Seventh Floor, Pipitea Street – Wellington. March 7th, 2041. 20.12LT

  Oliver Walker adjusted his glasses as the secured desk computer blinked to life. The building was quiet at this hour — the kind of stillness that amplified every keyboard click, every faint hum of the ventilation. Most of the upper-floor staff had gone home. But like Walker, Charles Sinclair had not.

  The Director of the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service stood in the glass-walled office next door, watching. Not hovering — watching. It had become his habit.

  Walker’s fingers moved carefully across the keys, filtering layers of archived metadata. The program he had written to search for any mention of Karere/11 was pouring through stacks of electronic data. The SIS, like all government departments had laboriously transferred all of their older paper files onto a digital format several years prior, but there were still gaps.

  It was one of these gaps, which was puzzling Walker now. The tag had appeared again — this time embedded inside a redacted procurement file, triple firewalled and buried under a pile of innocuous project summaries from 2034. It was like the mere mention of Karere caused a domino effect within the system, or more accurately, it caused the system to bounce the information around like a ping pong ball. If it wasn’t for Walker’s program, the lead would have slipped away again. This had to be on purpose, that sort of thing never happened naturally.

  “Found something,” he murmured, mostly to himself.

  “Show me,” Sinclair’s voice came a moment later, quiet but clear through the intercom.

  Walker turned the screen. What he had uncovered wasn’t much — at least not at first glance. A single funding trace. A cluster of technical documents. All of them scrubbed, masked behind acronyms and coded strings. But one name, or in this case, a phrase kept surfacing beneath the surface noise, Te Whetū Kaha or “Strong Star” connected to the HELIOS project.

  Walker frowned, looking up just as Sinclair entered the office. “Directed Energy Weapons?”

  Sinclair nodded slowly, looking over Walker’s shoulder. His practiced eye scanned the data. Years of field work had taught his senses to weed out the irrelevant and zero in on the important things. Sometimes in the field, you did not have much time, and Sinclair was a master of it.

  “Prototype series, look.” Sinclair confirmed running through the document, pulling out the highlights. “Thermal-Kinetic hybrids. The TWK variant was developed in secrecy under Defence Directive Theta-Seven, under the previous government. It looks like it was a major leap forward over what the Americans were doing in design, and effectiveness. Somehow managing to cut out much of the atmospheric drawbacks with specially designed micro fissure lenses and quin-core AI processing. It’s referenced under ‘high-energy theatre denial’ in the budget sheets.”

  Walker clicked through another folder. A new name emerged — Aotearoa Defence Optics Ltd.

  “ADO,” he said aloud. “Never heard of them.”

  “Not many have,” Sinclair said grimly. “They’re a private firm, they only work government contracts. As far as I’m aware, they have no declared ownership.”

  Walker did a quick google search. There was no website. He then checked the ministry of business and Innovation’s website and could find no business registry. They appeared to exist on paper only, not even a corporate office. Walker’s search through SIS found contract after contract, always defence-adjacent. Budgets and government payment schedules. He could find deployment notices for the Navy and the Army. Every time HELIOS was mentioned in a file, ADO wasn’t far behind, but no trace of the company itself.

  Walker leaned back in his chair, the frustration evident. Like all young men of the information age, Walker was used to having everything readily accessible at his fingertips. “This is bullshit, they’re like Schrodinger’s defence contractor, they both exist and don’t all at the same time!”

  Sinclair chuckled, patting the younger man on the shoulder. “Welcome to the wonderful world of Intelligence.”

  Sinclair stood still for a moment as if lost in thought. He often did that, it was similar to when a computer buffered, but it was the human form of it. Walker had noticed it more and more lately. Almost as if the old man, had so much information in his head it took a few minutes to sort and analyse what he needed.

  “You should look into Theta-Seven,” he said after a moment, reengaging as if nothing had happened. “Even I wasn’t privy to it until much later, it was buried even inside Defence. Less than a dozen people saw the unredacted files.”

  “It must have had sign off though, surely” Walker queried.

  “The Cabinet at the time signed off on it, yes, but very few actually understood what they were approving,” Sinclair said, raising his eyebrows conspiratorially. “It was very hush hush at the time.”

