Davor Senn paid Amsa in cash for a climate-system fix and locked the door behind her like he had for two years. Twelve hours later the alert pulses again. The door is unlocked. Davor is cold. The fix held.

Vee — unlicensed AI, half-hacked analyzer, parked on the shelf above the bench — disagrees with the insurance ruling out loud. The Mars investigator who walks into Amsa’s workshop next is the same one who stood across a Belt mechanic’s body at Highgate six months back. Inspector Kvor reads spin like a Belt-born and watches Amsa like he’s reading a panel for the value that shouldn’t be there.

Burst Day is six days out. A militant cell — the Forge — is engineering an air-system failure timed to a public ceremony. The casualties will read as crowd-crush, not sabotage. Davor was moving someone off the records. That someone killed him for it.

Amsa works the Belt side with Vee on her shoulder. Kvor works the Mars side with his own AI logging every pause. Neither is going to close it alone.

Pallas Protocol — Book 1 of the Amsa Logs.

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