The cool night air of the Dregs, usually thick with the scent of ozone and burnt oil, now carried a faint, metallic tang of desperation. Inside Olis’s garage, stripped carburetors and oily sockets lay shoved into corners to clear the steel bench. A holographic projection shimmered above a dented workbench, displaying a complex web of financial data, pulsing with red and green nodes. Jia Linso, her eyes narrowed with focus, tapped commands onto a battered comm-pad, her fingers a blur. “The entry keys held,” Jia muttered over the whine of twin cooling fans. “Merritt’s private cipher folded once we fed his own tokens through the perimeter gate. Arrogance makes him sloppy.” She threw a glance at Olis, who sat hunched over his own device, the sleek black interface humming beneath his calloused thumb. [TARGET ACQUISITION: Vancroft Consortium Board Member – Solan, Kaelan. Primary Violation: Insider Trading – Project ‘Solaris Bloom’ infrastructure contracts. Secondary Violation: Embezzlement – Falsified philanthropic donations to the ‘Caldaris Future’ charity.] “Kaelan Solan first,” Olis murmured, ignoring the blue chime. “He pushed hardest for Merritt’s sweep through the low wards, waving a manicured ring while calling our tenements vacant dirt.” Jia nodded, already three prompts ahead. “Solan’s exposure sits at 2.7 billion credits. He built his pedestal on clean governance; this will crack the marble.” Her nails clicked across the plastic keys. “Five ghost shells in the Outer Rim, all funneling dividends to a vault in Zurich.” [LIQUIDATION AUTHORITY GRANTED: Solan, Kaelan. Maximum Sanction: Asset Seizure – Vancroft Conglomerate Shares (3.8%), Offshore Trust Funds (All), Private Real Estate Holdings (Select).] [TRANSFER PROTOCOL INITIATED: Shares and Assets rerouted to designated proxy entities: ‘Aegis Holdings Ltd.’, ‘Shadowstone Ventures’, ‘Null Point Corp.’. Anonymity cloaking engaged.] Olis watched the balance tallies tumble. By sunrise, Solan would possess empty vaults and a ruined registry before the glass towers caught dawn. Through the night, dented tin mugs and cold dregs collected by the battery packs. Jia ripped through ledger sheets with practiced contempt, while Olis marked the pressure points across the family tree. [TARGET ACQUISITION: Vancroft Consortium Board Member – Vance, Roric. Primary Violation: Tax Evasion – Undervalued luxury assets, undeclared foreign income. Secondary Violation: Blackmail – Covert financial support to illegal gambling rings.] “Roric Vance bleeds for his son, Darian,” Olis said, tracing the transaction trees. “The boy dropped millions at the Cardium tables, and Roric dipped into development reserves to keep the enforcers quiet.” Jia’s fingers danced across her pad. “Got it. The ‘family emergency’ expenditure reports are a joke. Look at this – ten million credits routed through a ‘disaster relief’ charity in the same month Darian lost the Obsidian Gambit. Amateur hour.” Her lips curled in a sneer. “These high-tier idiots think nobody in the Dregs can read a balance sheet.” [LIQUIDATION AUTHORITY GRANTED: Vance, Roric. Maximum Sanction: Asset Seizure – Vancroft Conglomerate Shares (2.1%), Domestic Business Ventures (Majority Stake), Off-Shore Investment Portfolios (All).] [TRANSFER PROTOCOL INITIATED: Shares and Assets rerouted to designated proxy entities: ‘Aegis Holdings Ltd.’, ‘Shadowstone Ventures’, ‘Null Point Corp.’. Anonymity cloaking engaged.] The expropriated equity routed into the blind trusts Olis had constructed, tilting the board’s voting weight away from Merritt’s seat. Next sat Lena Quintus, whose foundation speeches routinely branded the lower ward children as unteachable labor. [TARGET ACQUISITION: Vancroft Consortium Board Member – Quintus, Lena. Primary Violation: Adultery – Covert financial support to non-spouse individual, undisclosed luxury villa in Meridian Valley. Secondary Violation: Corporate Espionage – Leaking proprietary Vancroft research to rival bio-tech firm, ‘Axiom Biologics’.] “Adultery and corporate theft,” Jia murmured. “Her husband, Senator Aldrin, will pull his endorsements by noon. And Axiom is Garrick’s pet enterprise.” Olis set his thumb against the scanner. “She stole from the old man’s till. Garrick eats disloyalty raw.” [LIQUIDATION AUTHORITY GRANTED: Quintus, Lena. Maximum Sanction: Asset Seizure – Vancroft Conglomerate Shares (4.5%), Personal Fortune (Major Portion), Political Donations (All frozen).] [TRANSFER PROTOCOL INITIATED: Shares and Assets rerouted to designated proxy entities: ‘Aegis Holdings Ltd.’, ‘Shadowstone Ventures’, ‘Null Point Corp.’. Anonymity cloaking engaged.] Smog turned dull amber over the rusted corrugated roofs outside. On the workbench, the graphic mapped ten percent of consortium equity locked under Olis's three ghost accounts, snapping Merritt’s voting majority in half. “Merritt lost his quorum,” Jia said, rubbing grime from her knuckles. “His floor just fell out.” Just as she spoke, Olis’s comm-pad chimed with an urgent notification, not from the system, but from an encrypted news feed. The headline blared across the small display: “Chairman Garrick Vancroft Advances Retirement Announcement to Apex Spire Gala! Unforeseen Corporate Realignments Cited.” Garrick had seen the quiet collapse on the exchange and moved the deadline forward. “The old monster smells smoke,” Olis said, wiping grease from his palm. “He’s pulling the knife fight into the ballroom.” A red alert banner scrolled beneath the dispatch: “Dregs Redevelopment Act Fast-Tracked! Groundbreaking Ceremony Initiated This Morning!” A surveillance still showed treaded crawlers biting into scrap-metal shanties three blocks away. Merritt was shoving his indentured labor mandate through by force.

Liquidating the Vanguard