Chapter 112

A dark silhouette loomed at the duct’s exit like the grim reaper’s shadow before casually stepping aside and gesturing toward the light.

"Just as I figured. Circling around was the right call. The local goons are currently turning the Commercial Block through the Residential Block upside down. I may have gotten a little… boisterous."

As Taro’s eyes finally adjusted to the glare, the menacing shadow morphed into a very familiar, very smug face.

"Phantom-san! Jeez, don’t give me a heart attack! I seriously thought the credits were rolling on my life for a second there!"

Taro let out a shaky, desperate laugh, staring at the smiling Phantom. Marl clutched her chest, exhaling a breath she’d probably been holding since the previous floor, while Taiki smoothly vanished his gun back into whatever hammerspace he kept it in.

"That’s my line, boy," Phantom said, looking mildly unimpressed. "I didn't expect you to kick over the hornet’s nest quite this fast. Couldn't you have been just a little more discreet?"

"Well, uh, ha ha..." Taro rubbed the back of his head, offering a dry, hollow chuckle. "A few coincidences just lined up perfectly, I guess? Maybe I got a little carried away—wait, what was that!?"

A muffled, low-frequency thoom echoed through the duct. Taro scrambled into a defensive crouch, looking like a startled cat, while Phantom didn't even twitch.

"I planted some boom-candy in a few public facilities," Phantom explained airily. "I made them look fairly obvious, so civilians should be fine. One of the guards probably poked one without thinking. Clearly, he failed his safety training."

He said it with the same emotional weight one might use to describe the weather. Taro’s jaw hit the floor. "Explosives?" he squeaked. The guy had walked in here with nothing but a handgun. He didn't even have a backpack!

"Yeah, to keep them busy over there. Luckily, there’s a brisk trade in firearms around here, so I wasn't short on materials. If you harvest the propellant from enough bullets, you can turn it into high explosives with a little elbow grease. It’s cheap, accessible, and fast. Mind you, the final payload weighed nearly two hundred kilograms, so it’s not exactly a DIY project for an average human... but anyway, the guards will be in a standoff with the bombs for a while. It’s a great way to kill time."

Phantom punctuated his explanation with casual hand gestures. Taro let out a long, exhausted sigh of admiration. Right, I keep forgetting he’s basically a walking war crime. Note to self: never ask him to help with a campfire.

"Sounds… fun? You’ll have to give me a lesson sometime. But more importantly, how’d it go on your end? Any luck?"

Taro got back to the point. Phantom gave him a sharp thumbs-up and jerked his thumb behind him. "There’s someone I want you to meet."

"Honestly, it was straight out of a textbook. In X situation, Y organization develops, leading to Z results. Individuals are wildcards, but groups? Groups are predictable. As expected, I found an Anti-Alliance Organization. Your typical Resistance. The only real surprise was—"

Phantom paused, fixing Taro with a pointed look.

"The fact that the Station Master here is the one running it. It seems the Alliance doesn't have as tight a grip on the reins as they think. There’s a gap in their armor we can exploit."

Led by Phantom, the group—Taro, Marl, Taiki, and Koume—marched toward City Hall as if they owned the place. They ran into a few clusters of security guards on patrol, but slipping past was child's play. With Alan beaming constant updates on guard positions via Plum, "stealth" mostly involved just standing behind a pillar for ten seconds at a time.

Besides, Phantom’s guidance was surgical. He sniffed out danger before it even existed. Surveillance cameras? Evaded or smashed. Sensors? Looped with dummy footage. He moved like the station was a 2D side-scroller and he had the cheat codes. At one point, when they hit a vertical wall, he grabbed Taro and Marl under each arm and cleared a five-meter jump like he was hopping a puddle.

............

Taro stared at the back of Phantom’s head in silence. He had a million questions, but he was too afraid of the answers to ask. How did he find an underground cell this fast? Why did they trust him immediately? And why was he doing all this for a guy who just gave him a cheap translator? Sure, Phantom loved his sister, but this felt like a lot of extra credit.

Special Forces types really don’t do things by halves, do they? But why is he sticking with a loser like me? Taro muttered to himself, his voice barely a whisper.

This guy was a legendary hunter—some said the best in the galaxy. Taro was pretty sure that if he ever told Phantom to "kill everyone on this station," the man would just ask if he wanted it done in alphabetical order.

