Earth
Sector 9 (Central Helix).
0215 hours.
June 9, 2037. Present Day.
The windscreen blinked red.
"Destination: Madin Spire.
Clearance Level: Omega-Ivory.
ETA: 02:13 Antimeridian."
Detective Ryan Kline muttered, "Omega-Ivory. Must be important," and tapped his cigarette into the trash port.
The Hexa-Glide hummed beneath him, a sleek angular flyer purring like a cat with knives for teeth. Outside, the dark hung low over Central Helix. Stars drowned in neon fog.
Below, spires pierced the night like broken bones jutting from steel flesh. He hated the view.
"Kline," the voice crackled from his comm implant, gravelly like dry death. Captain Dorren. "You sober enough to work this?"
Kline sucked his teeth. "Define sober."
"Senator Madin's dead. Butler found him. Some antique blade. Arcane War relic, they say."
Kline frowned. "That war ended ten odd years ago."
"Yeah. So did chivalry. Get there. Fast."
He killed the comm.
The Hexa-Glide tilted and sliced through the night. Below, the Black Rungs flickered. Districts of slums piled on slums, no sun, no rules, just hunger and flickering holo-ads selling solace.
Madin Spire rose like a God's finger. Twelve hundred stories of glass, myth, and paranoia. Senate men lived like kings. Died like prey.
He landed on Pad Forty-One. Autogates slid open.
Lochines Mel was waiting, pale as old paper, dressed in Imperial gray with silver gloves and an expression carved out of defeat.
"Lochines."
"Kline. Thank you for coming. He was alive at 0100. Dead by 0145. That's all I can say."
They moved in silence through the spire's inner sanctum. Lights whispered on. Marble floors. Gilded walls. Soft wallscreens showed orbital gardens and fake sunsets. No warmth. No heart.
"You didn't call his Security Detail?"
"They're ceremonial," Lochines muttered. "This… this felt older. It felt personal."
Kline stared at him. "Show me the scene."
The library was a goddamn cathedral. Twelve-meter shelves. Books - real ones - lined the walls like a museum of forgotten truths. The air was still. Smelled of burnt spice and blood.
Senator Kurt Madin lay slumped in a hoverchair, throat torn open by something old and curved. The blade still lodged in his sternum - hilt made of obsidian, engraved in Tyr-Glyphs, banned since 2810.
Kline crouched. Blood had pooled into the rugs, thick and syrup-black. He touched the hilt, carefully. No prints. The blade was cold. Ancient cold.
"You move anything?"
"Nothing, sir."
"You touch the knife?"
"No."
"Surveillance?"
"Blacked out. All twenty minutes of it. The Core AI claims no memory interference. But the logs are blank."
Kline looked up. "Which means someone fed it a Null Ghost."
Lochines blinked. "But that tech's military-grade. Illegal."
Kline stood and sighed. "So's murder."
He checked the Senator's wrist. A Kairo-link, blinking blue. Still active. He tapped it and whispered, "Madin, last input command."
The wrist spoke back in the Senator's voice, shaky, distorted:
"Lochines. Get Ryan Kline. He'll understand the blade. It's beginning again..."
Then static.
Kline's jaw clenched. "Beginning what?"
The butler stepped back. "He never said."
Kline's mind spun. The Arcane Wars weren't wars. They were purges, across dimensions, timelines, realities folded into knots and burnt for power. That blade didn't just kill,it unstitched. Ripped soul from spine.
"Get me the list of everyone who visited Madin in the last seventy-two hours."
Lochines hesitated. "There was only one. Admiral Calder of Orbital Defense. Yesterday morning. Left after lunch."
Calder. That cold bastard hadn't smiled since Earth signed the Martian Treaty.
Ryan stared at the knife again. The runes pulsed. Not dead tech. Live. Something in that steel was still breathing.
Kline slowly scanned the cavernous space.
Quiet like a grave. Eerie.
A gut wrenching feeling welled in his stomach. Something about the shelves was off.
He turned back to the shadows, to the books.
Every inch of wall, covered in leather-bound titans, bulky, brutal things with steel corners and cracked hides. Not digital. Not copied. Originals. Old knowledge. Dangerous knowledge.
Then his eye caught it.
South shelf. Second compartment from the top.
A single gap.
"One book's missing," he said, pointing.
Lochines followed his gaze. His brows twitched. Eyes widened. He stepped forward slowly, like walking into a memory. The glint of his halo watch pulsed blue. He pressed three buttons in a staccato rhythm.
