Page 44 of Alien War Daddy's Got Rizz
Not here. Not now. Not where the teeth are hidden under tailored suits and corporate smiles.
Helios Combine’s underbelly isn’t just bars and back alleys. It’s the infrastructure that keeps the shiny towers humming. It’s the heat.
I head for Sector 4, the Cooling District.
The air here is thick enough to chew—humid, tasting of recycled coolant and ozone. Massive ventilation fans churn overhead, slicing the smog into rhythmic pulses. It’s loud. A constant, mechanical scream that drowns out conversations and footsteps alike. It’s the perfect place to trade secrets you don’t want recorded.
People here don’t carry guns out in the open. They carry data drives and decrypt-keys like shivs.
I step onto a grated walkway suspended over a canyon of server towers, the heat rising from them distorting the air like a mirage. My boots clang softly against the metal, a rhythm lost in the industrial din.
At the end of the gantry, a figure is hunched over a portable terminal, tapping at a hard-line connection spliced directly into the city’s spine.
Vex.
He doesn’t look up as I approach. He’s a info-broker who hates faces and loves code. His skin is pale from living in the shadows of machines, and his eyes are modified with high-speed scrolling lenses that flicker blue in the gloom.
“You’re blocking the airflow, Grau,” Vex says, his voice a scratchy rasp over the roar of the fans.
I stop a few feet away. “You knew I was coming.”
“I track displacement,” he mutters, finally looking up. His lenses spin, focusing on me. “You move heavy for a ghost.”
I lean against the railing, looking down at the infinite drop of blinking lights below. “I need lines, Vex. Not rumors. Hard connections.”
“Everyone wants lines,” he says, turning back to his screen. “Tidball?”
“Tidball,” I confirm. “And the shells he’s hiding under.”
Vex taps a key, and a holographic cube flickers to life above his wrist. It’s messy—a tangle of red and blue threads representing financial flows.
“He’s good,” Vex admits, sounding almost admiring. “He doesn’t just hide money; he launders theintent. See this?” He points to a cluster of red threads knotting together. “Supply chain anomalies. He’s flagging production lines as ‘Under Review.’ That freezes the assets legally, but look where the operational costs go.”
I squint at the light. “Offshore.”
“Bingo. Into accounts owned by holding companies that don’t exist on paper until the second the credits hit. He’s bleeding her dry, Grau. Not with a knife, but with a thousand papercuts.”
I feel the growl start in my chest. It’s elegant. It’s cruel. And it’s exactly the kind of corporate warfare Yara can’t fight because she can’t see the enemy.
“Give me the names,” I say.
Vex slides a data module across the metal railing. “It’s all there. The shell corps. The redirect codes. The names of the mid-level managers he’s bribed to look the other way.”
I cover the module with my hand, ready to take it.
“There’s something else,” Vex says.
His tone changes. The professional detachment drops, replaced by something tighter. Nervous.
I pause. “What?”
Vex hesitates, then taps his screen again. A waveform appears—jagged, chaotic.
“While I was digging through the sub-layer to find Tidball’s accounts, I hit a tripwire. Not corporate. Military grade. Old code.”
I narrow my eyes. “Who?”
“Does the name ‘Ghostlight’ mean anything to you?”
