The body was still in the hallway the next morning.
Reed discovered this when he stepped out for his morning rounds and nearly tripped over the corporate courier's legs. The man had died sometime in the night, after Reed had watched it happen, after the emergency response had finally arrived three hours too late, after they'd filled out forms and taken the body and left.
Except apparently they hadn't taken the body.
Reed stared down at the courier—different courier, actually, now that he looked closer. Younger. Maybe thirty. Corporate uniform from Sector 14, clean and pressed, the kind that marked you as someone who'd climbed a few rungs above the bottom. Not executive class, but comfortable. The kind of comfortable that Sector 12 residents saw in their dreams.
The man's eyes were open, staring at nothing. His hand was still clutching his chest. Heart attack, probably. Same as last night's courier. Same as half the mid-sector workers who pushed too hard for too long trying to maintain their prosperity scores.
Reed checked his tablet. Emergency services call log showed: RESPONDED, SECTOR 12 BUILDING 7, MEDICAL EMERGENCY, PATIENT DECEASED BEFORE ARRIVAL, REMAINS COLLECTED.
Except the remains were very clearly not collected.
"Fucking bureaucracy," Reed muttered.
He should call again. Report the error. Make sure someone came to get the body before it started decomposing in the hallway where everyone had to walk past it.
Instead, Reed crouched down and checked the courier's bag.
He told himself he was looking for ID, for next-of-kin information, for something to help get the body processed correctly. He told himself he wasn't looting. Told himself this wasn't the same survival instinct that had kept him alive in Sector 12 for five years—the instinct that said if you saw resources, you took them, because tomorrow there might be nothing.
The bag contained: a tablet (locked), three protein bars (expired yesterday), a water bottle (half-full), and a data chip in a secure case.
Reed pocketed the data chip without thinking about it.
The protein bars too.
The water bottle he left—he wasn't that far gone yet.
He pulled out his tablet and filed another emergency response request. BODY IN HALLWAY, BUILDING 7 UNIT 12-B, PREVIOUS CALL MARKED AS COLLECTED BUT REMAINS STILL PRESENT.
Then he stepped over the body and continued his rounds.
Behind him, someone else emerged from their unit, saw the corpse, and went back inside without a word.
This was Sector 12. Bodies happened. You reported them and moved on.
By evening, the body was gone.
Reed checked on his way back from a pickup in Sector 11—someone had finally collected it, probably after the third or fourth complaint. There was a cleaned patch on the floor where it had been, the kind of industrial solvent that ate through organic matter and left everything sanitized.
No memorial plaque would be added for this courier. He wasn't a Sector 12 resident. Would probably get a nice corporate funeral in Sector 14, with speeches about dedication and service. His family would get a fruit basket and a bill for the emergency response.
Reed sat in his apartment that night, turning the data chip over in his hands.
It was corporate issue, high-security encryption, the kind that cost more than Reed's annual dealing income. The kind that contained either completely mundane shipping manifests or extremely illegal information. In Reed's experience, companies didn't use high-security encryption for mundane information.
He had a contact who could crack it. Dmitri, two buildings over, who'd been a corporate data analyst before a prosperity score incident had dropped him to Sector 12. Dmitri had skills and a very flexible attitude about corporate data security.
Reed could take it to him. Could find out what was on it.
Or he could throw it away. Pretend he'd never picked it up. Stay invisible, stay uninvolved, stay alive.
His tablet chimed—the evening broadcast. "Remember, Nova Prosperity citizens: tomorrow brings new opportunities! Your dedication is your future!"
Reed looked at the data chip. Looked at his ceiling. Thought about the courier dying in the hallway. Thought about Marco dying at his third job. Thought about how the system just kept grinding, kept killing people, kept calling it "dedication" and "opportunity."
Fuck it.
He pocketed the chip and headed to Dmitri's building.
Dmitri's apartment smelled like synthetic coffee and burned electronics.
"Reed," Dmitri said, opening the door. He was in his forties, Russian extraction, with the kind of permanent exhaustion that came from knowing you used to be important and now you weren't. "You here for business or you need something cracked?"
"Second one," Reed said. "Got a data chip. Corporate encryption. I can pay."
Dmitri's eyes lit up—the look of someone whose skills were vastly underutilized in Sector 12 and who jumped at any chance to use them. "Let's see it."
Reed handed over the chip. Dmitri examined it, slotted it into a custom-built reader that looked like it was held together with hope and electrical tape.
"High-level encryption," Dmitri muttered. "Three-layer security. Whoever owned this wasn't fucking around." He looked up at Reed. "Where'd you get this?"
"Courier died in my building. Found it on him."
