Dawn is a rumor that hasn't decided whether to stick. The yard smells like wet metal and yesterday's plans. Corin awakens with the slow efficiency of a man who has learned to move first and name later; Jeong cracks jokes that are too loud for the hour. The ledger lies on the table like a small altar—folded lines and promises. I run a thumb over the fresh entry: Watch the Trust. Build alliances. Keep gardener secret.
System: Morning briefing — Shadow‑Map active. Suggested task: Network reconnaissance. Reward: 800 XP.
I ignore the chime. The System's neat menus make it sound like reconnaissance is a checkbox. Reconnaissance is a listening exercise and a patience test; it is also a chance to see who will leap at rumor and who will fold.
Hae‑In assembles a list of couriers and safe faces. Amira volunteers two vault hands for surveillance shifts; Sook offers beds for anyone needing a place to disappear for a night. Min sketches out a plan to cross‑reference Trust addresses with public registries and old ward logs, looking for shell organizations and names that don't add up. Corin sharpens a wrench like someone who uses tools when conversation fails. We call it coalition work and call it by names that feel like maps.
My assignment is field listening. I walk the market with an empty satchel and a ledger tucked beneath a scarf. The trick of the city is that people reveal their maps when they think they are alone; the trick of corridors and stalls is to overhear without being obvious. Echo Sight helps with motion but not with motives; for motives I need to be a patient sort of pest.
At a noodle stall I sit where steam hides faces. The vendor is talkative because people who cook for strangers are paid in stories. He mentions a collector who came through last month—quiet, polite, wearing a pin that gleamed like someone who wanted to be trusted. The word Trust shows up like a bruise in conversation: not name, but reputation. Someone pays to make names safe and then charges rent for the safety.
Across the market a pair of suitcases change hands under a tarp. I watch the exchange in slow, polite curves. The men who handle the cases are careful, practiced; they speak in numbers and dates and avoid names. One of them leaves his jacket folded over a crate—and on the inside pocket is a small crest I recognize from a redacted file: a stylized lock surrounded by laurel. The Trust's emblem, small and retired into the seams.
I follow the coatholder at a distance that respects a man's shadow and nothing more. He moves like someone who does not want eyes on him. He enters an administrative building that smells like varnish and old promises. The lobby is polished and polite; the receptionist smiles like a woman who keeps time. The man slips through a door with a discreet plaque: TRUST AFFAIRS, PRIVATE. The plaque is the sort of thing that pretends legality covers ethics.
I note the address in the ledger. Min will sift the registry for shell entries; Hae‑In will call quiet favors at the archives. My role is to see faces and return with names that mean something when whispered.
On the walk back Mariel appears at a corner stall like she grew out of the market itself. She hands me a folded slip of paper without preamble. It reads: THEY DON'T LIKE SURPRISES. STAY SMALL. Her handwriting is neat and the words are shorter than a threat. She studies my face for a moment and says, "You have people who protect you. Use them wisely."
"Why help us?" I ask again because curiosity is surgical and sometimes truths are blunt instruments.
Mariel looks at the bustling stalls as if cataloguing their prices in her head. "Because a stable market needs predictable supply," she says. "You disrupt that. Also"—she gives a near-miss smile—"because some of us still have bones that hurt from things we did for profit. We don't all like the shape of the ledgers we carry."
It's not comfort. It's admission. I tuck the slip into the ledger and move on. Nadirs of human self-awareness show up in odd places—market corners, cigarette breaks, quiet admissions.
That night we convene a small schema session in Corin's yard. Min presents a partial list—offices and shell companies that circle Trust activities. There are names that look official and leads that smell like rot. He highlights a cluster of addresses linked to a single managing director: a woman who appears in registries as a philanthropic trustee and in whispers as someone who funds acquisition teams. The ledger's margin fills with arrows and notes: Philanthropy as cover; acquisition as front; Trust legal arm.
Hae‑In recommends we play a long game. "We don't need to topple them," she says. "We need to be boringly inconvenient—leak a ledger line here, move a node there, make fragments hard to find and harder to market. If the Trust profits dry up, they'll look elsewhere."
"Or they'll use force," Corin says.
"Then we make it costly," Hae‑In replies. "We have people. We build redundancy and make their attempts expensive."
There's a rhythm to the plan: identify, obfuscate, protect, and when necessary expose. The ledger becomes a tactical journal as much as a moral one.
I take the Shadow‑Map that night and overlay the Trust addresses. A pattern emerges: procurement hubs that align with node surfaceings. The Trust isn't just buying; it's orchestrating access. Whoever controls procurement runs the market.
We need a way to test reach without inviting a hammer. Corin suggests a false fragment drop in a low‑value node—bait that looks sellable but is a decoy. If the Trust moves on it, we'll see their chain. If not, we hedge. Hae‑In presses for ethics: no human payloads, only objects. We agree.
The setup is meticulous. We plant a decoy tag at a busy depot and circulate a modest rumor about its provenance. Mariel helps, using channels that look like gossip but smell like currency. Jeong sits near the depot with a loose job wiping crates and an expression that says he means to eavesdrop and nothing more.
The night is thin with watchfulness. I hover in the market shadows and taste the city like an anxious man tastes a meal he didn't cook. Around midnight a pair of men approach the depot, moving with the precision of people who do this for a living. One wears a suit with a civil crest; the other, when he reaches into his pocket, reveals a small card with an embossed lock. Trust business. They extract the decoy tag with practiced hands and slip away like men who have rehearsed apologies.
Corin's radio crackles with a single word: move. Min coordinates an intercept with minimal fuss. We shadow from a distance and watch the men follow protocol—safe houses, drop points, a slow unwinding of a chain that leads near a Trust front. We do not intervene; intervention would be mischief of a different sort. We gather evidence, faces, tags, and the arc of their logistics.
The next morning Min hands me a dossier small enough to fit in a satchel: photographs from a safe distance, license plates, the embossed crest match. The Trust's reach is bigger than rumors and smaller than a city, precise as a needle.
Hae‑In exhales and says, "Now we know where the needle threads."
It's a small victory. Knowing the chain lets us make choices. We will not fight every link; we will make a few of them costly. We will also lean on quiet allies—library keepers, vaults, shelter networks—to create noise in procurement channels.
That night a different message arrives at the yard: a single, typed line taped to the ledger's cover—STOP INTERFERING OR WE RECLAIM WHAT BELONGS TO US.
It is not polite. It is not a negotiation. It is a threat made legal in tone. The ledger sits heavier for a moment, then lighter as if a resolve settles into its spine: we will not bow.
I add a single sentence beneath the typed line in my own hand: WE KEEP NAMES WITH NAMES. NO TRADE. Then I close the ledger and rest my palm on its cover like a man pledging an oath to paper.
The System, predictably, offers a suggested task: Attempt diplomatic channel with Trust proxy. Reward: 1,200 XP. I delete the suggestion from my head and lean into human plans instead—phone calls, favors, quiet couriers—things that money can try to buy but can't always replace.
Tomorrow we will press on the Trust's procurement logistics in a way that increases their cost and risks their narrative. For now we sleep with eyes partial to the night and ledger open to the next page.