The smear spread like a stain through the contractor forums—an old photograph of a narrow alley, cropped and captioned with insinuation. It was the same image Arjun had found in his drawer, repurposed into a public question: Who protects the academy when its cadets meddle in private commerce? The post threaded comments that argued for contractor oversight and comments that argued for academy restraint; beneath them, a darker current of threats and promises moved in private channels. The photograph had become a lever, and someone was already trying to turn it.
Arjun felt the lever in his pocket. The photograph was warm from being handled; his mother's alley lived in the crease of the paper like a memory. He went to the market without telling Captain Rhea first—because some things needed to be seen, not reported. Vendors watched him approach with the wary politeness of people who had learned to read leverage as easily as price. His mother stood behind her stall, hands folded over a cloth, eyes that had learned to measure risk in the same way the academy measured fatigue threads.
"They put your picture up," he said without preamble. Her face did not change at first; then a slow, tired anger settled into her jaw. "They think I'm part of something," she said. "They think I hide crates. They think I take money." Her voice was small and brittle. Around them, the market hummed with the ordinary business of a city that had learned to keep living under new maps.
Arjun thought of Captain Rhea's counsel, of Ishaan's fox‑like offers, of the academy's audits. He thought of the splice devices and the scorched plate and the way the contractor houses had pushed back. He thought of leverage as a language and of how easily a photograph could be turned into a sentence that demanded an answer. He could have gone to the academy and filed a report; he could have let the legal machinery grind. Instead he did what he had learned to do in the field: he made a small, immediate stitch.
He named the seam between two cracked tiles behind his mother's stall and unrolled a narrow ribbon of starlight that arced across the alley like a pale promise. The corridor muffled the market's noise and brightened the faces of the vendors who stepped through it to move crates and close shutters. It was no grand gesture—only a sheltered lane wide enough for a cart and a few people—but it changed the alley's shape for the hour it held. People moved through with less fear. A child who had been clinging to his mother's skirt laughed when the corridor swallowed the sound of a dropped tin.
The act drew attention. A contractor's observer at the market edge straightened and tapped a comm. Someone took a grainy clip on a handheld and sent it into the same channels that had carried the smear. The photograph in Arjun's pocket felt heavier. He folded it and slid it back into the seam of his jacket, the paper creasing where his fingers had pressed.
That evening Ishaan found him outside the market, where the alley opened into a wider lane. He did not come with a dossier this time. He came with a small, practical offer and a look that measured risk like a man who had learned to trade in it. "You made a public stitch," Ishaan said. "That draws eyes. I can move quietly—watchmen, a hand to pull a smear offline, someone to find who took the photo and where it was posted. I don't ask for signatures for that. I ask for one thing: if you ever need a hand that doesn't ask for your ledger, you call me first."
Arjun felt the halo at his throat like a compass that had been nudged. He thought of Captain Rhea's warning about bargains and of the favor Ishaan had offered earlier. He thought of his mother's tired face and the way the market had breathed easier under the corridor's hush. He could refuse and let the academy's audits run their course; he could accept and gain a quick, off‑record shield. Either choice would leave a mark.
He asked a different question. "If you find who posted the photo, will you tell Captain Rhea?" The question was a test of terms. Ishaan's smile tightened. "I'll tell her what I find if you want me to," he said. "But understand this—what I find will come with strings. People who post things like that don't do it for free. They do it for leverage. If you want me to pull the thread, you'll have to let me know when to cut it."
Arjun considered the answer like a stitch: where to place the name, how much pressure to apply. He thought of the academy's slow ladder and the way it protected cadets with forms and audits; he thought of the world beyond the academy that moved faster and paid in favors. He accepted Ishaan's help on the condition he had already set: any information would be shared with Captain Rhea and the audit team. Ishaan agreed, but his agreement came with a look that said favors were not free.
Captain Rhea did not like the arrangement when Arjun told her. She did not scold him for accepting help; she scolded him for the terms he had allowed. "You asked him to share with us," she said, voice low and precise. "That's good. But remember—off‑record help creates off‑record obligations. Keep your ledger clean. Keep your people safe. If Ishaan's help brings us evidence, we will use it. If it brings us debt, we will pay it with caution."
