CHAPTER 9
The Night the Foreman
Inspector Frome came the next morning.
He was a wiry man of sixty-five with the particular alertness of someone who has been waiting for a specific knock on their door for eleven years and is trying very hard not to let on that they are relieved to hear it. He met Kai in the shelter's common room, reviewed the documents, asked six precise questions, took the notebook away in a sealed evidence bag, and was gone before the morning shift whistle.
The journalist, Adara Voss, arrived that afternoon and sat with Kai for forty minutes. She was thirty-something, direct, and had the specific quality of concentration that belongs to people who are genuinely good at their work. She asked different questions than Frome — less interested in the legal chain and more interested in the human weight of what he was describing. How long had the migrant workers been in the warehouse. Whether he had spoken to any of them. What the dock workers he worked alongside knew or suspected.
He answered all of it accurately. He did not embellish. He did not speculate beyond the evidence.
At the end, she said: 'The evidence is solid. The story is solid. But you know how this works — the harbour authority is connected to the Harren family trust, and the Harren family trust has three of the city's media outlets.'
'I know,' he said.
'So when this runs — if this runs — it'll be in a national outlet, not a local one. Which means it'll take a week at minimum, maybe two, for legal review.'
'What about the warehouse?' he said.
'Inspector Frome can move on the warehouse on the criminal evidence without waiting for the story.' She paused. 'He will. I've worked with him before. He's not the kind who waits when there are people in a warehouse.'
Kai nodded.
'Why are you doing this?' she asked. 'You work the dock. This is going to make you very visible.'
He thought about this honestly.
'Forty-three thousand dollars,' he said. 'That's what the workers on the north dock are owed in back wages. From three years of overtime skimming. It's in the records.'
She blinked. 'That's the reason?'
'That's one of the reasons,' he said. 'The other reason is that there are forty people in a warehouse on the east dock who are not there because they want to be. Those are two reasons that are both sufficient on their own.'
She looked at him for a moment with the expression of a journalist encountering something that is, unexpectedly, not a story of the kind she expected.
'All right,' she said. And left.
✦ ✦ ✦
Inspector Frome moved on the warehouse at six that evening.
Kai knew because he was at the dock when it happened. He was not involved — he was three berths away, coiling rope, which he had been doing in that location for approximately two hours in a way that was entirely consistent with his normal end-of-shift routine and had nothing to do with wanting to know how it went.
He heard everything through the Auditory Enhancement. The vehicles arriving. Briggs's voice, alarmed, then aggressive, then — a different register entirely. The authority official's voice cycling through negotiation to threat to silence in about four minutes. The sound of a warehouse door opening.
He did not go over. It was not his operation. His job had been the records and the contacts. He had done his job.
He coiled the rope.
⟦ TRIBULATION WEALTH SYSTEM ⟧
TRIBULATION EVENT CONCLUDED.
HOST ACTION: Evidence compilation and
strategic deployment through appropriate channels.
OUTCOME: 41 migrant workers freed.
Criminal investigation initiated.
17 violations documented for prosecution.
TP AWARDED: +12 TP
[Breakdown: Justice (defended vulnerable): +6
Sacrifice (personal risk, career exposure): +3
Strategic wisdom (did not act recklessly): +3]
CUMULATIVE TP: 23
ADDITIONAL NOTE:
The 23 dock workers' back wages are
now part of an active legal recovery case.
The System anticipates Host will find
this satisfying.
The Ledger records: eleven years late.
Still counts.
He stood at the dock's edge with the rope in his hands and the city behind him and the water in front of him and twenty-three Tribulation Points in a ledger that had been running his account, apparently, since before he was born.
He thought: eleven years late. Still counts.
He put the rope down. He walked to the break room. He sat down in the plastic chair that had always been slightly too small for him and he opened the System interface and he looked at the exchange catalogue.
He spent 11 TP on the Enhanced Physical Recovery Rate.
He had 12 left. He saved them.
Then he noticed something at the bottom of the catalogue. A new entry, recently unlocked. The heading was different from the others — larger, weighted, the way a document heading looks when it is the title of something with considerable scope.
⟦ TRIBULATION WEALTH SYSTEM ⟧
NEW LISTING UNLOCKED:
[ MILESTONE UNLOCK — 20 TP THRESHOLD ]
BLACK TECHNOLOGY MARKET — ACCESS GRANTED
The Black Technology Market contains
items, blueprints, techniques, and upgrades
drawn from civilizations 300 to 500 years
ahead of Host's current era.
Items are priced in SP.
Items cannot be patented by others once
Host acquires the blueprint.
WARNING:
The Black Technology Market is visible
to external parties who monitor System
activity.
Acquiring technology from this market
will increase Host's threat profile.
The System considers this acceptable.
The System suggests Host begin to also
consider it acceptable.
[ BROWSE CATALOGUE — FOCUS TO ENTER ]
The Black Technology Market.
He thought about the warning. The threat profile. The scan from day four. The unknown intelligence and its three-second assessment.
He thought: I have 500 SP and no cash and a genetic test appointment tomorrow morning and a Crestfall name I've agreed to accept and somewhere in the city there are people who have been systematically trying to keep me small for twenty-one years and who are about to lose their best tool for doing so.
He thought: better instruments.
He focused. The catalogue opened.
The first item on the list — listed not by price but by the System's apparent assessment of Host-priority — was a blueprint.
⟦ TRIBULATION WEALTH SYSTEM ⟧
[ PRIORITY LISTING — 400 SP ]
MICRO-VOID ENGINE BLUEPRINT
Origin era: Year 2387 CE
Classification: Personal transportation
Description: A compact engine the size of
a suitcase that generates a controlled
void-pressure differential. Capable of
lifting and propelling a single vehicle
(up to 2,000kg) without fuel.
Produces zero emissions. Zero noise.
Maximum altitude: 8,000m.
Maximum speed: 340 km/h.
Current market value of equivalent
technology: does not exist.
Potential commercial value if patented
and manufactured: INCALCULABLE.
He read this entry three times.
Then he looked at his 500 SP balance.
Then he thought: I can't build this alone. I don't have a workshop. I don't have manufacturing capability. I don't have —
He stopped.
He thought about what he did have. He had twelve Tribulation Points. He had a Crestfall name. He had a notebook full of detailed criminal evidence against a significant commercial interest in the city. He had a retired inspector and a journalist and old Maren's social network and the specific gravity of someone who has been waiting twenty-one years for a leverage point to become accessible.
He thought: I don't need to build it alone. I need to acquire a position from which building is possible.
He thought: the name is a door. Tomorrow I find out what room it opens into.
He set the notebook on the plastic chair beside him, leaned back, looked at the ceiling of the break room with its flickering fluorescent light and its twenty years of dock smoke and its particular quality of being the ceiling of a room that nobody was supposed to stay in this long.
He stayed in it a while longer.
The Ledger ticked over. Twenty-three points. Five hundred Skill Points. A Black Technology Market with a micro-void engine blueprint sitting at the top of its catalogue like a door no one else in the world could currently open.
Tomorrow, he thought.
Tomorrow the name. The day after, the instruments. The day after that —
Well. The Ledger was long. He had time.