Chapter 23 — The Splintering
The committee chamber was all bare stone and cold air, the kind that made every breath visible. Four representatives sat around the narrow table, each wearing their House seal like armor. The meeting had already gone too long, voices getting sharper with each repetition of the same accusations. None of them wanted to be here. More importantly, none of them wanted this going any higher.
Vance Xiong leaned forward, broad shoulders tense. He'd been holding his temper for the past hour, and it was starting to fray.
"That pod was supposed to be in Bear custody three days ago. Legacy hardware or not, it was ours by statute. You had no authority to sit on it." He jabbed a finger toward Helen Yang. "And now? Someone walked into your annex and took it. Just... walked out with it."
Helen Yang didn't blink. Her hands rested flat on the polished wood, steady as steel.
"We followed protocol. The armed escort your House promised didn't show up. No escort, no transfer—that's Bear's own regulation, not ours. We were following your rules, Vance." Her voice stayed calm, but there was iron underneath. "Don't call it negligence when we did exactly what your own security manual required."
Vance's palm hit the table hard enough to make the water glasses jump.
"Protocol?" His voice cracked with frustration. "An intruder breached your facility and walked away with classified hardware, and you're hiding behind paperwork? That pod wasn't just a shell—it contained the origin system, the baseline architecture. And you let it disappear."
He leaned back, running a hand over his face. When he spoke again, his voice was quieter but more dangerous. "Look, we need to solve this here. Right now. At this table. Because if we can't, this goes up. Way up. And I don't think any of us want to explain this mess to the Patriarchs."
Helen's fingers pressed white against the table edge, the first crack in her composure.
"You think Bamboo wants this elevated? We've already extracted ECSE-v2, registered it, sealed it in the vault. What they took was a burned-out casing worth less than scrap metal." She paused, choosing her words carefully. "The Republic lost nothing of value. What you're calling a catastrophe is Bear paranoia magnifying a minor theft. But I'll say this clearly: we're not taking the blame for your security failures."
Barret Vang had been sitting back, arms folded, watching them tear into each other. Now he leaned forward, voice cutting through the tension.
"Can we stop pretending this is about who followed which protocol?" He looked between them, unimpressed. "Here's what actually matters: someone stole House property. It doesn't matter if it was an empty shell or the crown jewels—the world saw it happen. Our security failed. Our image is damaged. And right now, three foreign intelligence services are probably trying to figure out how to exploit this."
The silence that followed was thick with unspoken calculations. They all knew what he wasn't saying: if this couldn't be contained here, if the representatives couldn't solve it themselves, the Patriarchs would be forced to convene. And that would turn a theft into a House sovereignty crisis.
Barret let that sink in before continuing.
"Sky can provide interim security for the Bamboo annex. Just until your escort detail gets properly staffed." His tone was reasonable, almost helpful. "If we present a unified response—tightened security, shared intelligence, coordinated investigation—maybe this stays between us. The alternative is..." He let the sentence hang.
Helen's jaw tightened. She knew exactly what he was offering: help that came with strings attached. Sky personnel in Bamboo facilities. But the alternative was worse.
"We'll... consider it. Officially."
Vance turned on Barret, suspicion flashing across his face.
"You're offering help remarkably fast. Almost like you already know where that pod ended up."
Barret's expression didn't change, but something cold flickered in his eyes.
"If Sky had taken it, we wouldn't be sitting here playing detective. We'd be negotiating division of assets, not wasting time on accusations." He paused. "Cooperation is profitable. Paranoia isn't."
The temperature in the room seemed to drop another degree.
Federick Nguyen, who'd been silent until now, finally spoke up. His voice carried the detached precision of someone who dealt in documentation, not politics.
"From Oversight's perspective, this is simple. ECSE-v2 is registered, archived, and sealed. Royalties assigned, ownership logged, everything certified. What was stolen was hardware, not intellectual property. The ledger shows no loss."
Vance's frustration found a new target.
"The ledger." He laughed, bitter. "Dawn's ledgers are always clean, aren't they? You approved Bamboo's registration in record time—no secondary review, no technical audit, just rubber-stamped it through. That's not neutral oversight, Federick. That's speed over security."
Federick didn't flinch.
"Speed is security when the alternative is letting unregistered technology circulate. You know the law as well as I do, Vance. That's why you're angry—because it worked exactly as designed, and it protected Bamboo's claim." He let that settle before adding, "Dawn's documentation will hold up under any scrutiny. If this escalates, we're covered. The question is whether your Houses can say the same."
No one answered. The silence stretched, filled with mutual suspicion and the growing realization that they were failing.
