Morning light, hazy with dust, through the peepul tree. The looms start up next door—dhak-dhak-dhak—like the heartbeat of this whole damn place. Maa's already in the kitchen. I can smell the ginger in the chai from here. Real, solid smells. After the Fragment Hall's… nothing-smell, it's almost too much.
Huilan sits down across from me. Still moves like she's on patrol. Blue salwar kameez Maa gave her looks… wrong on her. Like a weapon wrapped in silk.
"You didn't sleep," she says. Not asking.
"Bas, dimaag chalta raha," I say. Just, the mind was running. It's the truth. One part of it was here, listening to the crows fight. The other part? That part was light-years away, reading mercenary contracts in a language made of math and threat.
Maa comes out, a law of nature in a saffron sari. "Chai peelo pehle. Subah-subah business ki baatein nahi." Drink tea first. No business talk in the morning.
So I drink. It's sweet and sharp. A simple transaction: leaves, water, heat. Satisfaction.
This is my life now. Two tracks running parallel.
Track One: The Son, The Husband.
I help Maa sort moong dal. My fingers—the same ones that placed a bid in a galactic auction last night—pick out little stones. Click. Click. It's… peaceful. Huilan tries to say "paani" for water. Sounds like a gun being cocked. Maa just laughs, a warm sound. "Phir se, beti." Again, daughter.
And something happens. Huilan's shoulders, always rod-straight, drop maybe one millimeter. Just one. A tiny surrender. A human moment. I file it away. It feels more important than any contract.
Track Two: The Merchant.
While my hands are busy with dal, the Level 7 interface in my head is wide open. Quiet. Efficient.
I pull up the Standard Galactic Contractor Template I bought. Not for the words, but for the bones. How do you build a thing that can fight but doesn't legally exist? Ah. See here. You don't hire soldiers. You hire "Independent Sub-Contractor Clusters." You don't start a war. You trigger a "Client-Side Stability Event." It's all a game of ghosts and paperwork.
Perfect.
I compose a message to Ganesh in my mind. Not words. Pure intent, shaped by the new protocol. It compresses, encrypts, and pings into the void, headed for his secure tablet.
MAKA 2.0. Directive One.
We are not smugglers. We are a network. Find the man in Mombasa who stamps papers for boats. Not the boss. The clerk. The one with the sick daughter. Own that chokepoint.
Find the air traffic guy in Almaty who loves horses more than his salary.
Forget borders. Own the flows.
And Ganesh… dheere chalna, lekin door tak jaana. Go slow, but go far.
I send it. Back to the dal.
Later, we go to the bazaar. The noise hits you like a wall. Huilan's eyes are scanning—left, right, up, down—assessing threats, exits, patterns.
"The system is wholly inefficient," she shouts over the film song blasting from a speaker.
"System?" I laugh. "Yeh system nahi hai, yaar. Yeh jaan hai." This isn't a system. It's life.
I buy sugarcane. Just for the crunch. As we walk, I'm running the Planetary Deterrence Report in a corner of my mind. Key finding: "A messy, decentralized civilization is a costly harvest."
I look around. The shouting, the bargaining, the sheer chaos of ten million stories colliding. It's not weak. It's… durable. You can't cut the head off a snake that has a million heads. You'd just make a mess.
My job isn't to clean this up. My job is to make sure no outside suit-waale ch wants to even try.
We get home. Maa's made aloo sabzi. Simple. Hot. We eat on the floor. She asks Huilan about her mother's flowers. Huilan talks about a greenhouse in Beijing, her words slow, like she's walking on ice. For a second, she's not a soldier or a spy. She's just a girl who misses her mother's garden.
I see it. The fracture. The person under the uniform. I file that away too. More important than any intelligence dossier.
Night comes. The house sleeps. My time.
I open the Fragment Hall interface. Just a sliver. Find the listing: "Decommissioned Orbital Defense Grid Schematic." Price: more money than exists on Earth.
I place a bid. A joke bid. One percent.
It's drowned instantly. But the notification pings:
> Bid logged. Merchant (Tier-0: Earth-Prime) interest in Strategic Defense assets noted. Watchlist: 'Primitive Militarization' updated.
A slow smile touches my lips. Got your attention, did I? Good. Let the big players see the mouse isn't just looking for cheese anymore. It's looking at blueprints for traps.
I lie down. The ceiling fan goes thump… thump… thump. In my mind, the golden '7' glows, steady.
Today, I was a son. I was (almost) a husband. I sorted dal and walked in the sun.
I also restructured a shadow empire and put my world on a cosmic watchlist.
Both things are true. Both things are me.
The small things—the chai, the frustration in Huilan's eyes, Maa's laugh—they're not a distraction. They're the point. The 'why' for all the 'how'.
I close my eyes. Tomorrow, Shanti will call, full business-mode mein. Krylov will demand updates. The General will plot.
Let them.