Real Hero

The badge hit the tribunal table hard enough to crack its glass.

Kade Ronin watched the silver disk spin through a smear of docklight, his name flashing once across its dead display before the tribunal’s dampener killed the power. Around him, the Undercity dockside stalls kept trading - contraband batteries, bottled rainwater, memory pearls sealed in teeth - but every nearby voice had thinned to a murmur.

A security mark burned beneath Kade’s left eye.

It had been placed there in the corridor outside, pressed into his skin by a Kessler-Vahn enforcement drone. The mark pulsed with each beat of his pulse, broadcasting his identity to every corporate scanner in Neo-Meridian.

Disgraced. Armed. Wanted for insubordination.

The tribunal judge leaned over the table. Her face was a mosaic of mirrored plates, each reflecting a different angle of Kade’s bloodied mouth.

“You received a lawful termination order,” she said.

Kade tasted copper. “I received an order to kill an unarmed witness.”

“A corporate asset.”

“A child.”

The judge’s mirrored plates shifted. Somewhere above them, the Spire’s light spilled down through the city’s open levels in pale gold shafts, catching on steam and oil smoke. Kade had spent six years beneath that light, wearing Kessler-Vahn armor, enforcing contracts that called themselves peace.

Now the corporation had stripped the armor from him piece by piece.

The judge tapped the badge with one lacquered nail. “You refused.”

“I did.”

“You discharged your weapon against your commanding officer.”

“He reached for the trigger.”

“You fled the scene.”

“I carried the witness out.”

That answer moved through the stall like a thrown blade. A vendor stopped pretending to sort counterfeit saint-bones. Two dockhands looked away. Nobody wanted to be seen agreeing with a man whose face was now a corporate bounty.

The judge lifted the badge. “Kade Ronin, your service is terminated. Your clearance is revoked. Your wages, housing, and medical access are suspended pending prosecution.”

Kade’s jaw tightened. “You’re calling this prosecution?”

“I’m calling it mercy.”

The badge vanished into her sleeve.

A laugh came from the back of the stall, soft and dry.

Kade turned.

The woman sitting beside a rusted coolant barrel wore a coat stitched from three different uniforms. Dock guild blue at one shoulder. Corporate white at the other. The center panel was black and unmarked. Her silver hair was cropped close, leaving a thin line of glowing script along her scalp.

She lifted a cup of something that smelled like burnt citrus.

“Mercy,” she said. “That’s what the Spire calls it when it wants your corpse delivered without paperwork.”

The judge’s mirrored face snapped toward her. “Juno Halverson, this is a tribunal.”

“Then tribunal quieter.” Juno took a drink. “You’re upsetting the merchandise.”

The judge looked back at Kade. “Leave the dock district before the mark completes its first sweep.”

Kade glanced toward the open street.

Beyond the tribunal stall, Neo-Meridian’s Undercity unfolded in stacked layers of wet metal and neon. Cargo lifts groaned between levels. Vendors shouted over the hiss of illegal generators. Above, the city climbed toward the Spire in luminous tiers, each one cleaner, brighter, and farther from consequences.

His corporate mark pulsed hotter.

The first sweep was already moving.

Kade stepped away from the table. His boots felt wrong without the weight of his armor. Too light. Too exposed. He had spent years trusting the suit to turn intention into action. Without it, every breath belonged to him again.

That was supposed to feel like freedom.

It felt like standing naked beneath a sniper’s scope.

Juno watched him approach. “You look expensive.”

“I’m not interested.”

“You haven’t heard the offer.”

“I know what your offers cost.”

“Usually less than corporate medical care.”

“Not after tonight.”

Juno’s gaze flicked to the mark beneath his eye. “No. After tonight, everything costs more.”

A scanner chirped somewhere outside.

Kade’s hand moved toward the pistol at his hip, then stopped. The weapon was the only thing the corporation had not taken, perhaps because they wanted him to use it. A dead fugitive created fewer legal complications than a living one.

Juno tilted her head toward the narrow gap behind the coolant barrels. “If you want to remain alive long enough to regret this evening, sit down.”

Kade did not move.

“You’re marked,” she said. “Every Kessler-Vahn gate from here to the lower sluices knows your face. The city’s independent scanners will sell your location for a meal. The guilds won’t shelter you. The patrols won’t arrest you.”

“Then what will they do?”

“Collect you.”

The scanner chirped again, closer.

Kade sat.

Juno slid a small black ampoule across the barrel. “Break that against the mark.”

He stared at it. “What is it?”

“An argument.”

“With what?”

“Your employer’s tracking lattice.”

“Poison?”

...