  Walker clicked a few buttons, he entered the phrase ‘Theta-Seven’ into the internal search engine

  ***

  No.09 San Sebastion Road – Wellington. March 7th, 2041. 20.12LT

  The autumn rain lashed against the glass doors. The steep, narrow street below had turned into a wind tunnel — dead leaves spun like angry birds, clogging drains and flooding gutters. Wellington's weather was a bastard on the best of days.

  Liu didn’t care.

  There was no wine tonight. No music. No distractions. He needed to stay sharp.

  The secure VPN on his laptop was running marathons, barely keeping pace with the packet-hopping ghost protocol he’d spun up. His backdoor into SIS was still holding, but something — or someone — was stirring the digital waters. Files were moving. Paths were being scraped. Whoever was accessing them wasn’t hiding very well. Or maybe they were hiding a little too well.

  Still, he wasn’t ready to spook the system.

  Others relied on smart code and search filters. Liu relied on something different — intuition, pattern memory, and years of learning where secrets liked to hide.

  A new search tag appeared in the return list. ‘Theta-Seven’…. Now there was a blast from the past.

  ***

  Defence Ministry, Wellington – New Zealand. June 2nd, 2031. 10.47LT

  Nathan Liu stood at his desk, stylus in hand. He was late for a Cabinet meeting — and as Defence Minister, he was expected to lead by example. The memorandum in front of him bore no names, no logos, no direct identifiers. Just an authorisation code, a list of technical benchmarks, and a line item marked “HELIOS-TWK Development Series: Compartmental Access Only.”

  He didn’t hesitate.

  He had read the background briefing, such as it was. DEWs were expensive, finicky, and decades from maturity. But the technology behind this — optics, thermal convergence, autonomous tracking — came with pedigree. The real push had come not from his staff, but from elsewhere. Quiet meetings. Briefcases left unlocked. A promise, unspoken but unmistakable: this would keep New Zealand relevant. He had already forwarded much of the data to MSS through a cutout in Jakarta.

  And the name — Aotearoa Defence Optics Ltd — mentioned only once, in the margin of an early draft.

  Liu had circled it, frowned, and let it go.

  He signed.

  ***

  Seventh Floor, Pipitea Street – Wellington. March 7th, 2041. 20.19LT

  The screen blinked again. Sinclair had left to take a call. Walker was still patiently waiting for the search to yield some results. If you could call nervously munching through his fifth snickers in the last hour patient. It was the white chocolate one, and the only thing edible he had found in the vending machines downstairs.

  Finally after several minutes, the search engine stopped and one file ID remained — flagged, isolated, but locked.

  Walker frowned. There was no data. No metadata. Just a reference string: #AX377-B: OFFLINE STORAGE | GOV-NZ/SEC-ARCHIVES/3B

  He clicked it twice, nothing happened. No preview, no backup scan. Just a prompt: “PHYSICAL HOLDING – CONSULT ARCHIVAL ACCESS.”

  Walker blinked twice, then sat back in his chair, rubbing the crust from his eyes. Shielding them from the glare of the suddenly too powerful fluorescent bulbs above him.

  “Charles,” he called. “I think we’re going to have to do this the old-fashioned way.”

  Sinclair didn’t answer at first. Then came the creak of his office door swinging open.

  He appeared with his coat already in hand. “Archives?”

  Walker nodded.

  “I was wondering when we’d hit that dead end,” he said. “Come on. Let’s go dig up some ghosts. We can get some more shit coffee on the way.”

  ***

  No.09 San Sebastion Road – Wellington. March 7th, 2041. 20.22LT

  Liu stared at the screen, for a moment he considered throwing the laptop against the wall, but he didn’t. That would be counterproductive. That did not change his mood however. It didn’t change what was on the screen either.

  #AX377-B: OFFLINE STORAGE | GOV-NZ/SEC-ARCHIVES/3B - “PHYSICAL HOLDING – CONSULT ARCHIVAL ACCESS.”

  Liu reconsidered that wine. He got up and walked to the counter, poured a glass and came back to the sofa. He stared directly at the screen, sipping slowly from the glass. He was hoping a plan might come, but all that did was sleep.

