The Obake Code

by Makana Yamamoto

Genres: Crime & Mystery

Synopsis

An all-new, stand-alone sci-fi caper from the author of Hammajang Luck: a bored hacker is forced by vicious gangsters to take down a crooked politician...only to find herself up against a code she might not be able to crack.

After the heist of a lifetime, Malia has it all: a loft apartment aboard the massive Kepler Station, expensive clothes, and a dev credit in her favorite video game. She’s also bored as hell. Three years after retiring her mantle as the Obake, the most infamous hacker in the quadrant—and arguably the galaxy—Malia hasn’t taken well to civilian life. So what’s the harm in rigging a few cybernetic prizefights and making a little cash on the side?

When Malia’s scheme is uncovered, she runs afoul of Jeongah Song—the dangerous leader of a local gang with a reputation for brutality. Malia is ready for retribution. But what she gets instead is an offer she can’t refuse: take down the local politician leading a “clean up the streets” campaign displacing residents and hindering Jeongah’s operations on the space station… or die. Without another way out, Malia takes the deal.

Luckily, she has some friends she can call on in times of need: a master thief, a street racing wheelman, and a femme fatale grifter. But as Malia digs deeper into the politician’s shady dealings, she finds herself embroiled in a conspiracy that might be too big for her to handle. One that has roots in her own rise as the Obake—a cybernetically enhanced superhacker created by a power-mad genius… a superhacker whose mods are rapidly degrading. Faced with threats on all sides, Malia may finally be in over her head...or stuck—forever—inside her own mind.

Release date: February 17, 2026

Publisher: HarperCollins

Print pages: 352

Sample

1

It takes twenty milliseconds to take a swing at someone. Motor cortex to radial nerve, radial nerve to triceps brachii. Tense, draw, make a fist. Swing. Twenty milliseconds altogether.

But I’m faster.

It was hot and humid in the room, the windows of the gym fogged up with the heat of sweating bodies packed tight like matches in a box. Ready to ignite. The floor had been cleared of equipment, leaving only the ring in the center of the room. We all crowded around it, screaming and swearing as twenty milliseconds passed again and again.

The fighters were circling each other, beaten and bloodied. One was dressed in neon-green leggings and a matching sports bra, mesh panels at her thighs and chest, exposing lines of biofeedback LEDs. Flashy, but useless. The other was dressed in a black leotard, exposing spindling lines of glowing bioluminescent tattoos down their limbs. Again, flashy, but useless. Nothing worth hacking there.

The fighters were three rounds into the fourth match, and they looked bus’ the fuck up. The crowd itself was shitfaced by now, their cheers and boos slurred by cheap liquor. I lingered near the back of the room, standing beside the plastic folding table that served as a bar.

I sipped at my cola and made a face. Flat.

“Ho,” the bartender said from behind me, “good scrap tonight, yeah?”

The fighter in green staggered backward from a hit to the side of her head, slow to react to the other’s swing. But she shook it off and didn’t go down.

I scoffed. “Min stay moemoe up dea? Dirty lickens iz wat it iz.”

I’d seen Min fight five times in the last sixty-three days. She was a favorite in this Brotherhood club, one of Ward 4’s homegrown fighters. And if any Ward on Kepler had its own identity, it was the yobos of Ward 4. The Brotherhood of Fire in particular.

Usually Min was cautious, deliberate, but never slow or sluggish. Nīele, I extended my consciousness into the crowd, sifting through the electronic signatures of all the phones and comms and broadcasting mods of the crowd to the comm on her wrist. It was Atlas Industries tech, and Atlas wasn’t one for privacy. The comm put up a token effort to keep me out, but I bypassed the firewalls with ease and dove into the data. I shuffled carelessly through her biometrics and found an abnormal sleep pattern in the past fifteen days. So, she was moemoe up there.

Roars from the crowd made me withdraw from Min’s data and return my focus to the fight. She was trudging out of the ring while the other fighter riled up the crowd, victorious. I watched as thirty-seven people in the crowd initiated credit transfers of varying sums as the bets were paid out. Data streaked through the air, sparking from comm to comm.

The gambling was just one part of the Brotherhood of Fire’s operations on Kepler Station. They ran two fighting rings and three gambling halls in back rooms of their affiliated clubs, but the gambling wasn’t where the real money was. The real money was in smuggling. Mostly guns, with some illegal mods thrown in. Just to keep it spicy.

I watched with renewed interest as new fighters entered for the next heavyweight match. One was a man dressed in black shorts and no shirt, to highlight the cut of his muscles and the slick metal curves of modded legs. The other was a larger, burlier man in a white tank top and black pants, seemingly unconcerned with appearances. It showed in the exposed nanofiber cables and whirring hydraulics of his modded arm.

“Dis fight, but,” the bartender said behind me, “dis fight one good one. Jaime going scrap good, but Kaleo going lick him.”

“Kaleo?” I turned to look at the bartender. There was sweat standing out on his bald head.

“Kaleo going down in da second round. KO. Watch ’em.”

The bartender looked amused. “Wachu know about scraps, Malia? One wahine iwiiwi like you?”

