Back in Tower Seventeen's plaza, Kael read a plain-text notification from Beta.
[SUMMARY: CULT NODE RESPONSE.]– SEVERAL BRACELETS REVOKED.– SHRINE NODE LABEL: NOW AWARE OF "MONITORED" NOTE.– ORGANIZATION: INCREASED CAUTION.– IMMEDIATE THREAT LEVEL TO FRAGMENT_HOST_RYU_HANEUL: REDUCED SLIGHTLY.
He exhaled.
"That's… not terrible," he said.
"You expected them to throw a tantrum?" Mira asked, watching over his shoulder.
"I expected them to double down on scanning," he said. "Paranoia is more manageable than zeal."
She nodded.
"For now, this stays between us, Cho, and Beta," she said. "Last thing we need is TRI trying to copy your 'audit graffiti' trick on every Node they don't like."
He grimaced.
"Yeah, letting a government agency cosplaying as a moral layer sounds like a great idea," he said.
Beta pinged quietly.
[NOTE: EXECUTOR SARCASM LEVEL – STEADY.]
Haneul's message popped into their shared chat.
How's my stalker situation?
Decoyed, Kael replied. You're now one of about four hundred "maybe shard hosts" in Gray-3 according to their busted scanner.
Nice. I've always wanted to be statistically insignificant, she wrote.
You are not, he sent back.
There was a small pause.
I know, she replied. But it's nice that, to the people who want to dissect me, I'm a blur.
He smiled, faintly.
"You realize," Mira said quietly, "that every time you pull stunts like this, you're writing yourself deeper into whatever role ADMIN_0 left lying around."
"Executor," he said. "Successor. Bug. Pick a label."
"'Bug' suits you," she said. "Annoying to the System, hard to squash, occasionally saves the whole program."
He barked a laugh.
"I'll take it," he said.
Beta added a note.
[EXECUTOR_SELF-LABEL: 'BUG.'][MORAL_AUDITOR_OPINION: NEUTRAL-POSITIVE.]
He rolled his eyes.
"Stop rating my brand," he said.
[OUT OF SCOPE.]
"Liar," he repeated.
Mira checked the time.
"I have a meeting where I pretend we're not all dancing on the edge of an ethical singularity," she said. "Try not to escalate anything world-breaking for a few hours."
"No promises," he said.
"Kael," she warned.
"I'll TRY," he amended.
She left, shaking her head.
Kael looked up at Tower Seventeen.
One floor at a time, he'd told himself.
Now there were sealed floors, shard politics, cult scanners, and an ethics process watching his every move.
And still, at the core of it, the simple shape of the job hadn't changed:
Get in.
Tilt the math.
Get people out alive.
He pinged Joon.
You up for more Floor 3 tomorrow?
Always, Joon replied. Also I found a guy selling "ethics-boosting charms." Want one?
Already have an auditor living in my skull, Kael wrote. Hard pass.
He closed the chat, feeling the weight of everything and the small, stubborn relief of having survived one more set of bad decisions.
Somewhere in the System, Unknown_3 glared at new metrics, Speaker Grayroot plotted around misleading data, and ADMIN_0's legacy Node ticked with updated weights.
Beta watched, counting trajectories.
For now, its verdict on the Ryu siblings and their messy, local, annoying attempts to redefine "worth" remained the same:
[DEVIATIONS: GENERALLY POSITIVE.][RECOMMENDATION: CONTINUE OBSERVATION.]
Kael could live with that.
For now.