CHAPTER 1
TRAZ
Glimner stinks like rust and rotting ambition.
I crouch on the edge of the broadcast tower, the wind cutting across the city’s night like a blade. The skyline shimmers with filth-drenched light—neon pulsing in time with the heartbeat of crime. Below, hovercars hum between broken spires and gangland shrines. Somewhere in that glowing hellhole is the man Petru wants dead.
I don't ask questions. I get names. I get locations. I get paid.
But Petru didn’t keep his mouth shut this time. Too proud. Too twitchy.
“He’s a senator,” Petru spat two nights ago, pacing his office with that glass of glowing blue swill he calls wine. “Human. The new breed—talks soft, but he’s organizing resistance. Wants to put ‘limits’ on Kiphian territory rights. Limits, Traz. Like we’re some parasite he can control.”
I didn’t blink.
Petru kept going.
“He's not just dangerous because of what he says. He’s dangerous because he’s clean. Untouchable. No bribes. No dirt. Just a soft-eyed revolutionary with too much influence and too much damned hope.”
That’s the thing Petru hates most—hope. It disrupts the economy of fear he’s worked so hard to build.
“Make it clean,” he said, pushing a data chip across the table. “Make it final.”
I took it. Not because I care about Petru’s politics, or his empire of back-alley slaves and smuggled tech. I took it because the money’s good, and because putting my blade in the spine of someone who thinks he’s untouchable still gives me a flicker of satisfaction.
Now I’m here.
Three blocks down, across from the diplomatic compound where the senator likes to sleep like a goddamn prince while his guards sweat in shifts. His suite’s on the top floor. Private balcony. Only two exits. One guarded. One facing a sheer drop. Petru said he wanted it done tonight—no explosions, no trace.
He wants the man to just stop breathing.
I check my PerComm. Countdown synced to the senator’s daily schedule. He eats the same late meal, listens to old Terran jazz, takes a shower, then checks messages in his study. Every night. Like clockwork.
I wait for the right beat, then hook into the side of the building with magnetic boots and drop to the balcony.
The guard’s inside, back turned. Rookie mistake.
I slide open the glass just enough to fire a dart. It hisses—quiet, efficient. The guard twitches and folds like wet cloth. No sound.
I’m in.
The suite is a monument to hypocrisy. Vials of aged Kiphian wine. A statue from Seleron. An Earth painting on the wall—“Starry Night,” I think. I never understood humans and their obsession with chaos frozen in color.
The senator is where I expect him. Back turned, hunched over a console, ranting quietly into a recording device.
“I’ve confirmed Petru’s weapon shipments to the Outer Rings,” he’s saying. “The merc he’s working with is?—”
He doesn’t hear me.
I move silent.
The blade’s out before he finishes the sentence. I don’t hesitate. Don’t give him time to look back and understand. I slip it between his ribs, under the shoulder blade. Twist. His breath catches, eyes wide. No scream. Just shock.
Then nothing.
I ease him down, close his eyes. Doesn’t matter that he was clean. Doesn’t matter that he was trying to fix this system. He got in the way of power—and power doesn’t negotiate.
I clean the blade on his cloak.