An insult was on the tip of my tongue, but the credit chit reader on the table made me pause. I smiled sweetly. “You like bet on it? Two hundred credits.”

The bartender laughed. “You know what? Fine. I bet on it.”

My smile widened as the bartender poked at his comm. “KO in da second round. Watch ’em.”

The first fighter, Jaime Ruiz, was a newcomer with only two wins—but decisive wins—to his name. Ward 4 wasn’t easy to impress, and his shiny new modded legs didn’t dazzle like they might in the bougie circles of the Upper Wards. The second fighter, Kaleo Akaka, was another hometown favorite, one who had been active in the scene for four years. His mods were just as well loved. A loss here would be a huge upset. There was a lot of money riding on these next twenty milliseconds.

But I’m faster.

I grinned to myself as I took another sip of my cola.

Jaime closed the distance on Kaleo when the bell rang, lightning quick. A series of jabs put Kaleo on the back foot, blocking what hits he could. Jaime sprang back at Kaleo’s swing, landing spry on his modded legs. He danced around Kaleo for most of the first round, until a boosted punch threw him onto the ropes. Kaleo drew his modded arm back for another swing.

I extended my awareness across the room, reaching outward to Kaleo. His mods were old, far from the slick smart mods of recent years. His software wasn’t much newer. I pushed through the firewalls and pinged the system: STOP.

Kaleo’s arm twitched, just for twenty milliseconds. But it was enough time for Jaime to bounce off the ropes and land a hit on Kaleo’s temple.

The crowd groaned in unison at the hit, and the bartender swore from behind me.

The fighters broke apart at the end of the first round, withdrawing to opposite corners to speak with their coaches. Kaleo rolled his modded arm in its socket, clenching and unclenching his fist.

When the bell rang for the second round, Kaleo came out swinging. He landed hit after hit on his opponent, driving Jaime backward toward the ropes again. Jaime was starting to look rough. He needed a little more help than I wanted to give. Annoyed, I dove into the code again. In an act of overkill, I flooded Kaleo’s inputs with commands: STOP, FIST, FLEX, FLAT, SHAKA. Kaleo’s arm shuddered in its trajectory, pausing just long enough for Jaime to launch forward with another hit.

The sensation of breaking someone’s jaw takes twenty milliseconds to reach the brain. Radial nerve to spine, spine to parietal lobe.

When Kaleo went down, there were four seconds of utter silence, quiet enough to hear the blood drip from Jaime’s face. Then the crowd erupted into overlapping screams and shouts, cheering and cursing. Forty-two credit transfers were initiated, and I watched as 5,289 credits flowed into my account.

“Chee hoo!” I whooped. I whipped around to the bartender, a grin on my face. “How you like dis wahine now, bolo head?”

“Sshibal gaesekki ya,” the bartender cursed. He planted his palms on the table and went on and on, but I didn’t bother to follow along with the translated feed running across the bottom of my vision. I chugged the remainder of my cola and slapped the plastic cup down on the table. Then I started the victory dance.

I’d been frequenting fight nights at this Ward 4 Brotherhood club for sixty-three days now, and this was my biggest payout yet. When I was new to the scene, I bet based solely on the fighters’ vibes. But after a few losses, I started calculating odds. Then I started poking through the secure transmissions, finding which fights were rigged and which were not. Then I started rigging them all on my own.

I started out legit. But where’s the fun in being legit the whole way through?

I was still wiggling and the bartender’s translation was still scrolling when an alert popped up in the upper right-hand corner of my vision. I opened it with a flick of my eye. A picture unfolded in my field of vision: another bolo-head yobo muttering into his comm. I lifted my eyes and scanned beyond the roiling crowd. He was looking right at me.

Oh hell.

“Tanks, brah, good fun!” I said to the bartender. I hurriedly transferred twenty credits to pay him for the drinks. “Shoots!”

I moved quickly away from the table, into the press of the crowd. I squeezed between bodies and under swinging arms, trying to vanish. The screen in the corner of my vision showed the yobo peering into the crowd, looking for me. I flipped to another camera angle and saw a second yobo circumventing the crush.

I made a beeline for the exit.

I popped out of the crowd just two meters from the doors. I closed the distance in what I hoped looked like nonchalant strides. My palm was on the glass when I felt a strong hand close around my arm.

“Not so fast, kid.”

I went with the first lie that came to mind, “I have a curfew.”

“It’ll have to wait,” the man said.

I slowly turned to look at him. Big, muscled, and tattooed with the signature phoenix of the Brotherhood. “Come with me,” he said.

“But I’m just a kid,” I said in my most pathetic voice. “My mom will slap my head if she catches me out.”

The man looked unmoved. The first and second appeared out of the crowd, and I was surrounded.

“Okay,” I conceded. “But I need to be home by 0200.”

Yobos three and four seized me by both arms. I glanced toward the ring. The ref and medic were dragging Kaleo off the mat as the Brotherhood members hauled me across the floor toward the back of the gym.

I wasn’t always legit, but I wasn’t always careless either. I made a name for myself walking that line: not reckless, but just unhinged enough to be unpredictable. It was what differentiated me from every other modded vigilante or cyberspace paniolo. The Obake wasn’t known to be careless. I had the Code for that reason.