  ***

  Basement Sub-Level Three, Department of Internal Affairs, Mulgrave Street – Wellington. March 7th, 2041. 00.19LT

  They had been at it for hours. The air down here felt stale, like it hadn’t moved in years — dense with the scent of old paper, damp concrete, and whatever chemical had once been used to keep the mould at bay. The hum of a distant ventilation fan came and went like breath in a dying lung. Somewhere far off, water dripped in a rhythmic tap… tap… tap… that had long since become part of the silence.

  Bay 3B, aisle nine, second sublevel — easy enough to find. But the file?

  That was another story.

  Box after box, label after faded label. Some were stacked three deep, bound in brittle twine or suffocating in plastic wrap. Others were naked and bruised by time, their corners chewed by age or rats — Walker wasn’t sure which. Handwritten codes in smudged ink meant nothing to either of them. One box was labelled "AB/Resettlement Trust 2036” but held nothing but faded property logs and a broken thumb drive.

  “So many trees died for this,” Walker muttered, crouched beside a tattered grey carton that coughed out dust every time he moved it.

  Sinclair didn’t laugh. He just peeled open another lid with the calm of a man who’d done this too many times before. His eyes were distant, scanning, sorting, remembering. “In the old days,” he murmured, “we called this ‘Tuesday.’”

  A single flickering LED bulb buzzed overhead like a lazy wasp, throwing long shadows across the stacks. The cold bit into the bones. The only sounds were the rustle of paper, the occasional grunt as another box was wrestled down, and the persistent creak of the metal shelves whenever either man shifted weight.

  It felt like a tomb.

  They worked in silence, the kind bred by too many dead ends.

  “Wait,” Walker said. “Here — look.”

  He’d cracked open a slim folder buried inside a box mislabelled “Budget Reconciliation 2032–2034.” At the bottom, wrapped in a translucent sleeve, was a sealed grey envelope — stiff, embossed with the faded crest of the old Ministry of Defence. On its front, in clear, block-lettered print: Theta-Seven / AX377-B

  Sinclair leaned in, the lines on his face stiffening. “That’s it.”

  Walker’s fingers trembled slightly as he peeled the flap open. Inside wasn’t much — a bound stack of thermal-printed sheets, faintly tacky with age and chemical residue. A few old, curling photographs, one of which was a strangely eclectic grouping of eleven men and women sitting around a table. Handwritten annotations were on some but not all. Redactions so thick in some places the ink had bled through the back. The papers crackled as he flipped through them.

  And then the cover page: Aotearoa Defence Optics Ltd – Defence Integration Review Summary 2001 (Unredacted Copy)

  Walker exhaled slowly, his breath visible in the chill.

  “Found you,” he whispered. “You ghostly bastard.”

  Sinclair nodded, but his voice dropped a register.

  “Now we see just how deep this rabbit hole goes.”

  They flipped through it together, wordlessly. There wasn’t much. But two terms kept surfacing, over and over — Irirangi and Waiouru.

  Sinclair straightened slightly, his breath fogging the air. He stared at the file Walker had spread out across the lid of an old box.

  “I almost expected Waiouru,” he said softly. “Irirangi though? That’s… somewhat more worrying.”

  Walker stared at the grey envelope on the lid of the box, still open. The words Theta-Seven / AX377-B glared up at him like a challenge. Sinclair, standing beside him, was silent — his eyes scanning the first page of the unredacted integration report.

  The air was heavy, dense with a sudden chill when the air conditioning clicked on unexpectedly. The low, almost imperceptible hum of the unit came from the walls — not a vibration, exactly, more like a presence. Somewhere far off in the subfloor’s bowels, a relay clunked over with a hollow metallic thunk, echoing down the stacks like a slow ominous footstep.

  Walker looked up, unconsciously zipping his hoody against the increased cold. “Why?”

  One of the overhead fluorescent strips flickered, buzzing softly like a wasp in a jar. Dust motes danced through the beam of Sinclair’s penlight, swirling in chaotic arcs as if disturbed by something unseen. The silence was deep here — not just quiet, but layered, padded, like the air was too thick to carry sound properly.

