> "There is no privacy where power lives. Only the illusion that you were alone when they chose to watch."
— Council Agent Training Manual, Redacted Edition
The hallway stank of perfumed smoke and old paint.
Agent Dymos Vell lit a real cigarette anyway, because fuck it. The air was already poison, and the place he was walking into had worse stains on the inside than secondhand ash ever would.
Room 408.
Same as always.
He didn't knock.
Council protocol didn't require it when surveillance clearance hit Class Red-4. And Dymos had long since stopped pretending he gave a damn about being polite.
The lock disengaged with a hiss. The door slid halfway open before catching on something soft—fabric, maybe, or a person.
Didn't matter.
He shoved it with his shoulder.
Inside, the lights were low. Red-tinted. Artificially warm.
The scent hit him immediately—synthetic musk, sweat, cologne, the sharp antiseptic edge of stim-powder burned too close to skin.
And moaning.That, too.
Dymos didn't flinch. Didn't pause.
He stepped over a silk tie, past a half-shattered decanter on the floor, and stopped at the foot of the bed.
Councilor Darek Luno was very much occupied.
The woman beneath him—half his age, lean and trembling, neural-link collar still blinking—hadn't noticed Dymos at first. Her wrists were strapped above the bedframe. Decorative. Not reinforced. Not meant to hold.
The scene was a painting of indulgence.
But Dymos wasn't here for art.
"Darek," he said, voice flat.
The Councilor froze mid-motion. Turned his head slowly.
Sweat slicked his temples. He didn't look surprised. Just annoyed.
"Couldn't wait?" he asked, panting lightly. "It's almost over."
Dymos took a long drag from his cigarette. "Not according to Grid activity in Sector 12. You've got a pulse-tag on you. High Council wants you walking. Now."
Darek rolled off the woman with an exhale and reached for a silk robe on the floor. "Is this about the Polyarc transfers? Because I already cleared those with Virex."
"Not Polyarc," Dymos said. He glanced at the woman, who was still catching her breath, wide-eyed and frozen. "This one marked?"
"No," Darek said. "Off-record."
Dymos stepped forward and yanked the neural-link collar off with a sharp snap. She flinched.
"Get out," Dymos said to her, jerking his head toward the hallway.
She scrambled off the bed, clutching at her clothes. She didn't speak. Didn't even look back at Darek.
When the door slid shut again, Dymos sat on the edge of the bed and ground out his cigarette into an empty shot glass.
Darek adjusted his robe, still breathing like he hadn't come down yet.
"So?" he said. "If it's not Polyarc, what is it?"
Dymos handed over a datapad.
Encrypted. Simple. Clean.
Darek scrolled.
Then paled.
"Wait. These aren't mine. I don't own anything in Cerberic Holdings."
"No, but your companion does," Dymos said. "The one two months ago. The art dealer from Vanthe. She used your access log to open a backdoor through Sector 17's bond clearinghouse."
Darek dropped the datapad.
"I didn't—"
"I know," Dymos said. "That's not why I'm here."
Darek's brow furrowed. "Then what—"
"They want you to testify."
Darek blinked. "Testify?"
"On record. Public forum. Pretend it was your op. That you flagged it. Clean up the noise."
"But I didn't—"
"That's why it works."
Darek opened his mouth. Then shut it again.
His robe had slipped slightly off one shoulder. He didn't bother fixing it.
"They're going to throw me under, aren't they?"
Dymos shrugged. "Maybe. Depends how good your speech is."
Silence fell between them for a while. The only sound was the faint hiss of the vent struggling to move the room's stale heat.
Finally, Darek said:
"You ever fuck someone and forget their name the second you came?"
Dymos looked at him. "No."
"Hm. Lucky you."
Darek stood. Stretched. Muscles tight. Age catching up. Power, too.
"You ever regret working for them?" he asked.
"No," Dymos said. "I stopped regretting things the day they promoted me."
Another pause.
Then: "Ashar," Darek said.
Dymos didn't move.
"He's making a mess. Everyone's watching, but no one wants to say it. They think if they ignore him, he'll implode on his own."
Dymos stood. Lit another cigarette. "You scared of him?"
Darek looked out the window.
"No," he said. "But I think I was supposed to be."
Back in Transit
Later, riding a mag-line car alone through the lower corridors of the Capitol, Dymos opened his own datapad.
There was a live-feed of Ashar's quarters.
No sound. No context.
Just the man, sitting still, writing on a piece of actual paper like time still mattered.
Dymos watched him for a while.
Ashar paused, tapped the pen to his bottom lip. Then scratched something out. Then rewrote it.
No guards in sight.
No glass walls.
Just the dim glow of light and that unreadable stillness.
Dymos zoomed in.
The words on the paper were partially legible.
One was circled.
"Witness."