Maybe I was out of practice. Three years after my last big score, this was my first foray back into the criminal world. Maybe I’d lost my touch.

I hated the thought of that.

The Brotherhood members dragged me through a service door into the back of the club, then down a set of dingy concrete stairs lit by flickering fluorescent bulbs. Voices drifted up the stairwell, audible even above the roar of the crowd upstairs.

The voice was low, and heated. She spoke in Kepler’s Korean dialect, but I followed the translation running across the bottom of my vision.

“You must think I’m real fucking stupid, huh,” the woman said. “That it? You think I’m stupid enough not to notice when a whole fucking shipment of guns goes missing?”

The Brotherhood members stopped me at the bottom of the stairs. We stood at the entrance to a cramped room with unfinished walls and filled with sickly light. The woman who spoke was tall, with a muscular frame. Billowing black clouds and a phoenix with its flaming wings spread wide wrapped around her muscled arm in a full-sleeve tattoo, and her short, dark hair was pushed back out of her face. She stood over a man with his wrists and ankles zip-tied to the arms and legs of a wooden chair. He looked like he’d been roughed up, but nothing more than a few superficial cuts and bruises. I had a sinking feeling that was about to change.

“Who put you up to it?” the woman asked. “What’d they promise you? Credits? Drugs? What’d they promise to make you turn on us?”

The man didn’t lift his head.

A heavy silence fell over the room, punctuated by the screaming of the crowd.

“You were my brother, once.” The quietness of the woman’s voice startled me. She turned away from the man in the chair and crossed the room. She picked up something from the shadowed corner, and when she moved back into the light, I could see it was a worn bat. My heart pounded as the woman hefted the bat over her shoulder, standing over the man in the chair. He lifted his gaze. There was fear in his eyes.

“Hyungnim—” the man began.

“Shut the fuck up.” Her gaze was cold, all the heat of her anger gone out of her. But somehow the calm was even worse. “You were family. You should know that still means something to me—”

“Hyungnim, please—”

“So I’ll give you one chance: Where are my guns?”

The man swallowed. “I don’t know.”

Her expression was stony as she brought the bat down on the man’s hand. My eyes widened as he screamed in pain, jerking against the restraints at his wrists.

“Not fucking good enough.” The woman circled the man’s chair like a shark sensing blood in the water. She stopped at his side, then rested the bat lightly on his other hand.

“Where are my guns?”

“I don’t know! I swear to god—”

I flinched as the bat shattered the man’s other hand, filling the room with the sound of cracking bone. My eyes flicked between the Brotherhood members on either side of me, who were watching the scene with grim expressions. Not an uncommon sight to them, I guessed.

I swallowed hard. I was truly fucked.

“Where are my guns?”

“I don’t know!”

The man began to wail as the woman ground the end of the bat into his ruined hand.

“Where are my guns?”

“Please, Hyungnim! I don’t know!”

She lifted the bat from his hand, and the man gasped in relief. He was breathing hard, sweat standing out against his forehead. He moaned as the woman tapped his knee with the bat.

“Where are my guns?”

He didn’t answer. The woman raised the bat, winding up her swing.

“Wait! Wait, wait, wait, wait!” She paused. “The docks! Dock 118! The Syndicate is going to move the goods in five hours! That’s all I know I swear to god!”

There was another moment of silence, filled only with the man’s sobbing. “Please, Hyungnim. Please let me go.”

Anger flashed across her face before she swung the bat to shatter the man’s knee.

She turned away from the man to fix her gaze on one of the Brotherhood members in the corner, ignoring the man’s screams of pain. “Get a crew down to the docks. I want that shipment, and I want a name. Whoever thought they could fuck with us has got another think coming.”

The Brotherhood member jerked his head in the direction of the traitor. “What do we do with him?”

“Kill him. I don’t care how.”

The woman shifted her gaze to me, and my blood ran cold. She gestured to the henchmen, and they seized me by the arms. Two of them hauled the man out of the chair and the other two dropped me into it. They and the other Brotherhood member dragged the man out the back door. His sobs faded as the door slammed shut.

The woman stood over me, regarding me coldly.

“Howzit,” I said, weakly.

“You know who I am?” she asked.

I didn’t need to search the Net to know who she was. Song Jeongah, the worse half of the Song sisters and newly ascended heir to the Brotherhood’s criminal dynasty. Her reign was brutal, and as I’d just learned, she wasn’t afraid to get her hands bloody.

I nodded.

Jeongah leaned forward to look me in the eye. “So, you know who you’re fucking with.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lied.

Her eyes searched my face. Seemingly not finding what she was looking for, she straightened and hefted the bat across her shoulders. “I don’t know mods,” she said, “but I know fighting. Kaleo was pulling his punches. He never does that, and especially not for money. That, and his arm was twitching like a motherfucker all throughout. That’s not hardware, that’s software. And you”—she leaned forward to stare into my eyes again—“you’ve been at every upset over the past two months. I don’t know mods, but I know fighting. And I know when to trust my gut. You’re fucking with my fighters.”

“Would you believe me if I said this was a setup?” I asked.

Her lip curled. “No.”