"You could always look at it from the other perspective," Phantom said, not even turning around. Marl and Taiki blinked, wondering who he was talking to.

"You might have dragged me into this, but I’m the one who decided to follow you. You follow me, I follow you. It’s the same result. As for why… well, we’ll have that talk eventually. And here we are. You’re the star of the show from this point on."

They stopped in front of a heavy door. The electronic plate read [MAYOR’S OFFICE], and a small notification in the corner said [IN OFFICE].

"Welcome. A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Teiro. I am Bruno, the Station Master of Otto."

The group was ushered into a reception room, meeting the Station Master face-to-face immediately. They skipped the pretentious pleasantries by mutual, unspoken consent. Phantom had bought them time, but "safety" was a depleting resource. They needed to move.

"Yes, nice to meet you. I’m Teiro, the Station Master of Katsushika... uh, well. Honestly, I’m not sure where to start."

Taro’s brain was still trying to catch up to the fact that he wasn't currently being shot at. Bruno gave him a weary, sympathetic smile.

"Ask whatever comes to mind. Perhaps I should start with our situation?"

Bruno looked to be in his late fifties, his face a roadmap of stress-lines, but his eyes were sharp. He pulled out a physical piece of paper and a pen—an archaic sight that made Taro blink—and began sketching a simple organizational chart.

"Digital records leave trails. Paper doesn't," Bruno explained. "Currently, the Enzio Region looks like this: Three Large-scale Outlaw Corps at the top, their umbrella companies below them, and then the General Corporate Groups like us at the bottom. The Alliance Government preaches 'Equality under Crisis,' but it’s a total sham. They’re just siphoning our wealth by holding our lifelines hostage."

Bruno’s expression soured as he drew a pyramid with the Outlaw Corps at the apex. He drew two more pyramids and linked their tops with jagged lines.

"This is the Enzio Alliance. And this—"

He drew a line connecting the bottoms of the triangles, linking the smaller companies.

"Is the Resistance. Though 'Resistance' is a bit grand; we’re mostly just an information-sharing club. They took away our combat vessels before we could even think about a counter-strategy."

"They took them?" Taro asked, leaning in.

"Indeed. Under the guise of 'Anti-Imperial Defense,' they effectively conscripted our fleets. You could refuse, technically, but then your priority for resources would be set to 'zero.' Plenty of companies tried to say no. Their remains are currently drifting in the dark."

Bruno sighed, his pen scratching against the paper. "Their future is… bleak."

Taro crossed his arms, leaning back. "Resources... that means parts, finished products, the works. I guess that makes sense for the secondary sector. But how did they manage to pull this off? This is a massive scale."

It seemed impossible to monitor every single trade. In a place like Delta, if something was banned on the surface, it just went underground. It was a constant game of cat-and-mouse with the Security Company goons.

Bruno let out a long, heavy sigh. "The network."

"When the Old Neural Network collapsed, the Enzio military 'generously' opened up their proprietary network for public use. Everyone was in a state of total panic, so we all jumped at the chance. We praised their quick response at the time, but looking back, it was the perfect trap. Now, every byte of data in this sector is unified under their system. The military knows everything we do before we do it."

Bruno glared at a nearby terminal with pure, unadulterated cynicism. Taro frowned, trying to process the technical implications.

"The network... wait. You mean they had a completely independent infrastructure? Not just a layer on top of the Old Neural Network? Why would a regional military even have that?"

Even the Imperial Military only had tiny, private networks for top-secret comms. The Old Neural Network’s security had been so rock-solid that building a separate one was usually a waste of money.

"I don't know why, but it was there," Bruno said. "The Empire tried to restore the comms net, but only near the core systems. Out here, the restoration of Faster-Than-Light Communication was a pipe dream. Then the military steps in with a working solution? No one was in a position to say no."

He sighed again. Taro looked at Marl; she gave him a slow, grim nod. The network. It always comes back to the network.

"In truth, almost nobody wants to pick a fight with the Empire. Well, among the General Corporate Groups, anyway. But we have no choice but to follow orders. Resources, food, connectivity—no company can survive without those things. Mr. Teiro, I beg you. Take this information back with you. Spread it through every channel you have. Maybe some corporation out there will be moved to help us. I’m not holding my breath, but it’s better than sitting here waiting for the air to run out."