Mira didn't sleep much anymore.
She'd slept poorly before all of this—Towers and their ecosystem didn't lend themselves to peaceful nights—but knowing there were multiple shard-linked Executors out there with wildly different philosophies did not improve matters.
She sat in a dim TRI lab, coffee cooling beside her, as the "Conflict Map" hummed on a central display.
Each light was a worth-conlfict event.
Some green—audited and judged "positive" by Beta.
Some yellow—mixed or inconclusive.
Some orange-red—negative trends.
"Unknown_3 again," she murmured, tapping one orange mark.
[EVENT: TOWER_18_F3 – 'GLASS SERPENT.'][EXECUTOR: UNKNOWN_3.][PATTERN: INCREASE RISK TO NOVICES FOR 'GROWTH.']
"Still pulling that trial-by-trauma crap," she said.
Her console pinged: a message from Beta meant specifically for Observers.
[TO: OBSERVER_MIRA_HAN][SUBJECT: EXECUTOR PATTERN SUMMARY – TOP VARIANCE SOURCES.]
She opened it.
A short list of IDs popped up.
EXECUTOR_KAEL_RYU – "LOCAL STABILITY POSITIVE / RESOURCE OVERUSE RISK."
EXECUTOR_UNKNOWN_3 – "GROWTH-TRAUMA BIAS / POTENTIAL DESTABILIZATION."
EXECUTOR_… and a few others, lower-impact, still forming patterns.
"Congratulations, Kael," she said softly. "You made the top of the weird kids list."
She flagged Unknown_3's ID.
[NOTE (MIRA): PRIORITY MONITORING. ATTITUDE: CONCERN.]
TRI didn't have jurisdiction over Executors.
There was no law that said "don't argue with the System's ethics framework." There was barely language for what was happening.
But if Unknown_3's pattern escalated—if "pressure" turned into "acceptable collateral damage"—she wanted to know before it reached her city.
Her wrist buzzed.
Kael.
Got a ping for "Executor pattern summary." Beta outed me as 'local stability positive.' Should I put that on my resume?
She smirked.
Only if you want cults and corps to start fighting over you harder.
Pass.
A second later:
I see Unknown_3 too. The "make them suffer to grow" guy.
She replied:
Yeah. Watching. Don't poke him directly yet.
"Yet" is doing a lot of work there, he wrote.
She hesitated.
Then:
You're not here to fight other Executors. You're here to keep your city and your shard-host sister alive. Priorities.
Understood, he replied.
She leaned back, closing her eyes for a moment.
"You're doing okay," she muttered to the empty lab. "For a kid with a god-fragment hanging off you and a moral auditor grading your every move."
Her Observer tag buzzed softly, registering her bias.
[OBSERVER_MIRA_HAN: EMOTIONAL INVESTMENT – INCREASING.]
She ignored it.