Chapter 13 – The Hidden Threat
I jogged home through the Republic's sterile evening streets, heart still hammering from what had just happened in pod twelve. The override during the baseball sim wasn't just immersive—it had shattered everything I thought I understood about Deep VR technology.
It shouldn't have happened. The hardware limitations alone made it impossible.
But it had happened. Twice now.
My boots echoed off the polished concrete as I cut through familiar alleyways, checking over my shoulder more than once. The rational part of my mind said it was just nerves, but twenty years of living with unexplained mysteries had taught me to trust my instincts. Something was different. Something was watching.
Or responding.
My apartment was thirty minutes from Wall Pod on foot—close by Republic standards, where every square metre of urban space carried a premium that would bankrupt most Commonwealth citizens. I moved on autopilot, muscle memory navigating the transit lanes whilst my engineering mind churned through impossibilities.
Two separate VR systems. Two completely different hardware configurations. Both had exhibited the same impossible behaviour the moment I accessed them. Not just enhanced graphics or improved physics—fundamental alterations to neural feedback protocols that required processing power those systems simply didn't possess.
Home was a 30-square-metre box that cost me 300 Republic Credits per week, roughly equivalent to my old rent back in the Southern Commonwealth. The difference was what those credits bought: a foam mattress that folded against the wall during the day, a table that collapsed into a desk when needed, a kitchenette with a single electric burner, and a bathroom so compact the shower spray hit the toilet if you weren't careful with the angle.
Cramped didn't begin to describe it. But this was the Republic of the Houses, where space was earned through contribution, and I hadn't contributed enough to warrant luxury. Or comfort. Or even basic dignity.
I kicked off my shoes and let them thud against the metal door. The sound echoed in the tiny space, highlighting just how alone I was. Six months in this box. Six months cleaning other people's dream machines whilst my engineering degree gathered digital dust on my tablet.
The overhead fan wheezed on its lowest setting, barely moving the stale air. My work shirt clung to my skin like a second layer of sweat and frustration. I peeled it off, tossed it onto the pile of clothes I'd been meaning to wash for three days, and headed for the shower.
No hot water. Again.
The cold spray hit like a slap, but I welcomed it. Another reminder of my position in the Republic's hierarchy. Without House affiliation, you got the leftovers. The services no one else wanted. The infrastructure that barely functioned.
I wasn't on the books at Wall Pod. Jamie Cash let me work off-record—credits only, no taxes, no contracts, no paper trail. That arrangement suited us both. He got cheap labour without bureaucracy, and I stayed invisible to a system that would otherwise demand choices I wasn't ready to make.
In the Republic, opening a bank account wasn't just financial paperwork—it was a declaration of allegiance. Each of the eighteen Houses operated its own sovereign banking system. Choose one, accept their authority, pay ten per cent to your House and another ten to the federal government, and you gained more than just financial services. You gained recognition, protection, legitimacy. A place in the system.
I remained unaligned. Just another foreign graduate living in limbo, with three years to affiliate before my residency status expired. Without House backing, my only legal option was the Federal Central Bank—the so-called House of the Republic, designed for those without banners. Flat twenty per cent taxation plus service fees. It existed, but it was never meant to be comfortable.
So I existed below the surface. Invisible to the bureaucracy that ran everything else.
After towelling off, I collapsed onto my mattress and stared at my left hand.
The ring.
Black as volcanic glass, rough to the touch, utterly without ornamentation. No inscriptions, no embedded circuits, no shine that might suggest precious metal. Just a cold, silent weight that had circled my finger since I was five years old.
My father had given it to me during our last conversation. Not a formal presentation—just a distracted gesture as he packed his research materials, muttering something about it being "a toy to remember me by" whilst his mind was clearly elsewhere. Even then, I'd known it was more than a toy. The weight was wrong, the material unknown, the way it seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it.