I calculated the odds. Not many people crossed the Brotherhood and lived, especially now that Jeongah was its head. And she definitely wasn’t a due-process kind of leader. If my kneecaps were still intact, it meant I was valuable to her. For what, I didn’t know.

“It’s a DDoS,” I said finally. “I flood the inputs of the mods with nonsense pings and overload the software.”

“How.”

I tapped my temple. “Mods, how else?”

“Why.”

Why did I do it? I’d asked myself that the first night I’d come home from this Brotherhood club, sweaty and stinking of blood and liquor. At the time, I didn’t know. But the adrenaline humming in my blood, it made me feel alive in a way I hadn’t in three years. Sixty-three days later, and I knew.

I shrugged. “I’m bored.”

Jeongah didn’t seem to like that.

She straightened, then tapped my knee with the bat. I resisted the urge to jerk away. “Give me one good reason I shouldn’t break your legs.”

“Seems like you already have a reason,” I challenged. “Or they’d be broken already.”

Her mouth twitched. I swallowed.

“Have you heard of Lucas Pierce?” she asked.

I had. He was a politician, elected to the mayorship of Kepler Station. He was up for reelection this cycle. But I didn’t know why Jeongah would care about him. I pinged the GhostNet, and in 0.82 seconds it returned an answer. He was running on a tough-on-crime platform, and in the three years since he took office the Station Security budget had ballooned by eight percent. But the money had to come from somewhere. And that “somewhere” was places like the Ward 7 Historic Library, the Ward 2 Public Education System, and the Ward 1 Centennial Infrastructure Project. A real faka.

But it didn’t answer why she would care.

“What about him?” I asked.

“I want him gone,” she answered simply.

“Why? You don’t strike me as a ‘public good’ type.”

She scoffed. “Pierce is bad for business. Station Sec has raided three of my clubs in the last two months and put half my men on the books. ‘Cleaning up the streets’ is cutting into my bottom line.”

“And you expect me to do something about it?” I nodded at the Brotherhood members at the door. “Don’t you have guys for that?”

Jeongah followed my gaze. “Assassination is too messy, too public. I need subtlety.” She returned her gaze to me. “I’m not known for subtlety.”

“You could say that again,” I muttered.

She ignored me. “I need you to get rid of him. Consider it repayment for the 8,000 credits you owe me.”

“9,492 credits,” I corrected.

Her dark eyes widened. “Nine thousand four—”

“You seem to have a lot of faith in me,” I said. “Why?”

A sinister grin spread across Jeongah’s face. “It’s not every day that you meet the Obake.”

I flinched. I hadn’t been the Obake in three years, not since the Atlas heist. It was safest for her to disappear. Safest for me to disappear. But I’d been careless. Sixty-three days of betting and hacking and lying brought her back, haunting me just like her namesake.

“I know a few business contacts who would be very interested to meet you,” Jeongah said.

So, that was the play. I’d scammed half the gangsters on this station, in service of the other half. I had no doubt that Jeongah would make more than just 9,492 credits turning me in.

I felt afraid, but, weirdly, I also felt a little thrill. Maybe that was the unhinged side of the Obake in me, the side no one could predict. The last sixty-three days had been the most fun since my last job three years ago. What did it mean that this was the most exciting thing that had happened to me since then?

I looked between Jeongah’s henchmen.

Subtlety, she’d said.

I could do that.

A slow grin spread across my face. “All right. I’m in.”

2

I didn’t get home until well past 0300. Later than the curfew I’d given Jeongah and her henchmen.

The door lock disengaged at my command, and I shouldered it open. All the lights flicked on, and I squinted into the room. Putting my fingers to my throbbing temples, I dimmed the lights.

I trudged to my bedroom at the far end of the condo.

Even after everything I went through, I couldn’t bear to leave Ward 2. But I was tired of hearing my neighbors through the walls, so I bought out the entire floor. I had no idea what to do with all the space, though. I’d never invited the Atlas crew up for that reason: Where the hell were they supposed to sit?

I turned the lights off as I walked from empty room to empty room, until I reached the main suite. I’d set up all my gear in the walk-in closet—the most furnished part of the whole condo. I jokingly called it my panic room—it was where I felt safest. I flopped onto the mattress on the floor and groaned.

I wasn’t one for peace and quiet. I liked things loud, chaotic, frenetic. It kept my brain busy. I always got hassled for having a vidfeed, music, and a game all going at the same time. I didn’t know how to explain that it was the only way I could keep my brain busy.

Because when it wasn’t busy—that was when I got into real trouble.

Lying here in this dark condo, the neon lights of the station flashing through the closed blinds, who knew what I was about to do.

If Jeongah had her way, four felonies, at least.

I’d reviewed the footage of me in the Brotherhood club at least three times now, playing back every bet, every word, every movement. I was no grifter, but I definitely didn’t look as shady as some of the other gamblers and bookies there. As for the rigged fights, I’d tried to keep my DDoS-ing within the range of each fighter’s average reaction speed. It was supposed to look like any one of them was just having a bad day. I thought it was pretty fucking clever.

I remembered what Jeongah said and scowled to myself. Intuition.

