Learning to steal half a billion credits took three days.
Reed spent them in Dmitri's apartment, surrounded by screens and improvised hardware, learning things his financial analyst training had never covered. How to route transfers through shell companies. How to split transactions to avoid detection thresholds. How to use sector exchange timing to create untraceable patterns. How to become invisible while moving massive amounts of money.
"The key," Dmitri explained, gesturing at a schematic that looked like a spider web designed by someone on stimulants, "is that you never move the money directly. You fragment it. Route it through seventeen different sector exchanges, each one thinking it's handling legitimate transfers."
"Won't corporate forensics track the pattern?" Reed asked.
"Eventually? Maybe. But that's the beautiful thing about this particular account." Dmitri pulled up the black ops fund details again. "This money doesn't exist officially. It's off-books. So if corporate wants to track it, they have to admit it exists. Which means admitting to board-level illegal activity."
"So they can't investigate without incriminating themselves," Reed said slowly.
"Exactly. They'll try—quietly, internally—but they can't make it public. Can't file official reports. Can't use station-wide forensic systems." Dmitri grinned. "You're stealing money they stole first. It's theft all the way down."
Reed looked at the screens, at the complexity of what Dmitri was building. "This is really going to work."
"It should work. Probably. Maybe 70% chance." Dmitri shrugged. "The other 30%, corporate finds you in a week and you disappear. But hey, better odds than staying in Sector 12 until you die of poverty at forty-five."
"Inspiring," Reed deadpanned.
"I do my best." Dmitri pulled up another screen. "Okay, so here's the structure. You'll set up twelve shell accounts under fake company names. Very boring names—'Sector Services LLC', 'Maintenance Solutions Inc', that kind of thing. Corporate won't look twice at transfers to companies that sound like janitorial services."
"And then?"
"Then you move the black ops money into those shells in chunks. 50 million here, 40 million there, spread over two weeks. Looks like normal budget allocation for maintenance and services. Once it's distributed, you consolidate into your main operating account—I'm suggesting we call it 'Future Forward Solutions' because corporate loves that kind of aspirational bullshit."
Reed smiled despite himself. "Future Forward Solutions."
"See? You're already thinking like a criminal." Dmitri started typing rapidly. "From Future Forward Solutions, you'll distribute to your targets. I'm assuming you have a target list?"
"Building 7," Reed said. "200 units. Everyone gets the same amount."
Dmitri stopped typing, turned to look at Reed. "You're giving it away."
"Yeah."
"Not stealing it for yourself. Not using it to escape to a better sector. Not buying a new identity and disappearing. You're... redistributing corporate's illegal money to the poorest people on the station."
"That's the idea," Reed said.
Dmitri stared at him for a long moment. "You know that's insane, right? You could use this money to actually escape. Get to a mid-sector, maybe even an outer station. Live comfortably for years. Instead you're going to give it to 200 people who'll spend it and forget about it in a month."
"Maybe," Reed said. "Or maybe they'll do something interesting with it."
"Like what?"
Reed thought about Marco. About the memorial plaque. About "exceeded productivity targets" being the only legacy his brother got for working himself to death.
"Maybe they'll stop working themselves to death," Reed said quietly. "Maybe they'll prove that people aren't what corporate says they are. That we're not just lazy workers who need to be desperate to be productive."
"So this is an experiment," Dmitri said.
"Yeah. I guess it is."
"An experiment that's going to cost you half a billion credits and probably your life."
"Probably," Reed agreed.
Dmitri shook his head slowly, turned back to his screens. "You're either the stupidest person I've ever met or... I don't know what. But fuck it. If we're doing this, let's do it right."
He pulled up a new interface. "Here's what we're building: automated distribution system, monthly payments, completely anonymous on your end. Recipients will see transfers from Future Forward Solutions with a note about 'Prosperity Initiative Grant' or some corporate-sounding bullshit. They won't know it's you. They probably won't even believe it's real at first."
"Good," Reed said. "I don't want them to know."
"Why not? You're giving them free money. Most people would want credit for that."
"Because then it becomes about me," Reed said. "I want it to be about them. About what they do when they're not desperate anymore."
Dmitri looked at him with something that might have been respect. "Okay. Anonymous benefactor it is." He started coding. "This is going to take another two days to build properly. You good to hide out here?"
"Yeah."
"I'll need another 5,000 credits for the infrastructure. And Reed?" Dmitri paused. "Once we activate this, we can't take it back. The money moves, the transfers start, and you're committed. You sure about this?"
