Insomniac Player

"The Neva Order operates in all two hundred and nine regions," Martin didn’t ease into it.

Nobody reacted immediately, which told Damien more than a gasp would have. They’d known the shape of that fact already. They just hadn’t heard it said out loud in a room this quiet.

"How large is it?" Daria asked.

"That’s the second problem. Nobody knows."

Hamari leaned forward, elbows on the table. "Give us a number anyway. Even a bad one."

"Somewhere between eighty thousand and more than three million." Martin didn’t soften it. "Both figures came from respectable intelligence agencies."

Grace made a small noise in her throat. "That’s not a range. That’s two different organizations wearing the same name."

"Which is part of the problem," Martin said. "And it’s why every victory report from every region needs to be read carefully. A branch you think you destroyed might be one percent of what actually exists, or it might be most of it. There’s no way to tell from the outside."

"So how do they even function?" Hamari asked. "No uniform, no shared Class?"

"None," Elias said, taking over. "A registered merchant moves their money without ever calling it that. A respected guild hides their prisoners in a spare warehouse. A government clerk erases a name from a record and never meets the person who ordered it."

"Sounds efficient," Grace said.

"It is," Martin said. "During the locust event, Neva branches in thirty-one regions raided food depots while everyone was distracted. In eleven others, they sold counterfeit pesticide that killed crops faster than the insects did."

Doctor Smoke’s cigarette paused halfway to her mouth. "That’s worse than the swarm."

"Region 21 avoided the worst of it," Martin said, "only because our preparation started before the patch. Most regions didn’t have that head start."

"They don’t create the disasters," Damien said slowly, working it through. "They just make sure they’re standing ready when one happens."

"Correct," Elias said. "Which makes them patient in a way that’s hard to fight."

Martin brought up the world map. Color bled across it in layers: drug networks in yellow, human trafficking routes in a sick purple, contract assassinations as thin red lines threading between cities. Illegal Class laboratories, kidnapping rings, and terrorist cells stacked on top of all of it until several capitals vanished entirely beneath the overlay.

Hamari stared at it for a long moment. "It looks like a bruise."

"Region 21 alone has forty-three confirmed Neva operations," Martin said. "More than a hundred suspected ones on top of that."

"This is not an organization," Daria said. "It’s an alternative government."

"Without borders or public obligations," Elias replied.

"So they tax people through extortion," Damien said, "enforce their own rules through murder, and sell whatever the real government won’t."

"And smaller criminal groups either join or disappear," Martin added. "Most members never know more than the branches directly above and below them."

"Who’s at the top?" Grace asked.

Martin pulled up a single entry.

➤[The True God]

No photograph accompanied it. No voice recording. Just three verified lines.

➤[Identity: Unknown.]

➤[Class Rarity: Mythical.]

➤[Known Claim: Supreme Leader of the Neva Order.]

Hamari adjusted the Stillpoint Lenses, as though better focus might make the entry say more. "He named himself True God?"

"Or he let other people do it for him," Martin said. "Either way, nobody’s corrected him."

"Has anyone actually fought him?" Grace asked.

"Anyone who publicly claimed they had has disappeared."

"That’s not a satisfying answer."

"It’s the only one we have."

"And the Mythical rarity?" Daria asked. "Confirmed how?"

"Three years ago, an imprisoned regional commander accepted a System oath requiring him to name the strongest Class inside Neva," Martin said. "The oath registered Mythical a moment before the prisoner died from a restriction embedded in his own contract."

Silence settled over the table.

"They booby-trap their own oaths," Doctor Smoke said.

"That’s the closest anyone’s ever come to proof," Martin said.

He pulled up twelve silhouettes beneath the True God’s entry. "Seven regional overseers. Three who control illegal markets across several regions. Two whose function nobody’s confirmed. None of them have known faces."

Grace counted them on her fingers anyway, as if the act of counting might make one of them less abstract. "And you want us to start with men lending money in back alleys."

"A body this large survives because blood reaches it from somewhere," Elias said. "The loan network is one artery. Not the biggest. But it’s the one we can actually see."

Damien studied the hierarchy again. "They separate information more aggressively than Imran separates his own commands. Regional leaders know continental intermediaries. Local branches only know their regional contact. Entry cells get tasks without ever understanding why."

"Silas Vane is proof of that," Martin said. "A Level 61 field leader who never once had access to anyone important."

"Then we can’t reach the top," Damien said.

"Not yet," Elias agreed.

"So why show us the whole structure if we’re only starting at the bottom?"

"Because removing one branch without understanding what it’s attached to just invites retaliation from somewhere else," Elias said. "You need to see the shape of the thing before you cut into it."

Martin narrowed the display down to Region 21 alone. A network spread out beneath ordinary businesses, housing offices, and private lenders, unremarkable compared to the assassination routes, but wider.

"Loan sharks," Doctor Smoke said, reading the label.

"The lowest financial branch," Martin confirmed. "They target Players who need equipment, civilians rebuilding after Gatebreaks, and families who can’t afford healing. The contracts start out legal. The conditions hidden inside them transfer property, future income, sometimes System assets."

He opened the first file.

A Level 19 Player had borrowed twelve thousand Gold to pay for his daughter’s treatment. After two missed payments, the debt had grown to ninety-one thousand. His weapon, his apartment, and half his dungeon income now belonged to the lender.

"When he resisted," Martin said, quieter now, "his daughter disappeared."

Nobody made a joke about that one.

Grace’s jaw tightened. "Where is she now?"

"Unknown."

Martin opened a second file before the silence could settle too deep. "This one signed away five future Stat Points without understanding the clause. This one works in a Neva warehouse because his debt grows faster than his wages ever could." He closed both. "Mina Quill’s preliminary review found copied signatures, hidden coercion, and penalties that violate regional law on all of them."

Hamari took the Stillpoint Lenses off entirely. Her expression stayed level without them, which was somehow worse than if it hadn’t.

"When do we start?"

"After you understand the risk," Elias said. "Neva has people inside the army, the police, the treasury. Possibly this building."

Nobody looked at the walls. That would have been too obvious a tell.

"How much of this briefing existed before we arrived?" Damien asked.

"Only that Nova Corps would receive an assignment," Martin said.

"Who prepared the files?"

"A restricted intelligence unit."

"How many people in it?"

"Seventeen."

Damien looked back at the map. Seventeen was already too many, in a room that had just spent an hour explaining how little it took for one name to leak.

Daria caught the look. "You think the mission’s compromised before it even starts."

"I think Neva’s survived in every region because people keep assuming their own room is the secure one."

Elias didn’t argue with that.

Martin closed the global map, leaving only Region 21’s loan network glowing on the wall.

"Your objective isn’t to arrest a few collectors," he said. "It’s to map the branch completely and remove it all at once. Strike too early, and the leaders vanish and rebuild somewhere else."

Grace smiled without any humor in it. "So we let the bottom lead us up."

"Carefully," Martin said.

Doctor Smoke lit another cigarette off the last one. "Carefully is what governments say right before they ask freelancers to walk into a criminal organization."

Damien looked over the first target list. Loan offices. Collection houses. Contract brokers. A regional ledger whose location nobody had yet found.

Somewhere above all of it, a Mythical Player called himself a god, and no one in this room could prove otherwise.

Damien closed the profile.

"Start at the bottom," he said.

The words sounded simple.

The red network beneath Region 21 did not.

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