The data centre was hidden in plain sight a blocky, granite fortress without windows, disguised as the regional headquarters for a multinational telecom company. To the casual eye, it was corporate boilerplate. To Kael's Karmic Sight, however, it was the throbbing, anxious heart of the global financial web. Dark, sinuous threads of the Broker's influence converged here, weaving around the foundations.
Kael knew he couldn't afford a brute-force approach. The police, the security, and the rival Players drawn by the scent of chaos would overwhelm him. He had to be surgical. He had to hack the system's debt.
He approached the main service entrance, where a bored security guard stood behind a screen of monitors. Kael focused his Absolution not on the guard's conscience, but on the guard's debt to the night the simple, karmic debt of every hourly wage worker: the belief that they must remain alert for their pay.
Kael subtly absolved the guard's debt of vigilance. The guard's eyes glazed over for a split second; his shoulders slumped. Kael slipped past the security desk in that infinitesimal window of true, unfiltered exhaustion.
Inside, the building was a labyrinth of locked doors and laser grids. Kael repeated the tactic: He didn't break the high-security electronic lock; he found the essential lie in the circuit the tiny, fractional debt the solenoid owed to the electrical grid to remain locked. He absolved that micro-debt, and the heavy metal door clicked open, humming softly in confused malfunction.
He moved deeper, shedding layers of modern security with targeted, surgical applications of his power, until he reached the nerve centre: the main server floor.
It was a vast, cold cavern filled with rows of humming, blinking servers the physical manifestation of global trust. The air was dry and sterile, but to Kael's senses, the room chilled with the Broker's chilling, organised power.
He found the terminal Lysandra's key was meant for a console glowing with proprietary code. He jammed the Vex Key into the port.
The screen didn't show financial data. It showed a map of the world, crisscrossed by billions of tiny, dark threads. Kael received a torrent of information: the Broker's entire strategy.
The Broker hadn't manufactured a fraud. It was exploiting the ultimate, systemic lie of leveraging a multi-trillion dollar market of interconnected financial instruments. Everyone knew these products were overvalued, but everyone traded on them anyway, bound by a collective debt of greed. The Broker was simply preparing the command to expose the truth of these products simultaneously to all major financial entities. The collective exposure would trigger an instant, global chain reaction of panic, shattering the essential trust the system needed to function.
The Broker was about to trigger the Great Confession of Debt.
Kael brought his hands up, ready to strike the dark, central thread of the manipulation with his Absolution. He needed to cleanse the core lie before the Broker's automated command could execute. He gathered his strength, preparing for a single, final, earth-shattering act of purification.
But he was too slow.
A cold voice cut through the hum of the servers, as precise and inevitable as a calculation.
"We knew you wouldn't run. You are a predictable variable, Reclaimer."
Kael spun around. Standing at the entrance to the server room, Silas, Talon, and Echo emerged, their specialised armour gleaming in the cold, white light.
Silas held the Sovereign Siphon, its maw glowing faintly, eager to devour Kael's purity.
"The lie of secrecy is over," Silas announced, his voice flat. "Your frantic rush from a place of sorrow to a place of debt was mathematically logical. The hunt ends here."
Kael was cornered. His energy reserves were minimal. The Broker's trigger was moments away from execution. And the three most dangerous debt collectors in the cosmos were standing between him and the terminal.
The fate of the global economy now rested on a single, exhausted man in a cold, silent room, facing his own inevitable end.