"And you took it off a corpse." Not a question, not a judgment. Just a statement of fact.
"Yeah."
Dmitri nodded. "Smart. Corporate would've just erased it. Whatever's on here, they didn't want it getting out." His fingers flew across his jury-rigged system. "This is going to take a few hours. Come back tomorrow."
"How much?"
"Depends what's on it. If it's boring shipping data, 50 credits. If it's interesting..." Dmitri grinned. "We'll negotiate."
Reed left him to it and walked back through the corridors of Sector 12, past the spot where the courier had died, past other residents shuffling to and from their various jobs, all of them too tired to make eye contact.
He thought about what might be on that chip. Probably nothing. Probably just corporate scheduling or delivery routes or efficiency reports.
But maybe something interesting.
Maybe something that mattered.
He got back to his apartment, took his evening Leveler, and fell asleep wondering if dead men's data could be worth anything.
The next morning, Dmitri sent a message: COME NOW. YOU NEED TO SEE THIS.
Reed made it to Dmitri's place in under five minutes.
Dmitri looked like he hadn't slept. His eyes were wide, his hands were shaking slightly, and his apartment smelled like stress sweat and too much synthetic caffeine.
"Tell me you didn't show this to anyone else," Dmitri said before Reed was fully through the door.
"I didn't show it to anyone else. What is it?"
Dmitri pulled up his screen, triple-checked that his network connection was severed, and showed Reed the decrypted files.
PROSPERITY COLLECTIVE - BLACK OPERATIONS FUND
CURRENT BALANCE: 487,326,441 SC
AUTHORIZATION LEVEL: BOARD ONLY
PURPOSE: CLASSIFIED
Reed stared at the numbers. Read them twice. Three times.
Four hundred and eighty-seven million station credits.
In an account labeled "Black Operations."
Board-level authorization only.
"Keep scrolling," Dmitri said quietly.
Reed scrolled. The files showed transfers going back five years. Money moving to shell accounts, to "consultants," to "special projects." Money disappearing into the station's dark corners. Money used for things that definitely weren't in any official budget.
Bribes. Surveillance. Suppression. Payoffs.
The kind of money corporate used when they needed something done quietly.
"This is..." Reed couldn't finish the sentence.
"Illegal? Yes. Explosive? Extremely." Dmitri sat back. "That courier was carrying access codes to half a billion credits that officially don't exist. And he died before delivering them to wherever they were supposed to go."
"So somewhere, someone's wondering where their black ops money went," Reed said slowly.
"Exactly. And if they find out you have this chip..." Dmitri didn't need to finish. Corporate didn't ask nicely when it came to stolen money. They disappeared people.
Reed looked at the screen. At the account number. At the access codes.
At half a billion credits that weren't supposed to exist.
Money nobody could track because it was already illegal. Money that couldn't be missed because it wasn't on any books. Money that could do... anything.
Money that could prove something.
An idea was forming in Reed's head. Dangerous. Stupid. Probably suicidal.
But possible.
"I need you to do something for me," Reed said.
"What?" Dmitri asked warily.
"I need you to teach me how to move this money without being traced."
Dmitri went very still. "Reed. That's corporate black ops funds. They will hunt whoever touches this until they find them. And then that person will vanish."
"I know."
"You want to steal from the people who make people disappear."
"Yeah."
"Why?"
Reed thought about Marco's memorial plaque. About the courier dying in the hallway. About everyone in Sector 12 slowly being ground into dust while corporate hoarded half a billion credits for "special projects."
"Because fuck them," Reed said simply.
Dmitri stared at him for a long moment. Then started laughing. Bitter, exhausted laughter that might have been crying.
"You're absolutely insane," Dmitri said.
"Probably," Reed agreed.
"I want 10,000 credits up front. And Reed?" Dmitri's expression turned serious. "Once you touch this money, you're dead. You know that, right? Corporate will find you eventually. They always do."
"I know," Reed said. "But before they do, I'm going to do something interesting."
"What?"
Reed looked at the screen again. At half a billion credits. At possibility.
"I'm going to prove something," Reed said. "I'm going to prove people aren't what corporate says they are."
"And then you're going to die," Dmitri said flatly.
"Probably," Reed agreed again. "But it'll be interesting."
Dmitri shook his head, pulled up a different screen. "You're paying for my therapy bills in my next life. Okay. Let's talk about shell accounts and anonymous transfers. This is going to take a while."
Reed sat down. Learned. Took notes.
Outside, Sector 12 continued its daily grind.
Inside, Reed Salazar was becoming a thief.
And he couldn't quite bring himself to feel bad about it.