That was one thing that I never learned in my training. You could be clever as fuck, but you could never outwit intuition. A mark gets a bad feeling and checks their security feeds, or resets a password, or takes a new route to work . . . You can’t plan for intuition. It’s like the Code said: People are the most fallible point in any system. Both ways.

I could admit that I was feeling a little nuha too. I was the Obake for five years, and while I’d had close calls, I was never caught. And not on intuition. It’s the Code again: Always prepare for the worst-case scenario.

Maddox would’ve grounded me for a day. He always punished mistakes.

I shuddered at the thought. I didn’t know why, but lately he was always one or two thoughts away. Maybe it was the five-year anniversary of my escape, passed just a couple weeks ago. It was hard to believe it had only been five years. Rationally, I knew that I spent a lifetime in that compound with Maddox and the other caretakers. Irrationally, it felt like my life had only just begun once I left. I’d grown up, started a career, stolen one billion credits from a trillionaire, bought a house. The dream, right?

So, why was he on my mind?

I tried to push thoughts of Maddox away, rolling over onto my side and staring into the dark closet. I began to drift off, but the rest was uneasy. I could see, hear, feel the GhostNet, just beyond the edges of my consciousness. Images flashed behind my eyes, sounds echoed in my ears, sensations flitted over my skin. I couldn’t tell what was mine and what was its. I could hear—

your heart races in your chest through the sedative they gave you for your nerves you

feel dizzy lightheaded like youre going to die on this

table thank you for doing this for me he says as one of the nurses shaves your

head you cried then it took so long to grow

he leans down to meet your eyes bright and gray and kind youre making me so proud

a doctor leans over you count down backwards from one hundred for me dear

she fits a mask over your face you take a deep breath hes proud of you

ninety

nine ninety

eight

I jolted awake and sat up in my bed. I was still in my clothes, and without a bonnet, my locs were frizzy. Kepler’s simulated sun was shining through the blinds, the constant whir of air traffic outside the windows.

I dropped my face into my hands.

The AXON mods in my head were Maddox’s parting gift to me. It was what made me into the best hacker in the quadrant. Fuck, after the last heist? The galaxy. With them, the GhostNet was always near. Like a sea of data, roiling just beyond the shore of my waking mind. But these dreams—intrusions—were getting worse. My memory was getting leaky, the boundaries between me and the GhostNet growing weaker.

All because of a single stupid decision.

Then, it felt like the only option. We were running out of time, and we were running out of options. Brute forcing the codes, overclocking my mod, it felt like our only way into the vault and out of Atlas’s reach. The crew told me not to, told me they’d find another way. But I didn’t listen. I don’t think I cared, at the time.

Now I care.

A little envelope icon appeared in the upper right-hand corner of my vision. I opened it.

It was from an anonymous sender. you have 63 days. make them count.

---

I sent a message to my contacts immediately after getting the message from the Brotherhood. After that I dragged my ass out of bed and got dressed. When I checked my notifications at six minutes past, there was nothing. I went on to brush my teeth and fix my hair, but even at ten minutes past, there was nothing. At eighteen minutes past, I refreshed my connection to the Net. At twenty, I collapsed into my office chair in the walk-in closet, exasperated. And even then, there was more waiting. I spun lazy circles in my chair, absently fussing with a puzzle.

Right face, clockwise. Upward face, clockwise. Right face, counterclockwise.

Thirty-six minutes past.

I kicked off the leg of my desk, around and around. The Net told me that ballet dancers swivel their heads to keep their gaze in one place so as not to get dizzy during their pirouettes. The world record for the most pirouettes was fifty-five, in the early twenty-first century, before Earth got busier with other things. I gave myself an extra kick.

Forty-eight minutes past.

A little neon analog phone appeared in my vision, wiggling back and forth. I planted my feet to stop the spinning, wobbling in my chair. With a flick of my eye, I selected the icon. It prompted me to open a Net call. I accepted.

With a sickening rush, my consciousness was pulled out of my chair and into the GhostNet. I flew through the deep darkness of the Net, past lines of sparking code—images and video and endless reams of text. Emotions, feelings, urges tickled the edges of my consciousness. I let it all wash over me. Fighting back against the surge of the Net could drive you mental. Diving into it fully was even worse on the psyche. So I kept my eyes forward, on the digital destination just ahead.

I came to a stop in a lush rainforest. All around me were dewy leaves and vibrant flowers, a jungle mist rising through the foliage. Behind me, someone coughed delicately.

I turned around. Sitting primly on a stone throne, a hot-pink tiger in a loosened crimson kimono regarded me. I gave an exaggerated bow. “Katana,” I greeted her, my voice disguised in the rumble of Orogen, the Scourge of the Nine Realms—my favorite character on Way of the Sword.

“Obake,” she replied, inclining her head. Hers was a harmony of feminine voices. “You’re looking well.”

I grinned at her, though no expression would show on my face. My own avatar was a hooded figure in a mirrored mask. “And you are looking radiant, as always.”

The tiger giggled, hiding her fangs behind a dainty paw.