He'd been working on energy research here in the Republic, something involving quantum field manipulation and power grid optimisation. Cutting-edge work that attracted attention from multiple Houses. Three weeks after he gave me the ring, there was an explosion at his laboratory. No bodies recovered. No explanations offered. Just silence from the authorities and a quick burial of all research records.
That was twenty years ago.
All I had left was this ring and the memory of his face when he pressed it into my small hand—distant, worried, like he was preparing for something he couldn't explain to a five-year-old.
Now I was twenty-five, living paycheque to paycheque, cleaning VR pods whilst wearing a relic I'd never understood. A systems engineer reduced to janitorial work, carrying my father's unexplained legacy on my finger.
And today, something had changed.
One official House of the Bear Deep VR pod. One jury-rigged semi-VR system built from scrap parts. Two completely different hardware configurations, separated by generations of technological advancement. Both had overridden their standard protocols the moment I accessed them. Not just modified—fundamentally enhanced beyond regulation, beyond specification, beyond possibility.
And no one else saw the messages I saw.
"Enjoy your experience, Master."
I knew Deep VR technology inside and out. Four years studying neural interface design, testing firmware in university labs, dissecting layers of Xiong-standard documentation, memorising the House of the Bear's strict compliance manuals. That message wasn't part of any default user interface. It wasn't in any licenced update. It sure as hell wasn't supposed to appear on systems that had never communicated with each other.
Was it some buried admin command surfacing after decades? A legacy development build activated by unknown triggers?
Or was something else working beneath the surface—something that recognised the ring, recognised me, and responded accordingly?
I tried to convince myself it was a coincidence. Maybe corrupted runtime modules. Maybe stress-induced hallucinations. Maybe the isolation and financial pressure were finally affecting my perception.
But even as I formulated rational explanations, I didn't believe them.
Twenty years of wearing this ring. Twenty years of wondering what my father had really been working on. Twenty years of questions without answers.
Until today.
Back at Wall Pod, fluorescent lights hummed over the pod room where the day's last customers had finally departed. The rhythmic whir of cooling fans filled the silence as diagnostic equipment cast blue shadows across the walls.
Two men stood before Pod 12, their presence transforming the mundane rental shop into something resembling a crime scene.
Vance Xiong wore a neatly pressed indigo shirt, every crease sharp enough to cut, posture held with the precision of someone who'd learned early that appearance was power. The silver Bear emblem on his chest caught the overhead lighting—not jewellery, but a mark of authority within the House of the Bear's IP Control Division. His job was safeguarding sovereign technology standards across the Republic, ensuring that every piece of hardware, every line of code, every neural interface maintained the precise specifications that kept the Bear's technological dominance unchallenged.
This investigation was personal. His House's reputation was on the line.
Beside him stood Captain Barret Vang, six foot two of military discipline wrapped in a black tactical vest designed for function over aesthetics. The cobalt-blue Sky emblem at his collar wasn't just identification—it was warning. In the House of the Sky's Governance Enforcement Branch, defence and doctrine weren't theoretical concepts. They were lived obligations, backed by the authority to investigate, prosecute, and punish anyone who threatened the Republic's stability.
This investigation was political. His House's authority was being tested.
Each man commanded two aides—House-certified technicians with tablets and diagnostic equipment, fingers moving across interfaces with the reverence of acolytes interpreting sacred text. They parsed log fragments, analysed firmware traces, searched for evidence that would either explain or condemn what had happened in this room hours earlier.
Pod 12 sat in accusatory silence. Innocent to casual inspection, but no one in the room believed in its innocence.
"Fifth complete system scan," Vance murmured, eyes fixed on his diagnostic display. "No security alerts. No breach notifications. No flagged access attempts."
"That's precisely the problem," Barret replied, his voice carrying the flat certainty of someone accustomed to finding threats others missed.
Vance glanced sideways. "Explain."
Barret rotated his wrist-mounted tablet so the screen faced his counterpart. System traces glowed in pale blue against the dark interface. "Pain feedback override detected. Neural depth parameters exceeded Tier-3 civilian limits. Latency compression approaching combat-grade specifications."
