The sub-level maintenance tunnel was a suffocating tomb of damp concrete and the persistent, low-frequency hum of the city power grid. Zeta sat cross-legged on the cold floor, his back pressed against a rusted pipe that vibrated with the unseen movement of sewage and discarded data streams. The only illumination came from the faint, pulsing blue glow of his makeshift terminal, which he had jury-rigged from salvaged parts scavenged over the last few weeks. He was exhausted, his limbs feeling heavy and unresponsive, but he pushed the fatigue away. Mara was in the Core Sector, suffering for a sin he had committed, and time was a luxury he could not afford.
He withdrew the floppy disk from his pocket, holding it with the reverence one might reserve for a relic of a lost civilization. The dis