Yuki Katana was another cyberspace paniolo, almost as good as me. We’d worked together on a few jobs over my lifetime as the Obake, but more often as adversaries. It was nothing personal, though. We all had our own reasons for hacking. Some of us for personal gain, others of us out of the goodness of our hearts, and for the rest of us, the thrill of the game. Katana was a little of all three. From what I’d gathered from the Net, our peers, and her own story, she started hacking as a kid. Ripped off a corporate exec to pay for her transition, then never left.

She was a little cringe, but who wasn’t? I liked her.

“I was surprised to hear from you,” she said. “I thought you were out of the game.”

“I thought so too,” I replied. “But it seems I couldn’t stay away.”

She smiled. “We never can.”

That was true enough.

“I answered your summons as soon as I received it,” I said. “Have you news?”

“I do.” Katana reached into her kimono, letting it slip down her shoulder. She withdrew a lacquered scroll case. “This is all the information I could find.”

“Excellent.” I stepped forward, reaching for the scroll. “You have my grati—”

“Ah-ah,” Katana said, snatching it out of my reach. “Not so hasty, Obake. You have me curious.”

I stepped back from her, frowning. “You know what they say about cats and curiosity.”

She giggled again, but this time didn’t bother hiding her teeth.

I crossed my arms. “What is it you want to know?”

With a flourish, Katana uncapped the scroll and unfurled it. Her ruby eyes scanned the document. “Lucas Pierce. March 16th, 2109. O-positive. Pisces sun, Scorpio moon, Aries rising. Mayor of Kepler Station. Is this your employer or your mark?”

“Mark,” I answered.

“Ooh. And it looks like he’s been very naughty. Blackmail?”

“I wish. What transgressions did you find?”

“Many, many, many. Do you want the nepotism, the conspiracy beliefs, or the orphanage?”

I perked up immediately. “Start with the orphanage.”

“Well, I suppose it’s technically not an orphanage. A residential home.”

“Tell me more.”

Katana cleared her throat. “It’s called Cunningham House, and it was started by Pierce’s money-laundering front.” She tittered. “Sorry, ‘charitable foundation.’ It’s for children whose parents are incarcerated and who show aptitude for STEM. It’s meant to ‘foster greatness.’ ” She peeked at me over the scroll. “Competition.”

I scoffed. “A pale imitation.”

Still, it struck a nerve. Maddox could hardly call his compound a “home,” but it was a residence. For me, and for all the other caretakers. And I guess you could say I had an aptitude for STEM—it was all I was allowed to do. In between psychological testing and biological experiments, at least. What kind of stupid kid could compete with that?

“Obake?”

I blinked. Katana was looking at me curiously. “Apologies. What else is there about his money laundering?”

“Not much, unfortunately. It appears that the majority of the information is kept locally, on a closed server.” She smiled. “It appears you’ll need to do some hacking IRL.”

I hated IRL hacking. Social engineering wasn’t something that came naturally to me—that was more in the realm of the grifters and masterminds I had worked with. Still, it was part of the Code: People are the most fallible point in any system. Who needs a passcode when you can pretend to be a pizza guy and sneak into the office?

“How can I access these files?” I asked.

“Not so fast. I’ve answered a lot of your questions, now it’s time to answer one of mine.”

I sighed. “Very well. Ask your question.”

“Who’s your mastermind?”

I straightened my stance, proud. “I am. I’m working alone.”

“Expanding your skill set, are you?”

I smirked behind my mask. “Always.”

“I see. Then who is it you’re working for?”

I hesitated. Katana and I had worked together—worked together closely, even—but the Code was reverberating in my head. Never assume good intent. It’d kept me safe so far, and I couldn’t afford to compromise my identity now.

“I’m afraid I can’t answer that,” I said. “For my own safety.”

I figured the excuse would hold. A few of my and Katana’s colleagues had been dropping off the Net lately—nobody knew how or why. But it had us all spooked.

A frown passed across Katana’s face. “Then it’s someone who doesn’t want their identity to be known. Someone dangerous.” She paused, no doubt consulting the Net. I shifted uncomfortably in the silence. After 0.67 seconds, her gem-like eyes widened. “Not another gangster, Obake. I thought you were past that, with how your last job went.”

That was what I said, three years ago. After robbing blind the most wealthy and powerful man in this quadrant, what else could I want for? What else was there to reach for? Maybe that’s why I ended up in Jeongah’s club at all.

I shook my head. “It’s not an ideal situation.”

“Blackmail?”

I hated to admit I’d been made. I wasn’t sure how Katana would react to my weakness. It’s like the Code said: People are the most fallible point in any system. But maybe a little grain of truth would endear her to my cause. Tug on her heartstrings a little. Katana always had a soft spot for lost causes. I learned that from previous masterminds.

“Extortion,” I said with a grimace.

Katana nodded, grim. “I see.” She stood and approached me. She was shorter than me—relying on speed and agility, rather than brute force like other hackers. She handed me the scroll case. “Then you’ll need this.”

I took it. Saving to my own drive, the scroll dissolved in my hand. “Thank you.”

“Anytime,” she said with a smile.

“How can I repay you?”

“Well. I’ve always been curious what’s behind that mask.” She traced the outline of my face with a claw, and I resisted the urge to flinch away. Her touch was gentle. “Maybe we can meet sometime, in the real world. I have a feeling you could show a girl a good time.” She giggled again, hiding her teeth behind her paw.

