He went to Rennick.
He went because the contractual reality of his situation meant that Rennick's territorial problems were his territorial problems in practical terms, and because understanding what Rennick knew about the larger situation — Verse, the Ondas family, the specific nature of what was at stake on Four — was information that had become relevant to Kael's own plans in ways Rennick didn't know about and Kael had no intention of sharing.
The meeting was at the logistics office. Rennick was there with one other person — a woman in her fifties whom he introduced as Yava and who had the bearing of a former Resonance fighter, compact and watchful, with the tinnitus-induced head tilt that marked long-term high-output exposure. She said nothing during the meeting. She listened in the way that people listen when they are there to evaluate rather than to participate.
"The Ostrev situation," Kael said.
"Managed," Rennick said. "For the moment."
"Verse's people had your access codes."
"They had copied codes. The source is identified and has been addressed." He said addressed in the particular tone that meant the word was doing a lot of work. "The more significant issue is what it implies about timeline. Verse is moving faster than I had calculated."
"Moving toward what, specifically?"
Rennick considered him. This was different from previous meetings — there was a quality of assessment in it, the re-evaluation of someone who had classified Kael as one thing and was now working out whether that classification needed updating. "You're asking about something beyond the immediate territorial concern," he said.
"I'm asking about what I'm under contract in the middle of."
Fair framing. Rennick accepted it. "Verse's goal is the establishment of an Awakened-controlled administrative district across Tiers Three and Four. He's been building toward it for approximately two years — accumulating fighters, establishing networks, identifying non-Awakened interests he plans to displace." He paused. "I am, among other things, a non-Awakened interest."
"Is the Ondas family."
"The Ondas family is complicated. They are Awakened — predominantly Harmonists, three generations — but their power structure is built on pre-Resonance Event infrastructure. Physical territory, manufacturing, logistics. They are not entirely what Verse means when he talks about Awakened administration — they represent the kind of establishment power that his ideology criticizes, even when the power is wielded by Awakened." He folded his hands on the desk. "So Verse needs to either displace them or co-opt them, and co-option has not gone well from what I understand."
Kael thought about Sera's mother, thirty years of territorial management, thorough if not violent.
"What's his timeline?" he asked.
"My estimate is two to three cycles before he makes a formal territorial declaration. The Ostrev incident was a test — feeling the response, calibrating resistance." Rennick looked at him. "The honest answer to your question is that I don't know exactly what comes next, and I would be lying if I told you otherwise."
Kael appreciated the honesty enough to ask the next question directly. "Is there anything about the broader situation — beyond the territorial dispute — that you're aware of that I should know?"
Rennick was still for a moment.
"There is one piece of context," he said, slowly, as though committing to saying something he had been holding back. "Verse's ideology has a patron."
The word sat in the room.
"Not financial support — he has that from his own network. A patron in the sense of an ideological source. Someone who provided the framework that Verse is working from." He looked at Kael carefully. "The original articulation of the Awakened-administered territory concept appeared, as far as my sources can determine, in a series of documents that circulated through the lower-level Resonance communities about four years ago. Anonymous, heavily theoretical, extremely well-informed about the Spire's infrastructure and governance."
Kael waited.
"The documents referenced the Resonance Event extensively. Not as a random phenomenon — as a deliberate act." Rennick's voice was even, factual. "The argument was that the Resonance Event was engineered. That it was designed to create an Awakened class. That the Awakened class was supposed to be the foundation of a different kind of society, and that the current power structure — which had adapted to include Awakened while maintaining pre-Resonance hierarchies — was a corruption of what the Event was intended to produce."
The room was very quiet.
"The documents were never attributed," Rennick continued. "But the quality of the information in them — the specificity, the accuracy about infrastructure and governance that isn't publicly available — suggested someone with access to systems that aren't open to general inquiry." He looked at Kael with the steady gaze of someone delivering a specific piece of information to a specific person at a specific time, and meaning it to land. "The documents appeared approximately three years after the Resonance Event anniversary. Around the time that the Academy archive began restricting certain categories of material."
Eleven years after the Event. Eight years ago. Two years before Kael had found Seren's interview fragments on the secondary nets.
"You're telling me this specifically," Kael said.
"I'm telling it to you because you're under my arrangement and you asked." He unfolded his hands and placed them flat on the desk. "And because Yava, who has been running information analysis for my operation for fifteen years, tells me that your particular combination of abilities and background is relevant to the situation in ways that are not yet clear but that she considers significant."
Kael looked at Yava. She said nothing. She was looking at him with the flat attention of someone who had formed a conclusion and was waiting to see if the evidence would confirm it.
"I don't know what you think I am," Kael said.
"Neither do I," Rennick said. "That's why I'm telling you."
He left the logistics office and stood in the amber light of the maintenance corridor for a long time.
The Resonance Event, engineered. An Awakened class, designed. A corruption of an original intent. Documents with information from systems not open to general inquiry.
And a four-beat cipher pointing to an Academy archive where the pre-digital materials from the years immediately surrounding the Event were kept.
He was seventeen years old and he had been working very hard not to think about the possibility that the recording chip in his pocket was not a piece of music history but the start of something he didn't yet understand. He had been focusing on the practice and the technique and the fights and the credits and the daily management of staying alive in the Lower Tiers.
It was becoming harder to maintain that focus.
He walked back toward the transit platform. In his pocket, the chip was the same weight it had always been.
Everything else was heavier.