The data file the mannequin sent was small. Light. Far too light for the weight of what it had cost.
Seated in the silence of the Black Ladybug's cockpit, Ishtar opened the file. There were no avatars, no guild histories, no in-game coordinates. Just plain real-world text.
Name: Raul Smith Lee
Company: SSL 3D Printing
Odyssey Online Status: No registered avatar
Ishtar read the lines three times.
And felt nothing.
It was a dead end. An anonymous name. A nobody with no presence in the world that mattered. The information meant nothing to her. It wasn't Alexandre. It wasn't Ria. It wasn't Jett. Not even Moss. It was a stranger.
Her first reaction wasn't anger, but cold, immediate analysis. Raul Smith Lee wasn't the enemy. He was the weapon. A tool hired in the real world. And if he was the weapon, the crucial question remained:
Who was pulling the trigger?
She sent another message to the mannequin, encrypted and direct.
[This name is a ghost. I need the client who paid for this service. The name behind Raul Smith Lee.]
The reply came quickly, and the words that appeared on her screen reshaped her understanding of her new reality.
[Information has layers. You paid for a public name, and you received it. A company owner and his lack of an in-game avatar are easy data points. A contract. A financial transaction. That is mid-tier information. That is a secret.]
Another message followed.
[Data costs more than weapons. To know who threatens you in the real world, you need more than credits. You need reputation. You need favors. You need silence from people in positions that matter.]
Ishtar understood. The underworld wasn't a store where you bought what you wanted. It was a spiderweb of debt and power. To get the information that truly mattered—the NXZ client list, the payment records—she would need a favor from a data hacker. And to earn a hacker's favor, she would need capital. And in Finite Space, capital wasn't measured in credits, but in reputation and fear.
A third and final message from the mannequin appeared.
[Every mission you complete leaves witnesses. Other pilots in Finite Space see the "Black Ladybug." They see your efficiency. Your brutality. That builds your reputation. But it also paints a larger target on your back. Every step you take to uncover your enemy, you are also leaving a trail of breadcrumbs for them to find you.]
The path ahead unfolded in her mind with terrible clarity. To learn the name of her true enemy, she would have to kill through more contracts. Each one would make her more famous, more valuable to the black market. And every drop of that fame would make the alarms at Apex headquarters scream louder.
She was in a race.
A race to build a reputation faster than Ninsun could connect her to the Black Ladybug.
Ishtar closed the messages. She looked at the silent hull of Morito's ship, still drifting in front of her. He hadn't been first blood.
He had been the first installment on a far, far higher payment.
She opened the mannequin's contract list. Dozens of names. Dozens of virtual lives. Dozens of installments yet to be paid.
She selected the next one. A minor pirate guild leader causing trouble for one of Finite Space's syndicates.
The price of information was high.
And Ishtar was ready to pay it—no matter the cost.