  “Because officially,” Sinclair said, “it was decommissioned in 1991. Just a forgotten Cold War relic tucked in the hills. That’s what we told the Americans. That’s what we told ourselves. But the truth is... it was never really shut down. Just mothballed. Quietly maintained. Like an old bunker waiting for the right kind of war.”

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Behind them, a ventilation duct rattled unexpectedly, followed by a dry creek from the shelf stack nearest the door. Walker turned slightly, scanning the shadows. He could’ve sworn one corner of the archive — far back, where the light didn’t quite reach — looked deeper than it should, like it was waiting for something to crawl out of it.

  Walker frowned, turning back to face Sinclair. “You're saying it was always active?”

  Sinclair nodded. “In a fashion. Low-power operations. Passive listening. Some residual linkages to the Five Eyes architecture. Nothing flashy. But enough to keep the lights on, just in case. Then, after the oil boom and the first wave of AI-based defence systems, we needed a place—somewhere remote, secure, cold enough for server farms, close to nothing... and close to everything.”

  The archive’s temperature seemed to drop another degree. Walker rubbed the back of his neck. Static crackled faintly from the old light fixtures — background noise, or something electronic struggling to hold onto relevance in a room long abandoned by the modern world.

  “So you reopened it,” Walker said.

  “We made the call back in '31. A joint venture between us and Defence. It became a repository for satellite telemetry and the SOSUS net. The quiet beating heart of our surveillance infrastructure.” Sinclair paused for the briefest of moments, “Every submarine movement in the Pacific, every shadow passing over the Strait, every low-orbit burn — it all gets routed through Irirangi now.”

  Walker knew some of this — as a senior advisor to the Prime Minister, he’d seen what Irirangi was capable of. But Sinclair was painting a much deeper picture. There was more there than most realised.

  “But it wasn’t just passive.” Sinclair continued. “When the Aegis-at-home network was completed, Irirangi was the perfect place to control it.”

  “Our very own NORAD.” Walker stated with a low whistle, the pieces finally coming into place.

  “Of a sort, yes.” Sinclair agreed. “And that means... if someone’s been poking around in that file, they’ve either already breached it or they’re about to try.”

  From the far end of the aisle came a sudden ping — the sound of metal contracting in the cold air, or something brushing the edge of an old filing cabinet. Walker didn’t jump, but he noticed Sinclair’s subtle shift in posture — not alarmed, but alert. The old spy hadn’t lost his edge.

  Walker’s expression darkened. “And Waiouru?”

  Sinclair gestured vaguely, as if pointing through the walls. “Waiouru was always meant to be a training ground. It’s perfect — every terrain known to man, all in one place. That’s why foreign militaries send their soldiers here.”

  Walker nodded thoughtfully. He knew this from his time at Massey studying defence.

  “But that changed the moment the Rafael facility went in. Then came the Defence Manufacturing Complex, the optics test range, the missile telemetry suite.” Sinclair went on. “The airfield? That was just a gravel strip when I was young. Now it’s a full-blown air base with strike fighters, ISR assets, even airborne EW. Waiouru is a city now, Walker. A military-industrial city hiding in plain sight.”

  Walker nodded slowly. “And someone’s trying to dig through the floorboards.”

  “Or worse,” Sinclair muttered, “they're already buried in the roots. Theta Seven gets us in the door, let’s see what we can shake loose.”

  ***

  NIWA-AI Wing, Irirangi Station – Waiouru, Central Plateau. March 8th, 2041. 09.52LT

  The plane ride had been brutal, though relatively swift. An Air Force Learjet from the VIP wing out of Rongotai. They had landed at Waiouru with little fanfare, at least they had given him a small breakfast on the plane. An Army Hawkei jeep was waiting for him on the tarmac, a not too happy Army officer standing beside it. The ride to the main complex was short.

  Oliver Walker didn’t even see the guy coming until their shoulders clipped, jostling his tablet loose. It bounced once on the carpeted hallway before he caught it with a surprised grunt.

  “Shit! Sorry, mate,” the other man said, stepping back. Ex-RNZAF, if Oliver had to guess — tall, lean, haircut half-grown out. Civilian windbreaker with the Kea Aerospace logo on one sleeve. Under the jacket, a battered lanyard with a NIWA–IrOps Liaison patch flapped against his chest.

