Adventure of Jostan Ordomo 1

Fourteen days later, rain glosses the freight overlook above Leonidas’s automated cargo lanes. Cranes glide without drivers, moving sealed containers through blue-white scanning light.

Sela Marr waits beside the guardrail without guards or visible weapons, her dark coat beaded with rain. A private logistics display flickers across one palm.

Below, cargo carriers turn with mechanical precision, their route lights threading between towers. Sela angles the display away from the public cameras.

The display shows duplicated credentials, freight timestamps, and a descending route that vanishes beneath Leonidas’s coastal infrastructure. One access signature remains active.

Jostan traces the descending route and the prints around the freight access point. Trace the Sender separates legitimate municipal traffic from copied credentials, revealing fresh handling marks and a concealed transfer toward the underwater infrastructure.

The trail confirms the hardware is moving under someone else's authorization, but the route itself is genuine. Its latest transfer window is recorded in Sela's display, along with the access signature still active below Leonidas.

His hand closes over his stomach as the hunger catches up with him. The favor he gave Sela sits in the evidence beside the route, no longer feeling separate from the trouble it uncovered.

Sela turns the display toward him. The prints, timestamps, and copied authorization chain align into one actionable path beneath the coastal infrastructure, while the public cameras continue watching the freight lanes.

Jostan’s cybernetics reach through the freight overlook’s public camera mesh. One sharp command fries the feeds, leaving the nearest lenses dark and their recordings useless.

Every displayed copy follows the same path into his buffer: prints, timestamps, route coordinates, and the active authorization chain, sealed into a private partition.

A rush of excitement moves through Jostan as he gently takes Sela’s hand. Rain taps the guardrail, and the disabled cameras leave the overlook briefly blind.

Sela leads him from the freight overlook, keeping their hands together as they descend through a service stairwell toward the brighter streets below.

Minutes later, the neon sign for Regalos Pizzria glows through the rain. Warm air, melted cheese, and industrial spice roll out as Sela opens the door.

Inside Regalos Pizzria, Jostan spreads the copied transfer records beside the steaming pizza. The timestamps resolve into a single shipment: pressure-rated relay couplers, sealed power regulators, and submersible network housings.

He says it while staring at Sela, the records forgotten for a deliberate second. Neon rainlight catches her face as she studies his expression, then the hardware list.

Jostan returns to the transfer chain and identifies the destination package as municipal emergency infrastructure: components meant to restore a submerged relay district, not ordinary freight.

Jostan finishes the last slice, sighing as the grease and heat settle him. He smirks at Sela, turning uncertainty into a challenge instead of surrendering it.

Sela folds the logistics display shut, her expression sharpening. She gives him the useful certainty: the transfer is deliberate, the destination is real, and the buyer understands the route’s value.

Sela rises, leaves payment on the table, and leads him through Regalos’s side entrance. Rain and neon receive them as the concealed transfer route becomes their next destination.

Sela reopens her logistics display and builds a false shipment around the stolen route: pressure-rated couplers and relay housings headed for the submerged district. Her forged manifest carries a legitimate municipal priority code.

She submits the manifest through a dormant logistics account, and the network accepts it without requesting a human review. A cargo carrier below changes its route and begins descending toward the coastal infrastructure.

Sela leads Jostan through a service access beneath the freight lanes. They enter the false shipment’s route as the carrier passes through a maintenance lock, descending beneath Leonidas toward the underwater infrastructure.

The false shipment glides through the transfer gate beneath Leonidas. While Sela’s municipal priority code clears the scanners, Jostan sweeps the gate with the Eye of Anylasis, tracing handling marks and authorization residue.

The inspection succeeds without disturbing the manifest. Jostan finds the buyer’s trail embedded in a duplicated freight credential, leading from a private logistics account to the submerged district’s receiving platform.

Keeping pace with the carrier, Jostan turns his scan toward Sela. The readout distinguishes ordinary biology from concealed augmentation without forcing a connection or touching her systems.

