CHAPTER 5 — The Missing Brother
Gray Market Uplink / Outer Ring, Vesper Arcology
It was raining where the city couldn’t see.
That was the first rule of the Gray Market: if the cameras saw you, you were in the wrong place.
Rain in Vesper wasn’t natural. Nothing in the Arcology was. Weather lived in the ceiling—projected, simulated, regulated according to mood data. Drizzles on low-work weeks. Sun when productivity charts dipped. Thunder only in curated art installations.
But here, on the outer ring just above service level, water leaked through an old microfracture in the dome. It slid down a hairline c***k, gathered along a recessed channel, then fell in slow, imperfect drops into the alley between two forgotten buildings.
The alley smelled like rust and fried soy oil.
“This isn’t o
