Chapter 10 False Queens

The suite overlooked the Atlantic - floor-to-ceiling glass tinted so deep, the ocean beyond looked oil-slicked. Greta Voss preferred it that way. Nature was never honest in daylight.

She stood barefoot on the marble floor, sipping coffee so dark it shimmered violet. A data-sheaf hovered in the air beside her - six screens wide, each pulsing with telemetry, market chatter, and three separate surveillance feeds from Vienna, Zurich, and the Polar Relay.

None of it surprised her.

The Zurich breach had been predicted four days ago, modeled in a pressure-split sim run through the Atlantean tier. She'd allowed it - a controlled leak. A scent trail. Caroline Amsel was following it like clockwork.

Voss turned as the doors opened behind her.

Dmitri Korshov entered without ceremony, carrying a slender case like a violinist late to rehearsal. The man looked like a banker, moved like a wraith, and had killed people in twelve time zones. She liked him because he didn't ask questions.

"Tier Four confirmed the variable?" he asked in Russian.

"She's in," Greta said, switching the language easily. "They'll test her. And she'll destabilize the lattice the moment they do."

Korshov set the case on the bar and opened it. Not weapons - instruments. Neural probes, chemical agents, a sleek silver syringe capped with a red-glass ampoule.

Greta raised an eyebrow.

"The anti-synchrony dose?" she asked.

"Prototype," he said. "Not to be administered. Just seen."

She nodded.

"Symbolic deterrence," she murmured. "Like a crucifix in a vampire chapel."

She walked to the terminal, tapped a command. A rendered sphere appeared - The Core, in schematic. No longer theoretical. It pulsed with living data, a fractal storm inside a skull-shaped envelope.

"They don't understand what they've built," she said, voice low. "Severin thinks he's resurrecting knowledge. He's wrong."

Korshov tilted his head. "What is it then?"

"A mirror," Greta said. "And it reflects only will. Monarch thinks it can survive by mapping itself onto an older mind. But the Core isn't just memory. It's bias. Aggression. Empire."

She shut the projection off.

"We let them install it, and there won't be any war. Just compliance. Recursive, permanent compliance."

Korshov waited.

"What's the next move?" he asked.

She smiled thinly, stepping into her heels.

"Atlantic City goes quiet in six hours. I want the local uplink cut, three Tier Three techs scrubbed, and the East Node flooded with ghost traffic."

He hesitated.

"That will trigger a Tier Two retaliation."

"Good," she said. "I need them loud. I want the whole lattice vibrating when Caroline steps into the trial."

She turned toward the window, sipping the last of her coffee.

"She's not ready. But she doesn't need to be."

A new screen shimmered to life. Greta's private line. A secure call, no audio - only the blinking sigil of the off-grid faction known as Perennial.

They were watching.

She let them.

"We push the paradox now," Greta said aloud, more to herself than to Korshov. "Before Monarch completes the overlay. Before VERA stabilizes."

Her fingers danced across the console. One command queued. Unsent. A dormant virus she'd buried in Monarch's relay hub three years prior.

REVENANT_01.

She looked at it for a long moment.

Then deactivated the console and turned away.

Not yet.

Let Caroline get closer.

Let her touch the Core.

Only then would the past come roaring through.