  Then his brow creased. “Wait a sec… you're Walker, right? Oliver Walker?”

  Oliver frowned. “Yes?”

  The man grinned. “I knew it. Massey, ‘31. You did that guest lecture on the 'Strategic Illusion of Drone Dominance.’ Brutal. You had half the class wondering if drones even had a future.”

  “I didn’t say they had no future,” Oliver replied dryly. “Just that Ukraine made people lazy. Everyone forgot drones are tools, not silver bullets.”

  “Fair.” He extended a hand. “Zac Taimana. Systems analyst, Kea Aerospace. I was in UAV engineering, but I caught your lecture through the Defence Politics club. Left a mark.”

  Oliver shook his hand, already mentally filing away the name.

  “What brings you out to Waiouru?” Zac asked casually, adjusting a carry case that looked suspiciously like it housed a long-range camera pod.

  Oliver hesitated. “I’m here as an observer for some weapon testing.”

  “Sure you are,” Zac said, deadpan. Then he lowered his voice. “Look, I know how this works. I’m not gonna ask, and you’re not gonna tell. But I do have something you might want to see. We picked it up last week running high-altitude survey over the Bohai Gulf — Chinese coast, off Liaoning.”

  He pulled his tablet free from the laptop stack and flicked through a few files before handing it over. “This isn’t what we normally look for, but… well. It stuck out.”

  Oliver took it, frowning. The screen displayed an IR-contrast image — grainy, but sharp enough to make out a distinctive rectangular structure buried under camouflage netting. Heat signatures flared across the surface in regular intervals, consistent with heavy internal activity.

  “Looks like a dry dock,” Oliver murmured. “Why were you looking there?”

  “We weren’t. Our drone — Atmos Mk3 — was tracking jet stream anomalies at 65,000 feet. The Ministry of Science & Tech has us running joint climate missions with NIWA and Irirangi. Cross-branch stuff — keeps the politicians happy. But this showed up, and the thermals were... off. Like, really off.”

  Oliver pinched to zoom. The shape of the hull under construction looked too large to be a frigate. Too long, too stealth-contoured. The timestamp flashed.

  “Is this still live?”

  “Not this pass — that’s from 36 hours ago,” Zac replied. “But the drone’s still flying. We’ve got more telemetry on the NIWA servers. Most of it tagged for oceanic particulate dispersion... but I think someone’s hiding a different kind of search under an algae study, wouldn’t be the first time.”

  Oliver handed the tablet back slowly.

  Zac held his gaze. “I know what this place is. Not officially, but you hear things. The techs from Wellington talk fast when the beers hit. So I’m telling you this now — if it’s nothing, fine. But if it isn’t? Someone needs to know.”

  Oliver gave a slow nod. “Send it to this,” he said, scribbling a disposable address onto Zac’s notepad. “Encrypted packet. High-priority. Include your raw telemetry headers.”

  Zac nodded. “Already prepped.”

  As Oliver turned back toward the range security checkpoint, he glanced once more over his shoulder.

  “How often do you guys catch things like this?” he asked.

  Zac offered a crooked smile. “Not often. But when we do... it usually means someone else is already looking the wrong way.”

  ***

  Testing Range, Waiouru Military Reserve – Central Plateau. March 8th, 2041. 10.37LT

  A young Army engineer, maybe late twenties, greeted Walker at the far side of the building with a curt nod and held up a retinal scanner. “Please stand still.”

  Walker obliged, noting the edge in the soldier’s stance. Not fear — anticipation. As if this place held secrets even the staff weren’t entirely comfortable with. It was true, HMNZS Irirangi had come a long way from its humble radio relay roots in the Second World War.

  With the security checks complete, he was guided back out to the waiting Hawkei, and his driver sped off into the desert. Walker felt a few ominous pangs. Warning signs — DANGER: LIVE FIRING, EXPLOSIVES IN USE — flashed by left and right. It took them half an hour to get where they were going. Walker would have missed it entirely if they hadn’t stopped.

  The driver hit the brakes and the Hawkei skidded to a stop, a cloud of dust and debris overtaking it momentarily. They had pulled up beside a camouflaged hangar in the middle of nowhere, half buried into th4e side of a hill. The nondescript door was marked simply: RESTRICTED: NZDF ECL FIELD 3

  The driver passed through, and Walker followed.

