table fell into stillness.
Kaelvar clenched his fists. “And when he acts against us?”
“He won’t,” Rulen said.
“Because his enemies are ours.”
He’ll make the city stable. Clean. Fed. He’ll think it his. And when the time comes… we will decide whether to leave him the crown or cut it.”
Lady Afolake tapped her ring against the wood, considering.
Her eyes lingered on the picture of the man to the right.
“He’s imperfect,” she said. “Which is to say, perfect.”
A man striving to make the world a better place. She had read his manifesto—text form—eighty-six times.
“Where New Africa won’t be divided between the Suspended and the Expanse.”
What he meant was a world where the Suspended wouldn’t tinker in Expanse politics. Break apart or fuse entirely. He’d run in circles until he died before that happened. No gene edit would help—but still…
The old fool thought he was smart. That man was already her pick. A smile threatened to burst through seams, but she held it in.
For her, Trent was a necessity. It had taken her two years to get her candidate seated as mayor of State 22 in the Expanse. The next move? Governor. Once that happened, everything would fall into place.
She rubbed her hands together—a habit she was trying to break. To the trained eye, it was a tell. But this time? It wasn’t nerves. It was excitement.
“A laundress’s son,” Daryon growled again. But he did not object further.
The cube rattled softly before settling, projecting three faces into the air. Holograms flickered before the lords’ eyes.
Trent Alister. Nyphos Reighlin. Hilter Malvecar.
Daryon’s eye twitched at the last name.
The man was barely in his thirties, but his left eye told another story. A stark obsidian iris, encircled by faint, pulsing circuitry, had overtaken what was once natural.
A gene-line distortion. A flaw etched into his blood, passed down to every child he would sire—a permanent signature, impossible to erase.
Daryon needed him.
The devil only he could control.
His ruthlessness made him a liability to anyone else.
Daryon’s palm brushed the obsidian table. A soft chime echoed, and the number beside Hilter’s name ticked up by one.
Afolake’s knuckles whitened as she placed her palm on the table. Across from her, Dey Lorn’s lips curled into a faint smirk as the numbers flickered to life.
Kaelvar adjusted his glasses, eyes scanning the screen.
Final tally:
- Five votes for Trent.
- Four for Hilter.
- One for Nyphos.
Losing control—it was the mark of children who had yet to master war. The kind who could grin heartily before slitting a man’s throat. He had killed many of such.
He sat quietly. A whole five Houses had chosen Trent.
"Brilliant,"Dey Lorn chuckled, chugging down a bottle Kola-infused synthwine.
His house was even more war-oriented than his. They fought the Crudes outside the whole scope of New Africa. The miles leading to their walls were clear—because he was good. If he weren’t, foreigners wouldn’t be running here for safety.
Kaelvar approached as Daryon rose to leave.
“You seem... unbothered by the result, Lord Myxell.”
Daryon offered a faint smile. “Until next time, Warden.”
“Wait.” Kaelvar hesitated, waving a hand.
Daryon frowned. “What is it?”
“Calm down. I wasn’t talking to you,” Kaelvar chuckled.
His eyes flicked toward the veiled figure behind Daryon.
“Your Effector,” Kaelvar said smoothly, pointing.
“He adjusted a spell in the Great Code.”
Daryon narrowed his eyes.
It has a gender. It’s a man.
The name surfaced—Paul.
Forged from the ambient dust on the floor, the name coalesced in his mind—ash and static weaving into form, a whisper made real.
It held.
A shape given breath
“Why don’t you come and serve under my House?” Kaelvar said, voice oiled with false warmth. “Travel down to the Expanse—or wherever it is you’re from?”
For a split second, a smile leaked from behind the veil. Gone as soon as it appeared.
Then, the veiled hand rose. The Atom Gear stirred.
“Looping temporal path: eighteen hundred meters. Constructing residual matter. Present takeoff: frictionless displacement. Sync node set.”
Paul had done this with the Great Code since he was a child. One of the Orbit’s best.
They vanished instantly. No ripple. No sound.
The Expanse would have a new ruler before week’s end.
And Trent would never know ten chairs had shaped his fate.
Elsewhere—
[Ground City | Council Hall – Day]
The final tally clinked into place like the last piece of a trap.
In the Council Hall of State 22, Nigeria Province, surrounded by banners of faded velvet and broken promises, the Overseer’s voice rang out—crackling, skipping once like an old record:
“By majority vote… Trent McAlister is hereby named Governor of the Ground City.”
