CHAPTER ONE

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ZAVIN

 

The dignitary's pulse runs hot against the silk-draped air, and I taste the precise moment his composure cracks. Copper and citrus flood my palate, the chemical bloom of a lie poorly held.

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I lean closer and graze the ridge of his forearm with a light touch. He's Korvathi, this one, gray-skinned and severe in the tradition House Korvan breeds into its political class. Every being like him comes to the Velvet Warrens eventually. They arrive for pleasure and leave lighter, in every sense that matters. To me, that is.

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"You were saying," I murmur, letting my mouth curve into the smile I’ve practiced thousands of times, pleased when his mouth parts and his eyes roam my face. And then drop lower. "About the rerouted shipments through the Disputed Corridor."

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His thermal signature spikes along his throat and jaw, arousal braided through anxiety, the two inseparable when a man wants to be seduced into indiscretion. The heat-sensing pits along my jawline sense his pheromones. His dilated pupils and loosened posture answers my questions, and the rest is theater for his benefit, so he can tell himself he chose to share what I always wanted to know.

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The alcove holds us in shifting blue and gold, bioluminescent panels responding to the deep bass reverberating through the stone floor beneath our feet. Around us, the Warrens breathe in layers. Distant music settles in my chest. A dozen species' pheromones mingle with the sweet undertone of chemical attractants, the expensive kind the pleasure workers wear on their wrists and throats. Silk rustles in dark alcoves. Someone laughs, low and intimate, a sound carrying warmth that has nothing to do with genuine affection.

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This is my territory. I built it from overheard conversations and well-placed mouths and the understanding that every transaction in the Warrens leaves a trace, if you're the one holding the ledger.

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The dignitary leans forward, convinced this is his idea, that the beautiful Sethrai second son has been charmed by his importance, flattered into attentiveness. That's the trick of it, the real craft: making them believe they named their own price when I set it before we’d met.

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"It's hardly a secret at this point." He lowers his drink to his knee and leans closer, and the brandy on his breath mixes with the copper undertone of his anxiety. "The eastern trade lines are being stripped. House Korvan is pulling resources, military assets, supply convoys, everything that isn't nailed to a depot floor, and rerouting them through a subsidiary corridor along the Draven border."

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I let my eyebrows lift a fraction, the precise degree of surprise his ego requires. "That's a bold redeployment."

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"Bolder than you'd guess." He exhales a laugh, pleased to be the one explaining. His thermal signature warms along his collarbones. "It's a full territorial repositioning. Korvan's Council seat has been running triple-encrypted communiqués for weeks, and the frontier garrisons are doubling their rotations. Whatever Drazex Draven did when he took the Hollows, House Korvan is treating it as a direct threat to their eastern flank."

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I reach for his wrist and press my thumb to the cool ridge of his pulse. The gesture reads as intimate, a lover's touch, and his thermal signature floods with pleasure so bright it washes his throat and jaw in gold. Beneath my thumb, the artery beats steady and strong, and the taste of his sweat on the air shifts from copper to a sweeter note, the chemical marker of a man whose guard has dissolved entirely.

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"And the concentration of force," I murmur, letting the words land soft against the space between us. "Are they along the border itself, or staged further back?"

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"Forward. Right on the line." He covers my hand with his, gray fingers cool against my bronze scales. "Staging positions, supply caches, the full infrastructure for a sustained push. Korvan isn't posturing, Zavin. They're preparing for war."

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His pupils are blown wide. His pulse runs warm and trusting under my thumb, and he has no idea that he's given me everything I came for.

"Fascinating," I say, and the word carries the weight of admiration his ego requires.

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He leaves satisfied, his retreating back carrying the loose-shouldered posture of a man who believes he gave nothing away. The mask doesn't slip, because the performance doesn't end when the audience exits. That's the amateur's mistake, and I stopped making it years ago.

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The alcove holds his residual warmth, and I flicker my tongue through the air, tasting the lingering cocktail of his departure. Relief and satisfaction and the residue of the mild sedative dissolved in his third drink, the one that loosened his tongue.

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I file the intelligence and straighten the copper silk of my collar where his fingers brushed it during a moment of brandy-soaked boldness.