  Ahead, the corridor dipped gently downward — past two sets of motion-sensing cameras, a double-walled blast containment zone, and what looked suspiciously like an airlock.

  The door slid open. What lay beyond was a series of cleanrooms and anti-static filters. They stopped at the first junction, and Walker was directed to put on safety clothing: a set of white coveralls with a hood, linen booties for his shoes, and an anti-static harness.

  The production chamber on the other side of the door stretched out before them like a bunker built for giants — reinforced concrete, hexagonal bracing panels, and a honeycomb ceiling embedded with arrays of sensor domes and phased mirrors.

  At the far end, encased in a circular gantry ring, sat what he could only assume was a HELIOS-TWK variant, though he didn’t recognise it. It didn’t look like what you’d expect a laser to look like. It looked like a stubby naval gun crossed with a FLIR pod — sleek, compact, almost insectoid in posture. A central barrel flanked by twin photonic intake vanes. Electro-optical arrays studded its frame like black diamonds, and at its base, the signature teal-blue cooling coils of the ADO-developed quinfuse lens array glowed softly in the dim light.

  Whatever ADO was it wasn’t building weapons. They were building legends.

  “Christ,” Walker murmured.

  A sharp-eyed woman in matching anti-static gear approached, offering a firm handshake and a tight smile.

  “I’m Johnson. I head this project,” she said. “You’re early. That’s good — we’ve just finished pre-sequence calibration.”

  “What am I looking at?” Walker asked, his voice neutral but laced with tension.

  Johnson didn’t miss a beat. “This is the Mk3 variant of the Te Whetū Kaha high-energy laser with integrated optical dazzler. Thermal-Kinetic Directed Energy Weapon. Effective range: ten klicks. Adaptive beamforming. Powered by a self-contained hybrid cell — lithium-aerogel buffer with high-speed capacitor cycling. This thing can fire in sustained bursts without melting its own barrel and keep firing through any conditions.”

  Walker raised an eyebrow. “How did you solve the atmospheric interference?”

  That earned him a sideways glance and a real smile.

  “Multistage refraction shielding,” Johnson replied. “We use a micro-fissured cone — think of it like a synthetic vacuum lens that punches forward at the moment of beam emission. It clears particulate density in a half-millisecond arc. You don’t shoot through the atmosphere anymore. You carve a path through it.”

  Walker’s eyes narrowed. “And the quin-core processor?”

  Johnson nodded. “Manages adaptive correction in real time. Wind shear, thermals, angle offsets. The TWK Mk2s we built for the satellites last year could track to within 0.3 milliradians at two klicks. This one can do 0.1 at ten. It doesn’t just fire straight — it fires smart.”

  “How?” Walker asked, genuinely intrigued now.

  “The firing computer’s integrated with AEGIS and the new Tūmatauenga-X Core AI,” Johnson said, pride clear in her tone. “With those two working together, the Mk3 can fry something the size of a twenty-cent piece in a cloud of fifty-cent pieces.”

  Walker looked her in the eye. “You’ve tested this?”

  “Of course.”

  “And the power draw?”

  “Massive,” she admitted. “But we’ve solved the heat bleed. Twin cryo-coils feed into a venting system along the spine. The lens recycles 12% of its own thermal loss, and the mount displaces the rest via ground sinks.”

  Walker blinked. “Wait — it’s ground-sinked and shielded?”

  “Correct.” Johnson stated. “Only the big kids will get to play with it though. Destroyers and above for now, until we can do something about the power situation.”

  The tour complete, Johnson ushered Walker back to the cloakroom, where they both changed. She didn’t bother with privacy. When Walker saw her pull a set of NZ Army fatigues out of the locker — patch reading Johnson, the crown of a Major on the chest — he understood why.

  She led him outside, into a natural valley range behind the hanger — shielded from the surrounding terrain, yet still full of enough atmospheric interference to simulate real-world combat. One of the Mk3’s was set up on a low-hauler cargo trailer, the barrel pointing downrange. A wide camouflaged net was strung out above them,

  Just outside the door, they had just left, was an eight by eight cargo truck in army green, he was led up a set of stairs into the camouflage painted container on the back. A tone sounded from the control deck in front of them, just as they stepped inside.