Katana had made this request a few times. A hacker’s life could be lonely—I could tell she wanted to be friends. But again, the Code reverberated in my mind: Never assume good intent.

I clasped her paw, drawing it away from my face. She drew in a hushed breath. “Apologies,” I said. “I can’t do that. Not even for you, Katana.”

She pouted. But after a moment, she brightened again. “I’ll get you someday, Obake. Just you wait.”

I laughed. “Maybe someday.”

I stepped back from her and gave another exaggerated bow. “You have my thanks. But I must take my leave. I have much to do.”

“Of course you do.” She waggled her toes at me. “Goodbye, Obake.”

“Farewell.”

I disconnected from the chat. My consciousness was pulled backward, the data streams rushing around me until I was sitting in my chair again.

With Katana’s intel, I could formulate a plan to steal the rest of Pierce’s files. With the files, I could expose him and all his cronies to the press. Even if it didn’t take him out forever, it would keep Station Security busy long enough for Jeongah to come up with a more permanent solution.

I was no IRL hacker, though. I would need a grifter for that. Plus a face that could get us into Pierce’s inner circle. And depending on security, a thief to steal the documents. I blew out a breath. This was getting complicated.

But wasn’t that what I was looking for? Something complicated, something difficult, something fun?

I grinned to myself and sat back in my chair, my hands working on the puzzle. Now this was the type of heist for a real mastermind to cut her teeth on. I just needed the right crew to do it.

---

Left face, counterclockwise. Upward face, counterclockwise. Left face, clockwise.

It was shocking how furniture made a place look completely different.

Most of the Lower Wards of Kepler Station were relatively unchanged from when the city was first constructed. Built over the catacombs of the station’s interior, they were as close to original as the station got. Lots of the folks who lived here liked it that way. People who have been here since the very beginning, traveling across light years of distance and decades of time to find a new home after being driven from their old one. Stubbornly clinging to Old Earth traditions, despite the galactic powers trying to sell them new ones.

Me? I didn’t have much connection to Old Earth traditions, beyond what I’d learned from the Net. Growing up in a lab did that to a person. I didn’t have much loyalty to the tower I lived in, or the renovated condos I’d bought. But as I sat in Tatiana Valdez’s apartment, full of personal clutter and professional memorabilia, I could see the difference. This place looked so much smaller, yet much more alive.

I fidgeted with the puzzle while I waited. Left face, counterclockwise. Upward face, clockwise. Right face, clockwise.

Three years ago, Tatiana was my closest friend. We met on the Atlas heist: She was the thief, I was the hacker. We were the young guns on the team—kids, really. At twenty years old, I can say that. Incredibly competent kids, but still.

We all shuffled around after the payout from our last job—some of us moving farther than others—but none found it in us to leave Ward 2. Tatiana moved into her own place, a little farther up the tower from her folks, but that was the extent of it. Even her furniture was hand-me-down. She invited me to her family dinners a few times, but I always declined. I ghosted the crew almost immediately, but Tatiana I held on to for a little while longer. We cruised for a bit in the months after, but eventually I fell off. That’s what the Code said: no attachments.

And I had to follow the Code. It was what kept me safe all these years. I couldn’t abandon it now.

the walls are close so close so close in the dark youre crying but those close close walls

just absorb all the noise im

passive un

caring youve been here so long the shadows start moving faces and eyes and claws hungry

feeding

you

cry harder sobbing hiccupping a

crack of white light appears the door

calm down his voice says calm down and you can have the lights

you suck in a shuddering breath swipe at your eyes and nose with your sleeve im

sorry

the light grows wider as the

“What the fuck!”

I startled back into the present. A woman stood in the doorway, haloed by the neon lights outside. She had a gleaming switchblade in her hand. A spread of bodega snacks had fallen to her feet.

“Howzit, Tati,” I said, steadying my voice.

“Malia?” she responded. “I told you to stop doing this! I almost stabbed you!”

I gestured at her door. “Your keycard reader needs a firmware update.”

Tatiana sighed. She snapped the switchblade closed and started gathering up the snacks she’d dropped. “What do you want?”

I hopped off the arm of the couch where I was perched and started picking up snacks. “ ‘What do you want?’ That’s no way to greet an old friend,” I chided.

“You’re the one who broke into my apartment,” Tatiana shot back.

I met her annoyed glare with a grin. “Isn’t it enough to talk story with me?”

“You disappeared for three months, completely ghosted me and everyone else. What am I supposed to think?”

“Sixty-three days is way longer than you need to wait to file a missing person report.”

“That’s not funny.”

I straightened, a load of snacks in my arms. I dumped them on the lopsided coffee table near the couch. “I’m fine, Tati.”

“Modders are disappearing, Malia. And if they show up again, they’re borderline brain-dead. We were worried about you.” She shook her head. “Where have you been?”

I shrugged and flopped onto the couch. “I was bored.”

Tatiana stayed standing, arms crossed. “That’s not an answer.”

“No need fo’ da attitude, cuz,” I said, slightly defensive. “I got into a new game. I fine. No worries.”

She didn’t look convinced.