It's a Tuesday, and this is how Tuesdays go.

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Resh intercepts me three corridors from the alcove, falling into step beside me without breaking stride. He's good at materializing from the spaces between the Warrens' carved stone walls.

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"We have a problem," he says, his gaze fixed forward. "It’s Tevan."

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My stride doesn't falter. Tevan works the inner ring, a mid-tier pleasure worker handling the visiting trade delegations because he's beautiful and forgettable, which is the ideal combination for intelligence gathering.

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Resh passes me a data chip, slim and damning in what it holds. "Tevan has been duplicating the intelligence he feeds us and selling copies to an intermediary whose trail dead-ends at a House Korvan front company."

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I turn the chip between my fingers while the Warrens hum around us, light shifting gold to green along the corridor walls. The air is cooler here, away from the private alcoves where body heat accumulates and sweetens. My claws extend around the chip's smooth edge, a reflex I don't bother controlling when only Resh is present.

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"How long has he been doing this?" I ask.

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"Three months, possibly longer. He got sloppy last week, and one of his buyers used the same courier twice."

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Three months of compromised intelligence, every secret Tevan carried passing from my network into a rival's ledger. The male will be held accountable for this.

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"I'll handle it."

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Resh nods. I offer my employees good pay, protection from Kazren's appetites and my father's indifference, and the assurance that their bodies remain their own.

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In exchange, I ask for one thing.

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Tevan gave his loyalty away for the price of a Korvan intermediary's credit transfer.

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Tevan's quarters are comfortable because I made them that way. The Kaelish textile he bartered for at the Crimson Bazaar hangs on the far wall, its woven pattern catching the room's amber light. A half-finished drink sits on the low table, and music plays from a personal console, a melody low and slow, the kind a man chooses when he believes himself safe.

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The male looks up from his console with the easy smile of someone who trusts the person walking through his door. His thermal signature reads relaxed, warm, slightly elevated from the drink.

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"Zavin." He rises, posture carrying comfortable deference, a man who respects his employer without fearing him. "I wasn't expecting you tonight. Is this about the Korvan delegation? I had a preliminary report ready for the morning."

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"Keep it." I settle into the chair across from him, crossing one ankle over my knee, letting my weight distribute into the cushion. "I wanted to ask about the textile. Is that new?"

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He glances at the hanging. "I bought it last rotation from the Kaelish merchant near the southern gate. Her work is extraordinary, and she doesn't overcharge the Bazaar markup."

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"Beautiful craftsmanship." I study the pattern, the colors shifting in the glow, warm golds threading through deep reds. Tevan has good taste. His quarters reflect a life built with care, small comforts accumulated by a man who has made a home.

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"You seem well," I say.

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"I am." His grin widens. Contentment rolls off him in waves, not a hint of tension anywhere. "I've been making progress with a Zhaelith trader on the upper levels. The textiles business is just a front. She's really moving encrypted data caches through the southern corridor."

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He leans forward, enthusiasm creeping into his voice. "We've had three meetings this cycle and she's finally starting to trust me with distribution routes. Another couple of weeks and I'll have the whole supply chain mapped."

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His thermal signature glows with pride. The amber light catches the planes of his face, his pupils relaxed and easy.

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He has no idea I know he's on the take.

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He reaches for his drink and takes a slow pull. The movement brings his wrist across the space between us, casual and completely unguarded. Closing my hand around the joint takes nothing more than a slight shift of my weight.

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The words die in his mouth. He knows now. His thermal signature erupts. Shock floods his skin in a red wave so bright it burns against my sensory pits. I read the sequence as it arrives: bewilderment first. Then fear. Then, slower, recognition.

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"Your buyers got sloppy last week," I say.

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"Zavin." His free hand comes up, not reaching for mine, not pulling away. Hovering, because he understands that the next few seconds belong entirely to me. "I can explain."

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"You can't." I tighten my hold, rotating his wrist a fraction, and his breath hitches at the pressure on the joint. "An explanation would infer that I've misunderstood something, and I know I haven't. You sold my information to a rival house. The only question that matters now is whether Kazren discovers it before I've finished tracing your buyer's distribution chain."