  “We’re ready,” Johnson said, taking the empty seat at the main console.

  “Target?” Walker asked, stepping up behind her.

  Johnson gestured toward the far end of the range. A drone was buzzing lazily — low-profile, angular, wrapped in thermal sheeting and jammers.

  “Simulated strike drone. Fourth-gen stealth composite. Velocity profile of Mach 0.7. Close-range anti-ship analogue.”

  “We’re going to hit it with a 4.2 megajoule burst.” The young man sitting beside Johnson stated. “Pulse-compressed. Real-world scenario.”

  The container control room dimmed as alarms sounded. Orange strobes flashed overhead, and a protective UV coating turned the window glass a darker tint.

  Walker leaned in slightly. The beam didn’t fire. It unfolded.

  A pulse of white-blue light snapped into being like a giant’s lightsaber. The air cracked — not thunder, but collapsing pressure. The beam struck the drone at range, and for a second… nothing.

  Then the target detonated in a shimmering heat bloom — not an explosion, but disintegration. The hull folded in on itself. The skin evaporated. Composite plating atomised on contact.

  Walker blinked.

  “And that,” Johnson said, “was only forty percent.”

  The silence was broken by a deep roar overhead — twin General Electric F110-GE-129 afterburning turbofans. Walker looked up and spotted the beefy fighter jet — it looked like a Strike Eagle, but different. No missiles. Just strange pod-like structures under the wings.

  “Is that one of the new Reapers?” he asked. It was the first time he’d seen one in the flesh, and he was impressed.

  “Mmhmm,” Johnson confirmed. “That’s our next test subject.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “Just watch.” She nodded to the controller.

  The Mk3’s barrel began tracking the Reaper with eerie precision — even when it dipped behind terrain, the screen showed the AI holding lock.

  Johnson picked up a radio. “Ghost, range is clear. Start the noise.”

  “Ghost,” came the only reply, eerily whisper like.

  Over the next several minutes, the Tūmatauenga-X Core AI duelled with the Reaper’s jamming pods in a silent game of hunter vs hunter. It was simulated, of course — no weapons would actually fire. But the AI was learning. Fast.

  The Reaper, too, was operating on its own AI. This was a chess match — a weapon trying to kill itself.

  Walker watched, both fascinated and horrified. This wasn’t a weapon. It was a scalpel for a new age. ADO was making wonder weapons, and someone — with access and motive — had tried to bury them, hide them from the public. He was no closer to finding the truth now than when he started.

  He turned to Johnson. “One question. Who signed off on Theta-Seven?”

  She paused. Just for a moment. Then said, “It wasn’t our people.”

  “Then who is ADO?”

  “I have no idea, we just get handed specs and the supplies to build it.”

  ***

  No.09 San Sebastion Road – Wellington. March 8th, 2041. 22.22LT

  He tossed the soiled cleaner’s shirt onto the grill, doused it in lighter fluid, and lit a match.

  The flames took fast — angry orange fingers clawing skyward — and for a moment, the crackle of burning polyester was the only sound on the wind-whipped balcony. Coal burners were rare these days — emissions restrictions, shifting public attitudes — but Liu had gone out of his way to find one. Second-hand, battered, slightly rusted through at the base. Perfect.

  Some things couldn’t go in the bin. Not in his line of work.

  He leaned on the railing, watching the shirt curl and blacken, until the name patch — Tony — crumbled into ash.

  The cleaning company had cost him ten thousand dollars, paid through a shell firm in Singapore that didn’t technically exist. Background checks, badge data, contract swaps. He’d spent weeks laying the groundwork for this identity, building just enough plausible cover to avoid alerting anyone still poking around in his affairs.

  All that effort. All that subtlety.

  And he had blown it on a complete waste of time.

  The Archives were empty. The file he needed — AX377-B — was gone. The box had been moved, the code scratched through on the intake ledger and replaced with a five-digit cipher he didn’t recognise. No digital trail, no checkout record, no fallback.

  Someone had beaten him to it, and that someone had known exactly what to look for.