The next morning Ishaan delivered a small packet: a list of handles, a time stamp, and a grainy clip from a market camera that showed a figure taking the photograph and slipping away. The badge at the hip was indistinct, but the gait and the jacket matched a contractor subcontractor who had been dismissed after the anchor override. Ishaan's contacts had found a trail that led through shell companies and a courier route that passed near Arjun's mother's alley. The packet also contained a single, unexpected thing: a name—someone who worked in the academy's maintenance corps.
The name landed like a stone. Arjun felt the halo at his throat tighten into a single, bright point. The idea that someone inside the academy might be involved in leaking images or facilitating splices was a bruise that hurt more than a contractor's threat. Captain Rhea's face did not change when he told her; she only said, "We will audit maintenance logs and personnel. Quietly. No accusations until we have proof."
They moved with the careful, legal machinery the academy trusted. Maintenance logs were pulled, personnel interviewed, and telemetry cross‑checked. The contractor houses bristled at the academy's scrutiny; their spokespeople called for transparency and accused the academy of paranoia. The public forums filled with noise again. The smear had become a political instrument, and the academy's response was a slow, precise counterstroke.
In the quiet hours between audits, Arjun trained. The mentorship circle ran shared activations until the motions felt like muscle memory. The Phoenix‑root medic guided them through healing rituals for the corridor seams; the Golem‑bond practiced keystone presses until its hands were callused in the right places. Arjun pushed Starbind in controlled increments, learning how to widen a corridor without leaving a corruption trace and how to fold a seam so it left less bruise on the mind‑screen. Each success brightened the halo a fraction; each failure left a red thread that required reflection.
When the audit returned a result it was small and sharp: a maintenance tech had been paid in small sums by a courier linked to the contractor house, and his access logs showed a late‑night pass near the market camera the night the photograph had been taken. The tech denied wrongdoing and claimed he had been coerced; the courier's ledger showed payments that matched the contractor's shell accounts. The evidence was circumstantial but enough to justify a formal inquiry.
Captain Rhea moved with the academy's legal certainty. She requested a secure interview with the tech and arranged for protective custody for Arjun's mother until the inquiry concluded. The contractor houses protested; the public forums argued. Ishaan watched the proceedings with a fox's patience and a hand that had already moved to cover a few loose ends.
Arjun sat through the interview with the tech and watched the man's hands tremble as he told a story of threats and small payments. The man's fear was real; his complicity was real. The academy's audit team cataloged the evidence and prepared a report that would be sent to Director Sethi and to the outpost council. The contractor house issued a statement denying institutional involvement and promising cooperation. The smear's momentum slowed.
That night, after the formalities had been filed and the market's vendors had closed their stalls, Arjun walked the alley with his mother. They moved through the corridor he had stitched earlier, now a memory in the stones. She did not ask about Ishaan or the contractor houses. She asked instead about the stitch itself—how it felt to hold a corridor under pressure, what it cost.
He told her the truth he had learned in the mentorship circle: that stitches were tools and that tools left marks. He told her about fatigue threads and reflective entries and the way the Phoenix‑root medic's hands could ease a bruise. She listened with the steady patience of someone who had learned to live with small, persistent risks. When he finished she reached out and touched the halo at his throat as if it were a talisman.
"You keep people safe," she said. "That's what matters." Her voice was small and fierce. "But keep yourself safe too."
Arjun folded the photograph into his palm and felt the weight of choices he had already made and those he had yet to make. Ishaan's help had found a thread that led back into the academy; Captain Rhea's audits had slowed the smear; the contractor houses had been pushed back, for now. The cost of holding had become clearer: not only fatigue and public scrutiny, but the slow accrual of obligations and the risk that someone would use his past as a map.
He wrote his reflective entries that night with a hand that did not tremble. He logged the activation in the alley, Ishaan's packet, the maintenance tech's ledger, and the academy's response. Each line eased the fatigue thread a little. Each line made the halo steadier.
Outside, the city breathed under a thin sheet of indigo. The tide‑light along the canal pulsed like a slow heart. Arjun slid the liaison's card back into the drawer and left the photograph folded in his pocket. He had accepted help and set conditions; he had exposed a leak and protected his mother. The climb would be faster now, and the lines he crossed would be sharper. He slept with the knowledge that the next stitch might demand not only technique and ethics but a willingness to pay a price he had not yet counted.