Grid: Omnipotence Series

Issue #0: Cassiel

Cassiel — Ash and Coin

A prelude set before Act I. Orion still rules. Hypertech hunts its own. The tunnels wait for a spark.

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Chapter 1 — Compliance School

They called it Hypertech Army in recruiting feeds, but inside the gates it was the Compliance Corps—a corporate regiment with contracts instead of borders and audits instead of laws. Cadets learned to field-strip rifles and spreadsheets with the same brisk hands. A clean ledger, a clean shot, a clean conscience.

Cassiel took to it like a starving thing to salt. She had a runner's lungs, a fixer's patience, and eyes that saw angles where others saw walls. On graduation day, a surgeon slid cobalt optics into her skull—lenses that could read a pulse through concrete and paint the world in layers. The afterimage of the operating light followed her for weeks; sometimes she still sees it when she blinks.

They issued her a rifle older than she was and armor patched with borrowed history. They taught her the six rules of engagement and the one rule that mattered: Protect the asset. The word asset changed meaning each day—server farm, executive convoy, data spine, a neighborhood whose tax base mattered to the board. People were people until a spreadsheet gave them a number, and then they were numbers.

She did the work. Patrols in the rain. Evictions at dawn. Raids that found nothing and still counted as wins. Her file grew teeth: reliable under pressure; predictive instincts; minimal collateral. The pay loaded, on time, into a card she never looked at long.

At night, in barracks that smelled like gun oil and cheap soap, she watched the city through her optics. The Grid's hum was a lullaby with a threat in it. She slept because the morning always came.

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Chapter 2 — The Quiet Job

The quiet jobs started in the Outer Markets—vendor lanes stitched from tarps and stubbornness, lit by neon that never turned off because no one could afford to turn it back on. Hypertech wanted a census recalibration: live up to the contract by reducing the number of "unlicensed bodies" in a high-risk flood zone. No one said kill. No one needed to.

Cassiel walked the alleys with her squad and a list. Her optics drew hearts over heat signatures; the rifle sight drew circles over heads. She cut through a tarp and found a woman cradling a med rig that ran on stolen washing-machine power. The patient inside was a child with a tube in his throat and a sticker of a black bird on the cracked plastic. The mother's hands shook like the rig.

"Relocate," Cassiel said, and she meant it like a prayer more than a command. The mother looked at her like a ledger looks at a pen.

Her sergeant didn't slow. "Noncompliant node," he said, into the mic. "Flag for removal."

Cassiel stood between him and the cot without deciding to stand. "She's not a node."

The sergeant tilted his visor toward hers. "You want to write new policy, Cass? Get promoted." He nodded at a private. "Seize the equipment."

The private tugged at a cable that was also a vein. The child made a sound like a battery dying.

Cassiel took a breath that hurt with the weight of it. "I can requisition a portable," she lied, and she made it a good lie. "We'll move them. Quietly."

Her squad lead looked at her like she'd brought the wrong caliber to the wrong fight. He started to say something. She didn't let him finish. A quick palm to the barrel of his rifle, a step inside his guard, a twist. The gun clattered. Surprise did the rest. "We'll do it my way," she said, and for one hour it was almost true.