Targeting reticles painted scarlet lines across Rivo’s grease-stained canvas coat. The air thrummed with the descent of the grav-chutes, kicking up a fine, oily mist from the slick concrete. Before him, a Vettor squad settled into the muck with a muffled hiss of boot hydraulics, their helmets blank sheets of tinted acrylic. Muzzles remained steady against his sternum. Their commander stepped forward, her grav-chute collapsing into an oiled backpack harness. Rain beaded and rolled off her tailored wool trench coat. Her hair, the color of polished coal, was pulled back severely, revealing sharp cheekbones and eyes the precise shade of aged jade. Ciana Vettor. Rivo knew the face from public transit kiosks, plastered above civic development taglines.
"You trespass on private industrial airspace," Ciana said, her tone level and crisp. Her glance darted toward the padlocked ladder rung, then drifted down to the brass rim of the culvert plate. "And you have disrupted infrastructure. Field termination applies."
Rivo held his ground, ribs aching behind damp wool. The municipal interface ticked behind his temples like a pocket watch. “Private property?” he rasped, his voice raw from the damp and the adrenaline. He held up the deed, the municipal seal glowing faintly. "Parcel 17.03.GAMMA.01 belongs to me. The municipal core verifies it. And the ladder I padlocked falls within my surveyed perimeter." He pointed a dirty finger at the black-site’s hidden entrance, camouflaged behind a crumbling wall of ferrocrete. "That means your hidden plant breaches municipal exit codes. Structural hazard, unmapped barrier, route clearance violation. The site is out of code, Heiress."
One of her guards shifted his stock, the scarlet diode flaring against Rivo's throat. "You think a scrap of parchment protects you from house security, boy? We write the permits."
"No," Rivo answered, teeth showing in a dry grin. "The civic charter does. Your operation inside can't clear fire inspection without secondary passage. Through my steel." He gestured to the padlock. "So I am billing you a access tariff. One hundred million credits per standard month. Otherwise the shackle stays shut, and municipal audit drones flag your bulkhead." The inspectors were bought and paid for, but automated municipal warrants were impervious to bribes.
A mutter stirred among the squad. Ciana studied his collarbone, then the faint copper seal burning cold through the paper in his fist. Whispers on the executive subnet had warned of dead-file titles suddenly executing against corporate vaults, attributed to phantom data rot. Before her stood the actual glitch, reeking of rainwater and coal smoke.
“One hundred million?” Ciana’s voice was soft, dangerously so. "You negotiate from an untenable position, vagrant."
"I negotiate from sovereign title," Rivo retorted. "Cut this hasp or shoot me, and the registry logs an armed title breach. The automatic statutory fines carry compound penalties even your board cannot scrub, especially on an auxiliary exit route. Imagine the board review when this facility goes into receivership over a fire ladder."
Ciana’s chin dipped, her lips curling into a bloodless crescent. "Fascinating." She raised a hand, a single, sharp gesture. “Stand down.”
The guards lowered their barrels. The scarlet dots blinked out against his chest. Rivo kept his fingers tight on the deed.
"You are not merely vermin," Ciana said. "You are an operational tool. And you just gave me an idea." She stepped closer, her expensive boots splashing in a puddle. “My siblings, the ‘illustrious’ Orrin and Lycoris Vettor, are about to launch their pet project: the ‘Sky-Spine Energy Grid.’ A network of primary trunks meant to siphon geothermal output from the deep basin to the upper spire arrays. An enterprise backed by private debt to cement their board seats. They’ve been riding my father’s coattails for too long, relying on his influence to push through their shoddy plans. This grid… this is their legacy.”
Rivo stayed quiet, running the math. High-voltage trunks required substations, relief manifolds, and narrow service vaults. More bottlenecks.
"The primary main is scheduled to be trenched in three hours," Ciana continued, gesturing south toward the chemical fog. “It runs straight through the Sump-Ward, requiring massive excavation and temporary closures. All perfectly legal, of course, under their newly acquired ‘Urban Renewal Protocol’ mandate.”
Rivo swallowed bitter bile. The protocol was a certified death warrant for low-tier wards, allowing companies to scour whole sectors to bare stone under civil utility waivers.
"The Protocol," Ciana confirmed, "is their fail-safe. If the pipeline encounters civil resistance or bureaucratic encumbrance, they are authorized to declare the basin an unlivable hazard. Heavy bombers level the blocks. Everything here vanishes—your plots, your life, the whole sector. Then they pour bedrock over the rubble."
She leaned in, her voice dropping to a near whisper. "What if the obstacle cannot be bombed away? What if the power feed runs into an unassailable freehold? Not just a surface drain, but an unzoned sub-grade utility passage directly under their drill path?"
A fierce hunger sparked behind Rivo's ribs. This was an open title war against the upper towers, and he held the registry key.
"I want to bankrupt them," Ciana said, her pupils narrowing to black pinpricks. "I will provide blueprinted coordinates and survey maps. You drop municipal locks directly across their right-of-way. Refuse, and they ignite the ordinance anyway. You have three hours before their trenching drills bite into the ward bedrock. Block the line, or burn."
[NEW MISSION: INTERDICT SKY-SPINE GRID CONDUIT. ACQUIRE DEED TO COORDINATES 09.22.EPSILON.48 (SUBSURFACE CONDUIT JUNCTION). FAILURE WILL RESULT IN S-WARD DECLASSIFICATION AND MASSIVE PHANTOM DEBT INCURRENCE.]