Her scan confirms the answer: restrained cybernetic interfaces, no active weapons, and no concealed system reaching into Jostan’s buffer. The gate seals behind them as the carrier descends.

The service lock opens into a cramped ripperdoc clinic washed in surgical cyan. Wall racks hold unfamiliar interface tools, while a young adult woman with copper braids, with a slim build, warm brown skin, and a cobalt utility vest over a black interface shirt laughs hysterically over a terminal, fingers racing across its keys.

The Eye of Anylasis maps the room in layered detail: sterilization arms, concealed shutters, biometric locks, and a compact defensive grid built into the ceiling. The laughing woman’s workstation is isolated, not controlling the clinic.

Jostan reaches the padded chair and turns it. The ripperdoc, lean and dark-skinned, with a square face and black diagnostic gloves comes around with it, an adult woman in a stained white coat, close-cropped silver hair, and a narrow chrome implant tracing one cheek.

Multiple targeting points settle over Jostan’s chest and hands. His scanner identifies them as nonlethal restraint emitters, while the weapon mounted beside the chair resolves into a high-output nanogun with programmable ammunition.

Jostan winks at the woman at the terminal and runs the Eye of Anylasis across both women. The scan stays passive, slipping beneath their visible interfaces without touching either system.

The scan completes cleanly. Dr. Kiva Rell’s cheek implant, neural interfaces, and defensive controls are disciplined and locally isolated; the woman’s workstation shows layered intrusion tools, biometric masking, and no weaponized link to the clinic.

The restraint emitters remain trained on Jostan without firing. Kiva gestures toward the diagnostic chair, while the terminal woman turns her screen aside and begins isolating the signal’s external handshake.

Jostan lowers his hands, shrugs, and drops onto the medical bed. The restraint emitters track him without firing as Kiva studies his posture and the terminal woman resumes isolating the signal handshake.

Kiva lowers the restraint grid to standby and rolls the diagnostic chair beside the bed. The woman at the computer redirects the clinic’s external sensors, building a one-way trace that preserves Jostan’s active partitions.

The terminal fills with returning signal paths. One route stabilizes beyond the clinic, pointing toward a concealed relay outside the municipal medical grid as Kiva prepares the first scan.

A few quiet minutes pass beneath the clinic’s cyan lights. Kiva’s scanners map Jostan’s cybernetics locally while the woman at the computer traces the signal outward through a one-way diagnostic feed.

Kiva finishes the assessment without opening a connection into Jostan’s active partitions. The live signature is present, stable, and externally oriented, with no evidence of rewriting, hidden control, or immediate system failure.

The terminal displays the completed assessment: stable cybernetic continuity, no active overwrite, and a traceable external source. Kiva leaves the diagnostic interface open for Jostan’s review while Nika seals the one-way channel.

Nika gives Jostan a quick nod and keeps the one-way trace running. Kiva shifts her scanner from the signal map to his cybernetic architecture, careful not to open a route into his active partitions.

Kiva completes a deeper assessment and overlays the results beside the live signal. Jostan’s core systems are stable, but his interface has unused capacity for a local signal filter and hardened identity masking.

The clinic records the assessment without attaching Jostan’s legal identity. Nika’s isolated trace continues, while Kiva marks the filter and masking layer as a ready treatment path under Jostan’s control.

Jostan draws the Jimmy revolver and 34 NRP rifle from his gear, checks both quietly, and places them on a nearby steel table within clear view of Kiva and Nika.

Nika’s trace resolves the route without answering it. The relay is actively listening through a duplicated logistics credential, but Jostan’s location remains absent from its records.

Kiva sterilizes the interface port and begins fitting the signal filter beneath Jostan’s active partition boundary. Nika watches the trace, exposing the relay’s handshake timing and source markers.

The filter seats cleanly and the identity mask locks over it. The relay source is identified, Jostan’s systems remain under his control, and both weapons wait safely on the table.