If they couldn't resolve this here, among representatives with limited authority and manageable egos, it would rise to the Hall of Concord. The Patriarchs would be forced from their towers. What was now a theft would become a question of House sovereignty, of internal borders, of trust between the founding families. Blades would be drawn—not in war, but in judgment.
None of them wanted their names attached to that summons.
Rumour spread faster than decree. Technicians whispered in service corridors, voices muffled by the hiss of vending machines. Shopkeepers swore that convoys had moved before dawn beneath blackened tarps. Scribes muttered that the Four Pillars quarrelled like children over wreckage.
By evening, offices barred their doors earlier than custom, drills were enacted beneath the guise of "readiness reviews," and each House clutched its fragment of the anomaly ever tighter. The Republic had not declared war, yet the very breath of the city suggested that it braced for one.
Later that week—
Far beneath the chambers, deep in the belly of Oversight, Chris Xiong descended into the data-centre. Few mortals entered that place. The air was heavy with the sting of coolant and metal. Harsh white light poured from ceiling strips, casting shadows that stretched like prison bars. Endless rows of servers towered in silence but for their ceaseless roar, a sound like ten thousand locusts beating their wings.
He halted before a primary node, taller than he, its casing thrumming faintly with caged power. He set his palm upon the cold surface. At first it was lifeless steel; then it pulsed faintly, and the rhythm matched the beating of his heart.
He closed his eyes. His breath slowed. The hum of the servers drew him in until he could scarce tell whether he breathed or they. This time, he did not stumble into the connection. He willed it. His thoughts sharpened, and the directories unfurled not as lines of script but as currents in a vast and unseen sea, folding and flowing beneath the weight of his will.
There it was—the coil of ECSE-v2, glimmering deep within. He reached, and pain stabbed his skull as though nails were hammered behind his eyes. His knees faltered, his jaw clenched, but he pressed his hand more firmly to the machine.
And then he felt it—not the server, not himself, but another presence, steady, alien. The black volcanic ring upon his finger grew warm, then hot, its pulse rising in time with the servers. A current coiled from it into his arm, through his chest, and lodged behind his eyes. The override line that appeared upon the system was no chance of will; it was the Ring itself, answering through quantum corridors no firewall could see.
He understood, not fully yet enough: this was no ornament. This was the bridge. Without it, nothing would have moved.
The machine demanded more than command. It demanded intention.
This code shall not be hoarded.
It shall not be locked within Pillar vaults.
It shall pass to the lowest first. From the rejects to the Federation, thence to Gaule, and onward to the Southern Commonwealth. Better the world swallow it whole than the Houses devour it alone.
The agony doubled, fire across his temples, his body shuddering with each pulse of the servers. His heartbeat was their heartbeat. He and the machine had become one.
A fracture yawned open in the wall of Oversight—a probing tap, raw and narrow. He dragged ECSE-v2 towards it, each motion tearing some part of himself.
Before it slipped beyond him, he branded it with three stark letters:
CCX.
The current snapped. Chris reeled back, clutching his head as waves of pain thundered against his skull. His vision darkened at the edges, sweat dripping from his brow. The servers continued their indifferent hum, but the Ring upon his finger throbbed as though it had tasted victory.
For a moment, Chris simply stood there, breathing hard, staring at the node that had just executed his command. The enormity of what he'd done began to sink in, cold and heavy in his chest.
ECSE-v2 was loose now. Out in the world. No longer controlled by House vaults or Patriarch oversight. He'd given it to the rejects first—the lowest, the forgotten, the ones the Republic had abandoned. From them it would spread to the Federation, then Gaule Republic, then the Southern Commonwealth. Each nation would study it, modify it, weaponize it or heal with it or twist it into something he couldn't predict.
He couldn't take it back. He couldn't control what they'd do with it. He'd lit a match and thrown it into kindling, hoping it would bring warmth instead of wildfire. But fire didn't care about intentions.
The thought came unbidden, rising from some history lesson half-remembered: Oppenheimer at the first atomic test, watching the mushroom cloud bloom over the desert, whispering words from the Bhagavad Gita: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."
A weapon meant to end war had instead changed the nature of human existence forever. One test. One decision. No way to undo it.
Chris pressed his palm against the server one last time, feeling its indifferent pulse.
Those words had once been history's shadow, a cautionary tale from another era. Now they loomed before him as a mirror.
He prayed he had not loosed fire, but bread. Yet the Ring pulsed again, a reminder that the truth lay no longer in his hands.
Somewhere in the logs, the entry was already carved. Who had done it. The name that could never be erased.
CCX.
The Republic had lost ECSE-v2.
What had slipped from his grasp would never return. And it would not remain what he had sent it as. For information, once freed, always mutates.