Reed thought about it. About Marco dying at twenty-five. About Yuki juggling three jobs on Leveler. About Marcus's missing fingers and chronic pain. About everyone in Sector 12 slowly being ground down by a system that called it prosperity.
"I'm sure," Reed said.
"Alright then." Dmitri's fingers flew across the keyboard. "Let's rob the bastards."
Day three, 11 PM. The system was ready.
Reed sat in Dmitri's apartment, looking at the final screen. Twelve shell accounts, all funded. Future Forward Solutions, registered as a Sector 15 corporate wellness initiative. Distribution protocols set to execute monthly, automatically, perpetually until the money ran out.
500 million credits. 200 recipients. 2000 credits per month each.
That gave them... Reed did the math. 125 months. Over ten years.
Ten years of proving something. Ten years of watching what happened when people didn't have to be desperate. Ten years of answering the question: what if?
"You're really doing this," Dmitri said, not quite a question.
"Yeah," Reed said. "I really am."
"Last chance to back out. We can erase all of this, return the money, pretend it never happened."
Reed looked at the execute button. One click and 200 families would start receiving credits they desperately needed. One click and his experiment would begin. One click and he'd cross a line he couldn't uncross.
"No backing out," Reed said.
He clicked execute.
The screen flickered. Numbers cascaded. Money moved through the system Dmitri had built, fragmenting and routing and consolidating, becoming invisible in the noise of millions of daily station transactions.
INITIAL DISTRIBUTION COMPLETE
FUTURE FORWARD SOLUTIONS - OPERATIONAL
FIRST MONTHLY TRANSFER SCHEDULED: 6 DAYS
Reed stared at the screen, feeling nothing and everything. He'd just stolen half a billion credits from corporate's black operations fund. He'd just committed multiple felonies. He'd just guaranteed that if corporate ever found him, they'd make him disappear permanently.
And he'd just given 200 families a chance to breathe.
"It's done," Dmitri said quietly.
"Yeah," Reed agreed. "It's done."
"Reed... what happens when they find you?"
"I don't know," Reed said honestly. "But before they do, I'm going to collect data. I'm going to document everything. I'm going to prove that people like my brother didn't have to die for corporate profit."
"And if you die proving it?"
Reed thought about Marco's memorial plaque. About "exceeded productivity targets" being the only recognition of a life spent and discarded.
"Then at least it'll mean something," Reed said.
Dmitri nodded slowly. "I'm deleting my involvement in this. Wiping the programs, the shells, everything that connects me to the setup. Once I do that, even I won't be able to trace how you did it."
"Good," Reed said. "No reason both of us should go down."
"Yeah." Dmitri started the deletion protocols. "But Reed? For what it's worth... this is either the dumbest thing I've ever seen or the most important. I can't tell which yet."
"Me neither," Reed admitted.
They watched the deletion complete. Watched the evidence of how they'd done this vanish into permanent erasure. Watched the only proof of Dmitri's involvement disappear.
"It's gone," Dmitri said. "I was never here. You figured this out yourself. I know nothing."
"Thanks," Reed said. "For everything."
"Don't thank me. Just... make it count, okay? If you're going to die for this, make sure it's worth dying for."
"I will."
Reed left Dmitri's apartment with the data chip—wiped clean now, meaningless—in his pocket. He walked through Sector 12 in the middle of the night, past closed shops and sleeping residents and the memorial wall where his brother's name was carved.
In six days, Building 7 would wake up to 2000 credits in their accounts.
In six days, his experiment would begin.
In six days, he'd start answering the question that had been eating at him since Marco died:
What if people didn't have to be this tired?
What if the system was wrong?
What if there was another way?
Reed got back to his apartment, lay down on his narrow bed, and stared at the ceiling.
He'd just become a criminal.
He'd just committed to something that would probably kill him.
And he felt more alive than he had in five years.
"For you, Marco," Reed said to the empty room. "Let's see if I can prove you didn't have to die."
The station hummed around him. Fifty sectors, millions of people, all of them trapped in the same machine.
But in six days, 200 families would have a chance to escape.
And Reed Salazar would find out if freedom made people lazy or just made them human.
He fell asleep planning. Planning how to document the changes. Planning how to observe without interfering. Planning how to prove something that mattered.
Outside his window, Sector 12 slept.
And inside Room 12-B, a dead man walking prepared to start a revolution.