The wall behind them hummed.
Lochines paused. "It's a missing ledger. One the Senator referenced often. It's related to the occupation."
Kline flicked ash off his sleeve. "What was in it?"
"Classified." Lochines turned slightly. "But I caught a glimpse once. Maps. Flight logs. Colonial blueprints. Occupation protocols."
"Planet Corr?"
Lochines gave a short nod. "Exploration files. Regarding the Planets appraisal. Before Corr turned red."
Kline exhaled through his nose. "You mean the Republic's post invasion details?"
Lochines' lips tightened. "I don't delve into the politics of the day, Detective. My principal handled all that. I only managed the house, the access, the structure."
"Sure you did."
Kline knelt by the gap. Thin dust edges around the void. Whatever was taken, it was recent.
He rubbed the shelf. Dust stuck to his glove.
"Taken after the murder. Or maybe before. Either way, someone wanted what was inside. The knife? That was the smoke screen."
Lochines turned cold. "Detective, I've served Senator Madin for twenty-two years. He survived three coup attempts, a plasma poisoning, and a scandal involving a Martian sexbot."
Kline arched a brow. "Hell of a résumé."
"This…" Lochines continued, "wasn't just a killing. This was a purge."
Kline said nothing. The pieces twisted.
Corr.That cursed name. It was a desert moon. Barren. Blistered. Forgotten.
But deep beneath Corr's charred crust, they found something.
A mineral. Not just rare. Singular.
Stynx.
The Golgians had used it for centuries and then it was forgotten - lost in the eons of time. Till the Dark Emperor took over and used it in transforming a vast majority of the human race into cold, mean droids.
The Imperium called it "the next phase of civilization."
The Republic called it "unstable."
The rest of the galaxy didn't call it anything. They just watched. Quietly. Like prey watches predators argue over a fresh kill.
But rumor festered.
Whispers said the Republic wanted more than power.
They wanted control.
Not over space.
Over time.
And now, Madin was dead.
And the Corr Ledger was gone.
Kline stood silent, staring at the empty slot in the south shelf. Every shelf, crowded with knowledge too volatile to digitize.
A conspiracy surrounding Stynx, Corr and the Republic stank.
Kline could feel it. And someone had just fired the first shot.
Kline turned. "Lochines. Who else knew that ledger was here?"
"No one. Vault-locked. Full biometric encryption."
Kline narrowed his gaze. "Biometrics fail."
"Not this kind." Lochines held up his wrist. "Blood-threaded encryption. Bone marrow coded. Even his wife couldn't open it."
Kline exhaled. "Then someone either duplicated his blood… or they were family."
Lochines went still. "Senator Madin was estranged. No children."
"You sure?"
A hesitation.
That was enough.
"Talk."
Lochines looked at the floor. Voice thinner now. "There… was one. Rumor only. Before the Arc Trials. A woman. Off-world. He funded her passage. Records vanished. So did she."
Kline lit another stick. Took a long drag. "Funny. Ghosts always show up when the blood starts dripping."
So the Senator had a son? He wondered if Lochines was lying.
He may. He may not. But only time would unfurl the unfolding mystery
Then…buzz.
His implant crackled to life. It was a nasal voice cracking through the static. "The Commissioner wants you."
The message felt sharp like a switchblade.
"I'm on it."
Click then silence.
He turned to Lochines. "Agents sweep in by dawn. Full scrape and scan. Until then, au revoir."
Lochines bowed like grease in motion.
He watched the detective - lean, taut, cloaked in matte-gray trenchcoat, plodding back to his Hexa Glide. The maid trailed behind, her face blank as an erased drive.
His boots hissed on the wet ferrocrete.
Something stank beyond the blood and optics. The kind of stink that didn't wash off.
The crime tape flickered blue in the thick fog.
A kill this clean? In a vault like Madin Spire? No noise. No trace except an Arcane Wars relic buried six inches in the senator's thorax. Someone wanted a message sent.
The craft's canopy peeled back with a pneumatic gasp. He climbed in. The dash blinked alive: grids, alerts, voice memos pinging like ghosts.
"Drive," he muttered.
The AI purred to life.
Behind him, the city twisted like a dying machine.
Ahead, smoke, wires, blood politics.
He lit a stub of synth-nic. Drew deep. Inside his head churned like broken gears.
Something ugly was waiting to happen. And it would begin at Corr…