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He swallows. His pupils are blown wide, and his thermal signature reads terror layered over shame, a familiar pattern. I've tasted it on a hundred men who thought they could outrun the consequences of a bad decision.

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One short, controlled motion, and the bone gives beneath my fingers with a sharp crack. The sound is smaller than it should be for what it represents.

Tevan's scream is brief and strangled, bitten off behind his teeth because he's lived in the Warrens long enough to understand that sound carries through stone.

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He cradles the broken wrist against his chest, shaking. His thermal signature is a chaotic mess of pain and adrenaline. His eyes gleam with unshed tears, but he doesn't look away from me.

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"You're off active intelligence. Report to Resh for reassignment to the outer ring immediately." I straighten my cuffs. "I'm allowing you to keep your life and continue your service elsewhere. If it happens again, that consideration won't be extended. Nod if you understand."

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I leave Tevan to his broken wrist. The Kaelish textile catches the glow on my way out, its colors still beautiful.

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By the time I've taken three steps, the corridor swallows the sound of his breathing. The Warrens close around me in their usual rhythm of muffled music and distant commerce. My cuffs sit straight. My thermal signature reads neutral. The only evidence of the last ten minutes lives in the ache across my knuckles where his bone resisted — and that ache will be gone by the time I reach the upper levels.

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My father's summons arrived two hours ago, timed with the precision of a man who schedules his disappointments. I've kept him waiting long enough to suggest competing priorities, but not so long that the delay reads as defiance. The arithmetic of obedience in House Sethrak runs on thin margins.

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My father occupies the upper chambers comfortably, with full knowledge that every other creature in the vicinity is present by his permission.

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The room is stone and cold metal, stripped of warmth by its occupant's presence alone. Lord Sethrak stands behind his desk with his hands clasped at the base of his spine. The amber light catches his scales in the same bronze-copper tones that stare back from my own reflection. His eyes hold the same vertical pupils, the same fire. The resemblance is a blade that cuts in both directions.

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"What did the Korvathi dignitary provide?"

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I deliver the intelligence, laying out the shipping routes, resource reallocation, and Korvan's border repositioning along Draven territory. My father receives each item, processing without acknowledgment, filing without response, never looking up from the display he's studying, never nodding.

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When I finish, the silence stretches until it becomes its own communication. No praise follows, because praise implies the tool might have chosen not to perform, and that possibility doesn't exist in this room.

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"The Draven situation is accelerating." He turns a display panel toward himself, and I catch the edge of a Syndicate communiqué, the seal of the Council bright against the dark screen. "Every family is recalculating. Korvan is redeploying, and the Zhael are running triple surveillance sweeps on every Council member. That boy's coup has consequences."

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That boy is Drazex Draven, who deposed his father, Vorath, and now controls the Hollows with a human female at his side, which is the part that unsettles the old lords more than the violence. A son toppling his father is unremarkable history on Vahiri, but choosing a human over blood is a precedent that sends males of my father’s generation checking the locks on their doors.

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"Your brother requires watching," my father says, and the shift is seamless, a blade rotating in the hand without pause. "Kazren's ambitions are becoming less theoretical."

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"I'm aware."

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"Being aware and being useful are different things." His gaze lifts to mine. "Don't confuse the two."

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I absorb the cut. The mask holds, my thermal signature unmoved. I learned to regulate my own body temperature in this room, at fourteen, when the consequences for visible emotion left lessons I carry in the set of my shoulders and the stillness of my fists.

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I leave without being dismissed. Waiting for dismissal is an invitation to receive another lesson, and I've filled my quota for the evening.

The corridor is cooler, and I'm rounding the junction toward the lower levels when Kazren fills the passage ahead.

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He's broader than me, heavier, built for dominance rather than the fluid architecture my father sculpted me into. His heir's authority sits in his formal blacks as naturally as his own scales, and his amber eyes find me, contempt worn smooth by years of repetition in every line of his expression.

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"Working late, little brother?" His gaze drops to my knuckles. The blood is gone, but Kazren has always hunted for vulnerability by instinct, the same appetite I bring to reading lies. "Or playing late? Sometimes it's hard to tell with you."

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"Both have their uses."

