> "You can't starve a man who doesn't know where his food comes from. But when you tell him… and take it away…"
— Councilor Virex, Private Recording, Year 2471
Dymos didn't flinch as the courtroom door sealed behind him.
He didn't stand straight, didn't smooth his coat, didn't look for a camera.
He just walked in, half-limping from an old injury that flared when the weather dipped. His boots echoed across the slate tiles louder than they needed to.
Twelve robed figures sat at the crescent table, and none of them welcomed him.
They didn't need to.
He wasn't there for punishment.
They wouldn't waste someone like him on that.
Councilor Reen leaned forward slightly, not out of respect—just curiosity.
"You've read the proposal?" she asked.
Dymos sat without asking. "I read it twice. Then I read the parts that weren't written down."
Councilor Drayen raised an eyebrow. "And?"
"It'll work."
Reen shifted. "That's not an answer."
"It is," Dymos said. "It'll work. But once it starts, you don't stop it. No lever to pull back."
"And the cost?"
Dymos scratched his cheek. Looked tired. Not in a performative way. Just… used up.
"Two weeks of staged fluctuation," he said. "I'll start the tremor at the outer-zone lithium exchanges. From there, it cascades—resource markets, freight algorithms, mid-range export hubs. Within seventy-two hours, grain derivatives tank. Agri-trade in the south collapses. By Day Five, we'll see civil panic in Zones 3, 7, 9, and any of the old Burn Ward corridors."
Silence.
Councilor Solh tapped her finger against the tabletop. "You're describing a controlled famine."
"No," Dymos said. "I'm describing a spotlight."
They let that hang.
Then Councilor Arvik, oldest among them, cleared his throat with the slow patience of someone who still remembered when speeches were written on paper.
"Dymos," he said, voice like rust peeling from metal, "you could bring down an economy."
"I could bring down three," Dymos said.
"Why don't you?"
Dymos looked up.
There was no arrogance in his face.
No pride.
Just that emptiness that comes from too many secrets, too much silence, too many years of making people disappear without pulling a gun.
"I like watching the machine break slowly."
Councilor Reen leaned back now. Her voice was cool, measured.
"We want you to do it. Start the chain. But not for collapse."
"Then what?" Dymos asked, though he already knew.
"To remind them," Reen said. "That the Grid breathes because we let it."
He looked down at the datapad on the table. It had one symbol flashing.
A green crescent.
The trigger point.
One press, and Dymos would set into motion a global rebalancing event disguised as natural market volatility.
Officially, this would be called a Sector Reconciliation Disruption.
Privately, they would call it: "Starving the Gods."
He tapped the pad once, but didn't confirm it.
Then he looked up again.
"I want three things."
Reen blinked.
Dymos raised a finger. "One: immunity from all prior council infraction protocols."
A second finger. "Two: retroactive deletion of my second assignment file."
A pause. His voice was quieter now.
"Three: I want you to let me leave when this is done."
Drayen squinted. "Leave where?"
"Anywhere."
"No one leaves the Grid."
"I don't want off-grid," Dymos said. "I want out. Just a name erased. Nothing left. A shadow behind glass."
Councilor Tyen smiled faintly. "You think you're owed peace?"
"No," Dymos said. "I think I've earned exile."
They stared at him.
No vote. Just presence.
Eventually, Reen nodded.
"Begin."
Three Days Later — Sector 9, Outskirts
It started with prices.
Banana paste went from 6 credits to 24 overnight.
Fuel chits doubled. Then vanished entirely.
On Day Two, local merchants started locking their stalls at dawn.
And by Day Three, a food drone was pulled down mid-air by a hungry mob and eaten in the street before the contents were even removed from the shell.
Selis sat on a rusted pipe, chewing on a piece of dry protein skin and watching it unfold.
She wasn't stupid.
This wasn't chaos.
This was choreography.
Mara stormed into the tunnel. "Our drops got raided. No Council in sight. Just... silence. Like they want it to burn."
Thom cursed under his breath. "Somebody rerouted the entire East Grid flow through a dead port. On purpose. I checked the logs. The decision tree didn't come from a broken node. It came from Capitol Core."
Selis stood slowly. Her face didn't change, but her eyes flickered with something new.
Not fear.Not yet.
Just the realization that the battlefield had shifted again. And that she hadn't been told.
Eli leaned in the doorway. Quiet. Always quiet.
"They're starving their own," he said.
"Why?" Mara asked. "What's the gain?"
Selis clenched her fist. "Because gods don't bleed. They let crops die when the prayers don't come fast enough."
Meanwhile — Grid Depths
In a sublevel buried under eleven floors of shielding, Dymos sat alone in a black room.
There were no buttons. No monitors.
Just one long beam of light across a table, and a holo-orb watching him from the corner.
It wasn't speaking.
Just watching.
He sipped tea. Burned his tongue.
Didn't complain.
Because in three more days, the outer sectors would riot.
In six, the agricultural panic would ripple into the eastern territories.
By ten, food reserves would hit zero in twelve major city clusters.
And then—and only then—would Ashar be asked a question on live broadcast:
> "Why didn't you stop it?"
Dymos smiled faintly.
He wasn't a rebel.
And he pretending,
But he was tired.
Tired of pretending the system wasn't a machine made of bones.
And when it finally collapsed, he'd be buried under it.