  He chewed at the inside of his cheek, watching the flame gutter low. It was tick from his childhood that he was never able to fully shake. It got worse when he was anxious and distracted enough not to notice.

  It didn’t make sense. He had backdoor access into SIS, read-only though it was. He should’ve seen the movement. A keyword search that precise… it should’ve pinged. Unless...

  He turned and stalked back inside.

  The townhouse was dark, spare, almost ascetic. Liu had stripped most of the personality out of it months ago. Pictures gone. Books boxed. Anything sentimental — shredded or burned. The longer he lived like a ghost, the harder it became to trace the man he’d been.

  He sat at the dining table, fingers drumming against the wood.

  Someone was inside the system, but not in the usual way. No signature, no code tells, no pattern. That was what bothered him most. Whoever it was — they weren’t just tripping flags. They were bypassing them entirely. Not brute-forcing. Not backdooring. Something more elegant.

  Custom code?

  He frowned, eyes narrowing.

  He knew SIS’s best minds. The engineers, the forensic teams, the usual suspects. This didn’t feel like them. It felt… young. Fast. Intuitive.

  Whoever it was, they were chasing the same thing — and they had a head start.

  He reached for his tablet and opened the log file he’d saved after Irirangi flagged. One more keyword blinked in the cache: Karere/11. Still encrypted. Still unresolved.

  Not Theta-Seven, he thought grimly. Older. Deeper.

  The smoke from the balcony began to drift inside, curling along the ceiling like the remnants of a ritual. He didn’t mind. Let it linger. The scent of melted polyester and lies.

  He’d spent most of his life ahead of the game — two steps in front of SIS, four in front of the politicians. Now, for the first time in years, someone else was moving faster.

  He didn’t like it.

  ***

  Seventh Floor, Pipitea Street – Wellington. March 8th, 2041. 18.19LT

  Walker threw his bag and coat down on the armchair in the corner of his office, the canvas thudding dully against the leather. His face looked pale in the sterile glow of the overhead fluorescents — tired, wired, and slightly singed at the edges from whatever classified hell he’d just walked out of.

  Sinclair stepped in behind him, kebab in hand, grease already spotting the brown paper wrap. It smelled delicious and Walker’s stomach rumbled, It had been a long day.

  Sinclair raised an eyebrow, chewing as he spoke. “What did you find?”

  Walker ran both hands through his hair and exhaled like he hadn’t in hours.

  “A monster,” he said, flopping into his chair. “An actual monster. The Mk3 variant of the TWK is unlike anything I’ve seen. It doesn’t even behave like a weapon. It thinks. It predicts. It solves physics before it fires.”

  Sinclair stopped chewing.

  Walker leaned forward. “They’re not testing it. They’re training it.”

  That gave Sinclair pause — a long pause.

  “And ADO?” he asked finally.

  Walker’s frustration surged back, hot under the skin.

  “Nothing. Not a name, not a signature, not even a hint of who’s pulling the strings. It’s like they dropped out of the sky and landed a billion-dollar defence contract with no origin story. No directors. No paper trail. Just results.”

  He stood, pacing now.

  “Sinclair, that thing I saw at Waiouru? Someone built it in secret. Hid it in plain sight. And now it’s real. It works. And someone made damn sure nobody knew.”

  Sinclair nodded slowly and took another bite of his kebab.

  “Then we’re officially in the deep end.”

  ***

  21°47'49.6"S 175°10'19.5"W - Tongan Island Chain. March 8th, 2041. 18.19LT

  You wouldn’t find it on any maps, it didn’t exist on google earth either, but it was there. A small grouping of sunny warm Pacific islands, the perfect getaway. There was a jetty in a small cove on the main island, more of a small pier really, a multi-million dollar super yacht was moored there.

  On the hill above surrounded by palm trees, ferns and all manner of other island growth, a large darkly coloured wooden mansion sat as a silent sentinel over the island. The only nod to modernity, on the outside at least, was the multiple antennas and satellite dishes.

  In the small control room within the house, French doors swung wide open onto a screened off veranda, to let the warm tropical breeze flow through the room, an elderly man sat at a desk, watching lines of code on a screen.

  “Well isn’t that interesting.” He said to himself. “Someone is being very nosey.”