On some level, it was nice to know that someone cared. On another, I felt guilty for making Tatiana and the crew worry. But despite that, there was part of me that resented their fretting. I wasn’t a kid anymore. I was the Obake. I didn’t need someone to fuss over me.

I tried to change the subject. “You pau hana?”

“Pau fo’ good,” Tatiana said with a sigh. She dropped onto the couch beside me. “One of da artists waz talking stink about me, so—”

“You talked stink back.”

She grinned at me. “Someting li’dat.”

It made me feel a little better, knowing I wasn’t the only one adjusting poorly to civilian life. Tatiana was one of Kepler’s most sought-after safecrackers and thieves three years ago, and the habit never really faded. She’d bounced around the security scene for a few months before deciding she liked robbing execs more than reporting to them. Her latest whim was music. But Tati was too stubborn to buy her way into that scene.

“So, you’re unemployed?” I asked, opening a bag of cuttlefish chips.

“Between jobs,” she corrected.

“Well,” I said. “You like one job?”

She raised a brow. “What kine job?”

I shifted on the couch, turning to face her. “I need help, cuz.”

She rolled her eyes. “Here it is.”

“So, I was bored,” I began, “and I did get into a new game.” Tatiana looked at me expectantly. “Uh. Fights.”

She looked delighted. “You joined a fucking fight club?”

“Not me! I just watched.”

“Oh.” She sounded disappointed.

I straightened my shoulders. “I did bet, though. Rigged a few too.”

Tatiana grinned at me. “Couldn’t stay out of the game, could you?”

I met her grin. “You know it, cuz.”

The young guns of the Atlas heist—neither of us was really ready to retire. That was one thing I could count on Tatiana for.

She reached into the bag of chips. “So, what happened?”

“Well, it was going fine, until—”

“Someone got wise.”

I gesticulated wildly, scattering chips. “On one fucking hunch!”

She popped a chip in her mouth. “And you need money.”

I scoffed. “You really think I need money after our last job?”

Even for someone like me, it takes a lot of time to burn through one billion credits. My whims were security for a short while, game dev for an even shorter while. Turns out I was better at playing the games than making them. It didn’t take much for me to fall back into my old habits.

“What do you need me for?” Tatiana asked.

“The person who got wise, she doesn’t want her money back. She wants me to do a job for her.”

“And who got wise?”

I coughed. “Song Jeongah.”

Tatiana’s eyes widened. “Holy shit, Malia, you fucked up so bad you pissed off the Brotherhood?”

“I’ve pissed off worse before!”

“Have you?”

I had to think about it. I’d bankrupted a few billionaires, blackmailed a few celebrities, and scammed more than my fair share of gangsters on Kepler. I’d pissed off a lot of people. But when I thought of that poor Brotherhood faka and his kneecaps, I wasn’t sure if I’d ever been in deeper shit.

“Well, maybe not,” I conceded.

“Skill issue,” Tatiana said with a smirk.

“C’mon, Tati,” I pleaded. “I just need this one job. One last job, and I’m out. For good.”

Tatiana’s mouth quirked to the side, processing. I wasn’t sure if she’d go for it. We were tight on our last crew, stayed in touch for a long while after everybody else drifted off. But while I’d strayed from the path, Tatiana was still on the straight and narrow. I wasn’t sure how dedicated she was to going legit.

Not that much, it turns out.

She met my gaze, her brown eyes alight with glee. “Who’s the mark?”

I grinned. “I’m so glad you asked.”

I flicked my wrist and projected haptic screens of the files I’d gathered on Pierce. Tati reached for one and pulled it close. “The mark is Lucas Pierce. He’s Kepler’s incumbent mayor, and a real faka. He’s up for reelection, and Jeongah doesn’t want him reelected.”

She plucked another chip from my open bag. “So, what’s the play?”

“Buggah screams dirty politician, he just so happens to not be in Jeongah’s pocket. Exposing him should be enough to keep him from reelection. But he’s got hella good security for a mid-level politician, and I can’t get to his personal files without a direct connection into his servers.” I tossed a chip into my mouth. “Which is where you come in.”

“Where are these servers?”

“His office headquarters, in Ward 7. I have a plan to get you in, though.”

“And what’s that?”

“Pierce is hosting a flyer show in two weeks, at his offices. Some kinda fundraiser. Doesn’t matter.” I pushed a floor plan toward Tatiana. “There will be lots of people, lots of activity, and nobody watching the servers.”

She sifted through the floor plans. “How are we supposed to get into a flyer show?”

“I know a guy. Good with flyers. They can get us into the show.”

Tatiana pulled another document closer. She swiveled it around and pointed at the formal attire line in the invitation. “How are we supposed to hold our own at a political fundraiser? I’m no grifter, and you definitely aren’t either.”

“No worries, cuz. I know a guy. She’ll carry us through the fundraiser, fo’ sho.”

Tatiana flicked her big brown eyes between the documents. I grinned over the top of the chip bag. “You in?”

She met my grin and held out a cuttlefish chip. I clinked mine to hers in a bodega toast.

“You won’t regret it, cuz. Garans.”

I gave the puzzle one last turn. Front face, full turn, counterclockwise. It snapped into place.