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"Yours more than most." He steps closer, and the corridor narrows between his shoulders and the stone. "I've been reviewing your Warrens staffing allocations. Father approved an operational audit of all contractor designations under House authority. Yours included." He pauses, letting that settle. "You have quite a few assets classified as independent contractors, Zavin. Generous terms and comfortable arrangements. I'm curious how many of them would survive reclassification."

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Inventory. The word lands cold in my gut. My operatives chose this work. Chose me. In Kazren's grip they'd be property.

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I face him. "We've had this discussion. Those who think they're autonomous are loyal."

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His smile widens, all teeth and no warmth. "Relax. It's only an audit. For now."

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I step around him, keeping the geometry tight enough that neither shoulder brushes the other, every angle deliberate.

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"Sleep well, Kazren."

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His laughter follows me down the corridor, Sethrai to the marrow. The threat underneath it is real.

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The lower levels settle around me as I descend, the stone cooling against my heat-sensing and the ambient noise of the Warrens thinning to its late-hour hum. My quarters are three turns ahead, and the prospect of silence and a locked door is the closest thing to pleasure I allow myself.

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Resh is waiting at my door. That alone is enough to slow my stride. Resh intercepts in corridors, falls into step, delivers his information and disappears back into the walls. Standing still, shoulders tight, gaze checking the corridor behind me before it settles on my face is a version of Resh I've seen fewer than a handful of times, and never over anything minor.

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I open the door before he can speak and let him pass through. My quarters are swept daily, the one room in the Warrens I can guarantee holds no ears but my own. The lock engages behind us, and the ambient hum drops to nothing.

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"We have another breach." He keeps his voice low, a habit that persists regardless of the room's security. "Someone with lateral access has been moving through compartmentalized channels in the network. The pattern goes back months. I didn't flag it sooner because the leaks looked sporadic. Unrelated. They aren't. They're connected, and whoever's behind them is getting bolder."

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Lateral access means someone moving between operational cells without triggering the safeguards I designed to keep those cells separate. That's not a compromised password or a careless courier. That's someone who understands our architecture from the inside.

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"How bad is it?"

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He meets my gaze. "This isn't a leak, Zavin. It's a hemorrhage. And I can't trace the source, because whoever is doing this operates in the digital infrastructure, in spaces I don't have the expertise to audit."

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Resh opens his mouth to speak, and then his gaze cuts sideways. The datapad on my desk is pulsing amber. He crosses the room and pulls the display toward us. Seventeen alerts cascade across the network monitoring feed, rippling over the screen in a pattern neither of us has encountered before.

Someone is inside our systems.

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Resh reaches for the console to run a trace, but I'm already ahead of him, reading the intrusion the only way that makes sense to me. Not through the data. Through the intruder.

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Every system breach carries a signature, a behavioral fingerprint that reveals the operator behind it. Code has habits. Code has tells. The way this intruder moves through our encryption, which layers they peel back first, which nodes they linger on and which they skip, tells me who they are before any trace algorithm could.

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This intruder came in through a tertiary maintenance port, the kind of access point most attackers would overlook. That tells me they mapped the architecture before they breached it. They bypassed three redundancy locks without triggering the failsafe, which means they understood how those systems interacted and disabled them together. That's not luck, and it's not standard intrusion software.

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I follow the alerts in real time. The intruder is moving deeper into the network, past the operational layers and into the administrative architecture. They're good. Good enough that it takes me thirty seconds to separate their activity from legitimate traffic.

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When I find the origin point, it isn't because the trace catches them. It's because I recognize the pattern and work backward from it, the same instinct that lets me taste a lie before the liar finishes speaking.

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The signal originates in The Splits.

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A single-point access terminal. Commercial grade. Cheap enough that most people wouldn't trust it to maintain a stable communication feed. The bandwidth is borrowed from a relay node serving a block of refugee housing.

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One operator from The Splits.

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The Splits is a slum district. Human refugees. Off-world drifters. People scraping by on subsistence wages and black-market air supplements. And somehow one of them has cut deeper into House Sethrak's defenses than any intelligence operation I've ever encountered.

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Alone.

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On hardware that should barely function.

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The elegance of the intrusion is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.

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"I'll handle this one myself," I tell Resh, and I'm through the door before he can answer.

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