It streamed—glitching—across whatever primitive devices could still carry a signal. Some delegates squinted at grainy handhelds patched with copper wire and glue, trying to confirm the vote feed as it stuttered in and out.
Silence. Not applause. Not outrage. Just a moment too long.
The soldiers stood at ease. Guns raised, fired, and returned to place.
The gears powering the camera were promptly disabled—so the people wouldn’t see the phases about to unfold. The kill switch clicked like bone on rust.
From gray… to a click—off.
Outside, fireworks lit the sky—brief and sputtering like dying stars.
But inside the hall—
A scattering of whispers—sharpened murmurs behind gloved hands and narrow eyes.
Guilders from the Merchant’s Bloc leaned toward each other.
Enforcers from the Iron Quarter stiffened in their uniforms.
Clerics from the Inner Ring frowned over folded scrolls.
The vote had not made sense.
He wasn’t in their ledgers. Not a known asset. No patronage trail. No gold in his blood. No party machine. Even the President would raise an eye to this.
And yet—here he stood, blinking, stunned—but holding it together like he’d known all along, his name echoing like a bell no one had meant to ring.
Alister swallowed hard.
He wore no robe, no sash, no badge. Just a dark coat still dusted with flour from the kitchens of the east shelters, where he had been only that morning, yelling about spoiled grain.
“I… I don’t know what to say,” he finally managed.
A half-smile tugged at the corner of his mouth—unpracticed, uncertain. He looked to the rows of delegates, many of whom refused to meet his gaze. One or two nodded. One or two looked frightened. More than a few looked like they were already planning how to remove him.
“I didn’t have the numbers.
I didn’t have the money.
Or the banners. Or the songs.”
A few in the crowd chuckled. Awkwardly.
“But I had a clinic with leaking pipes. And neighbors who come for tea when it rains too hard. I know where the mold eats the children’s lungs. I know which guards don’t take bribes, and which ones only take bread.
“I’ve seen power cut out mid-surgery. Watched medbots die mid-code. Watched kids die because batteries cost more than blood.”
He paused. The air shifted. Attention sharpened.
“I didn’t plan for this,” he said. “But I am prepared.”
A slow murmur stirred the hall.
Unseen. Above.
Behind one of the upper curtains, where sunlight never reached...
“He’s doing well,” came Lady Afolake Ekundayo’s voice beside him. She had deployed arguably one of the strongest sensory blocks in New Africa. You’d need a level 6 or higher sensory breaker—or have her eyes—to see through it.
Kaelvar didn’t answer. He was watching the Guilders shift in their seats.
“He doesn’t know,” Sera said.
“He suspects something,” Kaelvar replied. “But not the truth.”
“And what will he do when he does?”
Kaelvar’s smile turned to shadow. “If he’s who Rulen thinks he is—he’ll surprise us again.”
Daryon walked out in a black hood.
If the Council knew he had come down to the Expanse…
But then, it wasn’t like many people in New Africa could beat him.
And Paul was here too. Somewhere.
A message nudged his mind.
A mental link.
Something from Paul about sensing heavy Coz in the air.
That evening, in his new office:
Alister stood alone, gazing out the iron-grated window.
The parts of Lagos that weren’t in Suspended had merged into a jumble with the old state veins, glowing with gaslight and ash. The neon was gone—just bones of it remained, flickering sometimes when the generators didn’t choke.
Streetlights blinked in and out like broken thoughts. A magnetic tram passed below with a screech that sounded too much like pain.
A stack of letters waited on his desk. Offers. Threats. Invitations.
He hadn’t opened any of them.
His hands were still shaking slightly.
Behind him, a scrap of parchment had been slipped under the door. No seal. No name. Just one line, written in ink that shimmered slightly in the dark:
You were chosen for being unclaimed. Stay that way.
He stared at it for a long time.
Then he folded it and tucked it into his coat.
He had no idea who had put him here—or why.
But if they thought he’d be easy to keep, they hadn’t watched him fight crude-stained rats in the floodlines with nothing but a rusted pipe.
He didn’t plan to be anyone’s puppet.
He’d tear the strings himself if he had to.
Knock.
He turned.
“Who is it?”
A beat.
“Your assistant,” came the voice.
Another pause. The air changed.
“Hilter Malvecar.”