CHAPTER 1137: PATH TO THE THIRD TIER (2).

But whispers had their own power. A governor denied complicity and then found his phone full of accounts he could not justify. A municipal judge saw donors named in checks that linked back to shell companies; the judge’s clerk was suddenly indisposed. Every small exposure forced others to choose: hide and risk exposure, or reveal and risk retribution.

Cain watched the chessboard rearrange itself. "We’re not just cutting money," he told the group one night. "We’re forcing choices. They can swallow the shame, or they can fight. Either way, we get movement."

Roselle’s answer was a soft, dangerous laugh. "And if they fight?"

"Then we are not the only ones who can burn bright," Hunter said, voice close and controlled. "We have allies in places we didn’t know to look. People who were afraid to speak until they saw someone else strike."

The city began to leak allies like a sieve. Small, previously muted groups stepped up—dockworkers who’d been paid in scraps, clerks whose consciences had teeth, nurses who’d watched embezzled health funds starve wards. These were not grand armies but enough hands in enough places to make a difference. They came with grudges, with fear, with courage that was not yet clean.

Cain accepted them. He did not romanticize their motives. He only counted their usefulness and then, quietly, their humanity. They were not saints. They were people who could be used, and in turn, who could use the moment to salvage scraps of dignity.

When the first direct strike came it was not a cannon or a court order but a televised confession: a minor broker—name splashed in bold—read out a ledger piece by piece on global feeds, tears in his voice. He was not a man of conscience; he was a man who had been offered a price for truth. The price had been safety for his family. The confession toppled another pillar.

The Daelmonts retaliated with law and with muscle, but they were slower to move than the currents Cain had learned to read. Every public shame made a private enemy. Every private enemy opened a small, critical wound.

Cain felt the logic tightening around them like a net. The ledger had done more than expose money; it had exposed fear, and fear had a way of spreading faster than artillery. Money could buy steel, but it could not buy the willingness of the frightened to stand together.

On the barge that night, as dawn bruised the horizon, Cain folded the newest page into his boot and looked at the faces around him. "We make them choose," he said, repeating the plan like a sermon. "They choose, we take the consequence. We’ll keep taking consequences."

Susan nodded, bone-deep tired. Roselle checked her weapon as if affection were a dangerous luxury. Hunter’s eyes softened for a second—an unreadable concession.

They were hunters, thieves, avengers, and sometimes, against Cain’s better measure, they were merciful. Each role cost them something. Each victory shifted the city’s axis a degree.

Outside, the river carried their wake and the city’s murmur felt less like a threat and more like a chorus. Men on towers watched and recalculated. Men in basements plotted. The ledger’s pages traveled like a contagion through systems built to suppress truth, and truth—slow, stubborn—began to show its teeth.

The ruins still burned, but the heat had dimmed into something colder—ash and static crawling along the metal bones of the city. Cain led the others inland, through the collapsed districts where the Grid’s old control lines still flickered weakly like veins refusing to die.

Steve moved beside him, muttering as he traced the ghost signals on a half-dead terminal. "These aren’t random outages. Someone’s rerouting the remains of the system. Not Daelmonts. Not any council loyalist either. This is clean—surgical."

Roselle kept her rifle leveled ahead, eyes sharp through the fog. "Then they’ve got engineers who knew how to survive the burn."

Hunter’s voice was quiet, but it carried. "Or they were waiting for it."

Cain didn’t respond. His focus stayed on the path ahead—a long stretch of broken street that cut toward the core. Between the ruined spires and half-collapsed bridges, he could see faint shapes moving. Not soldiers. Scavengers. But not the desperate kind either—organized, steady, armed.

Susan spat into the dust. "New dogs smell the corpse. They’re already building over it."

Steve’s scanner blinked red. "They’re not scavenging. They’re collecting data cores. System fragments. Whoever’s funding them wants the Grid back online—just not under Daelmont command."

Roselle looked to Cain. "You thinking what I’m thinking?"

He nodded once. "Somebody’s trying to replace them."

The group pushed forward. They passed bodies that hadn’t cooled yet—council troops and mercs both, scattered like debris. Every few meters, Cain’s boots crunched over glass, over wires, over the remnants of someone’s last plan.

When they reached the mouth of an underpass, a flicker of movement cut through the haze. Gunfire. Not warning shots—direct and clean. Roselle ducked first, rolling behind a fallen pillar, returning fire in sharp bursts.

Hunter raised his blade to deflect the first projectile that came too close, the ricochet splitting open a cracked support beam. "We’ve got snipers. Two, maybe three."

Cain’s hand flexed over his weapon. "Steve, smoke."

Steve didn’t argue. He flicked a capsule from his belt, and the air filled with dense gray static. The world became a blur of silhouettes and shadows. Cain moved through it like a phantom, {Eidwyrm} cutting arcs through the haze.

A body fell. Then another.

When the smoke began to thin, only three figures still stood—Cain, blood slick on his blade; Roselle, reloading; and Hunter, expression unreadable.

Susan stepped out last, dragging one of the fallen enemies forward by the collar. "Not Daelmonts. These guys are clean—new armor, untagged weapons."

Steve crouched beside the body, pulling a small metallic chip from the man’s neck. He held it up, light flickering across its surface. "Encrypted ID. Corporate-grade."

Roselle frowned. "Meaning?"

"Meaning someone’s privatizing the war," Steve said grimly. "We killed a squad that doesn’t officially exist."