Banyu tracked his sister as the guards steered her past the bronze pillars. Citra pulled against their grip until her fingers slipped loose from his torn cuff. She cast one back-look toward him before the gilded lift doors slid shut. Banyu’s spine curved back into its dull hunch, the defensive flare vanishing behind a slouch. Mahesa turned toward the west passage. "This way, Heir Banyu. Your wing is ready." Banyu dragged his worn leather across the stone flags without answering. His assigned suite held little beyond an unadorned divan and a low wooden table. Banyu gave the ceiling beams a lazy sweep, dropped flat onto the cushions, and closed his eyes. Mahesa latched the heavy panel from the outside and retreated to his private monitoring post above the hub. The console illuminated the darkened cubicle with multi-angle feeds. Mahesa pulled up the high-altitude drone log from the mountain clinic, replaying the sequence frame by frame. The cartel operatives had pressed in with shock-batons, yet Banyu broke their perimeter with blunt, unhurried counter-strikes: a forearm collision that splintered a wrist, followed by a flat palm driven into a ribcage, pitching the lead man into the stone masonry. He locked the playback on Banyu’s open hand mid-strike: fingers parted, thumb pinned flat. It was an unrefined grip, completely absent from the house's bio-engineered archives. Family tradition relied on the Marrow to generate visible kinetic shear, yet Banyu deployed unaugmented leverage with terrifying mass behind it. Then Mahesa scrubbed back three seconds: the moment the final attacker collapsed, Banyu had stumbled, his palm clamping hard over his sternum as his respiration seized. Amber telemetry pulsed across the auxiliary display. Seven heat signatures converged on the west suite: the Serpent’s Scale, Raden’s personal squad. Raden was testing his challenger early. Mahesa vaulted from the desk and took the service stairwell two steps at a time. The cedar door hung unlatched. Mahesa eased it inward with the tip of his boot. Splintered lacquer from the center table covered the rug, alongside two mangled brass floor lamps. All seven intruders lay strewn across the floorboards, limp and unconscious, dislocated joints pinned against broken floor tiles. Across the room, Banyu remained stretched along the divan, his head propped on his forearm, breathing in slow, rasping drafts. One scuffed boot hung off the edge. Not a single abrasion showed along his skin. Mahesa unclipped his radio. "Stretcher crew to west guest wing. Code Black. Bring cleanup." He knelt by the squad leader, checking the carotid artery. A steady pulse beat under the jaw, though the man was out cold from a blunt impact to the base of his skull. Back at his console, Mahesa tapped into the classified genealogical registry, keying past three administrative firewalls using his master clearance. He searched the record of Banyu’s mother, Leona. Her file had been purged to a single surviving entry: *Reason for Exile: Attempted sabotage of the Sovereign’s Marrow genetic formula. Subversive activities to dismantle Suryatama bio-engineering supremacy.*

The Minder's Gaze