A ripple of unease passed through the assembled technicians. They'd heard the rumours, read the theoretical papers, but seeing actual evidence was different.
"Combat-grade?" one of the Bear techs whispered. "That's not supposed to be possible on civilian hardware."
"Firmware degradation?" suggested his partner, grasping for rational explanations.
Barret shook his head with the patience of someone who'd already eliminated obvious answers. "Degradation leaves artifacts—corrupted memory fragments, polluted processing threads, system instabilities. This modification is clean. Too clean. Too precise."
Vance's professionally neutral expression cracked slightly. "You're suggesting this was deliberate."
"I'm stating that someone bypassed sovereign protocol," Barret corrected, his tone sharpening. "Without leaving traditional traces. No hash drift indicating forced entry. No console injection evidence. No development flags suggesting official modification. Whoever accomplished this wasn't breaking into the system—they were operating as if it belonged to them."
The temperature in the room seemed to drop several degrees.
In the Republic of the Houses, unauthorised modifications to sovereign intellectual property weren't mere policy violations. They were tribunal-grade offenses that could trigger inter-House conflicts. When they touched critical infrastructure domains, they bordered on treason.
"Cross-authentication logs?" Vance pressed, hoping for something that would contain the threat.
"Negative," confirmed Barret's lead aide, consulting her own diagnostic equipment. "No privilege escalation flags. No ghost key signatures. No administrative override records. The pod didn't resist the modifications—it adapted to them seamlessly."
Vance exhaled slowly, calculating political ramifications. "Then we classify this as a hardware anomaly. Quarantine the unit, replace the storage systems, file a routine maintenance report. Keep the investigation contained."
Barret stepped closer, close enough that their conversation became private despite the witnesses. "No. This goes to the IP Integrity Tribunal."
Vance turned to face him directly, reading the determination in the other man's eyes. "An unclassified system quirk? Without identifying a source or method? That would trigger comprehensive compliance reviews, licensing audits, penalty assessments. You'd drag the Bear into full tribunal scrutiny over shadows and speculation."
"This isn't shadows," Barret replied, his voice dropping to match Vance's but losing none of its intensity. "This is a sovereign override, executed silently and undetectably by unknown actors with capabilities that shouldn't exist. If this happens again, and someone dies from neural feedback overload, this pod becomes evidence in a negligence prosecution. You think your House escapes responsibility then?"
"This hardware node traces back to university development projects," Vance countered, his own political calculations becoming clear. "Escalate this investigation and you trigger a review cascade across every educational institution in the Republic. Thousands of students, hundreds of research projects, decades of academic collaboration—all subject to investigation."
"Which places the matter firmly under my branch's jurisdiction," Barret said with professional satisfaction. "If I identify the source, I earn tribunal credits and advancement opportunities. That's precisely how the merit system functions."
Vance's eyes narrowed as he recognised the true motivations at play. "So this is career ambition."
"This is institutional responsibility," Barret shot back, his military bearing intensifying. "Your House profits from Deep VR technology. Mine bears accountability when it fails catastrophically. If unknown actors can slip through the Bear's supposedly impenetrable protocols with this degree of precision, it represents a national security vulnerability that transcends House politics."
The two men held each other's gaze across a gulf of competing interests. Vance fighting for containment and damage control. Barret pushing for escalation and credit-earning investigation. Both calculating how this incident might advance or damage their respective positions within the Republic's complex power structure.
Behind them, Pod 12 continued its quiet operation. Still warm from recent use. Still processing background maintenance routines. Still harbouring secrets that neither advanced diagnostics nor House authority seemed capable of extracting.
Everyone in the room understood the implications: something unprecedented had happened here. Something that challenged fundamental assumptions about technological security, House sovereignty, and the nature of control itself.
And whatever that something was, it had left no conventional evidence of its existence.