The freight lift grinds open on a maintenance corridor washed in cold server light. Cooling fans roar behind the walls. Jade Blue steps out first, service key warm in hand, with Marshal Dax Orin close behind.

A red access reader blinks over a sealed security gate ahead. Beyond it, the restricted routing levels pulse with corporate power, the route to Marek Sulo's finance stack.

The seal snaps green. The gate unlocks with a soft hiss, and the corridor lights shift from idle gray to active blue. A fresh alert spikes on Jade's smart watch, a Syndicate tag pinging from deeper in the stack.

Dax squares up beside her, hand near his sidearm, while Jade faces the open gate and the narrow path toward Marek Sulo, and maybe Mira Blue.

Jade Blue drifts two steps past the gate and sweeps the corridor with a hard, practiced look. A maintenance vent grille sits high on the left wall, its fasteners mismatched from the panel seam, newer than the plating around it.

She marks the route in a single glance, the vent, then the blind corner beyond it, then the distance to the next junction. The blue light catches dust in the air, and the corridor stays empty for now.

Jade angles her body toward the grate and lifts the service key under it. The lock accepts the code strip, and the vent release clicks loose with a soft metallic snap.

Inside, a narrow service duct opens clean and dark, with a faint track of fresh scuffs leading deeper toward the stack. The route is usable, and it looks like someone else has used it recently.

Jade hooks her fingers into the duct lip and folds herself inside in one smooth pull. The grille vanishes behind her as the narrow shaft swallows the blue light.

She lands low, knees bent, then glides forward on silent hands and boots. The duct is tight, but the worn marks make the route clear.

Ahead, the passage opens around a junction seam, and a faint strip of warmer light leaks through the metal. Fresh scratches on the floor plate point that way.

Far behind her, Dax's voice drops to a rough whisper from the corridor mouth. The sound is cut short by the duct wall, but the warning carries.

Jade reaches the seam and pauses at the edge of the glow. Beyond it, the service route bends toward the stack, and something ahead emits a brief mechanical hum.

Jade slips through the seam without a scrape, and the duct opens into a side run washed in amber spill-light.

The mechanical hum resolves into a service relay box mounted on the wall, its maintenance panel hanging open.

A fresh cable snakes from the relay toward the finance stack route, neatly clipped and still warm to the touch.

Jade pauses in the shadow of the box, pistol low, and the duct beyond her curves toward brighter access panels.

Dax stays back at the junction seam, listening hard while the relay box ticks once, as if something on the route just woke up.

Jade flips the relay panel wider and traces the fresh cable by touch, finding a spoof tag tucked under the sheath. The alert is riding that line, not the duct itself.

She twists the tag free and the relay’s ticking stutters. Amber spill-light dims across the duct as the false signal drops from the route.

A second LED wakes inside the box, cold blue now, and the maintenance display reindexes to a clean service loop headed for the finance stack.

Dax pushes off the seam and steps into the run, one hand up for silence, the other angled toward the brighter access panels ahead.

The duct settles into a quieter hum, but a fresh indicator on the relay flashes once, showing the alert has been rerouted elsewhere.

Jade slips into the moving duct, boots finding the narrow ledge as the clean service loop carries her forward. Dax drops in behind her, keeping to the shadow of the wall ribs.

The run bends once, then opens into a maintenance throat lined with bright access seams. The finance stack’s filtration glow leaks through the grating ahead.

Jade reaches the final hatch and pulls it free. Cool air spills out from the stack side, carrying the bite of sterilizers and hot circuitry.

Below them, the finance stack rises in layered glass and steel, its security lanes pulsing with corporate blue. A service catwalk waits just inside the opening.

Jade steps through first, and the duct gives way to the restricted route. The hatch hangs open behind her, while a distant scanner light sweeps the far corridor and pauses.