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-====== ACE 34 — CHAPTER 1: Something That Doesn’t Belong (Rewrite) ====== 
  
-The Afterlife wasn’t a place that reacted easily. 
  
-It had seen too much, filtered too much, and learned long ago that most things weren’t worth noticing unless they forced themselves into the room. Noise, rumors, even violence — those passed through like background static. Only patterns that didn’t fit had any weight here.+**CHAPTER 1 — Something That Doesn’t Belong**
  
-This time, something didn’t fit.+The Afterlife didn’t care what you brought through its doors.
  
-Ace felt it before she reached the bar. It wasn’t tension or threat, nothing that would have made anyone else look twice. It was subtler than that — a quiet sense that something had been placed where it didn’t belong, and the system hadn’t corrected it yet.+As long as it made sense.
  
-That alone was enough.+This didn’t.
  
-Rogue Amendiares didn’t bother with introductions. She never did when a job mattered.+Ace felt it before Rogue said a word, before the room had fully settled around them again. It wasn’t tension, and it wasn’t threat. It was something more specific than that. Misplacement. The precise, ugly sensation of something being where it did not belong—and the world, for whatever reason, not correcting it.
  
-“Client lost something,” she said, her tone flat, almost dismissive.+Rogue Amendiares didn’t waste time.
  
-Ace stopped in front of her. “Object.”+“Client lost something,” she said, her tone flat as ever. Then, after the smallest pause: “Didn’t lose it by accident.”
  
-Rogue gave a small nod. “Crystal skull.”+Ace stepped closer. “Object.”
  
-There was no reaction from Ace, but the word itself carried weight. Not because of what it was, but because of how it was said. Rogue wasn’t treating it like a curiosity or a collectible. This wasn’t art. It wasn’t decoration.+Rogue gave a single nod. “Crystal skull.”
  
-“Didn’t lose it by accident,” Rogue added, leaning back slightly. “Taken. Clean. No noise.”+V blinked. “…You’re kidding.”
  
-Mai stepped closer and picked up the shard Rogue had already placed on the counter. She didn’t hesitate. She never did when information was available.+Rogue didn’t smile. “No.”
  
-The data unfolded cleanly — multiple camera feeds, overlapping angles, timestamps that lined up exactly the way they were supposed to. Whoever had taken the object hadn’t tried to hide. That was the first problem.+That was enough.
  
-The second was what they hadn’t hidden.+Mai’s gaze sharpened at once. “Origin?”
  
-Mai paused the feed and zoomed in.+Rogue lifted one shoulder in a slight shrug. “Client didn’t say.” A beat. “Did say it shouldn’t be here.”
  
-A corridor, dimly lit, industrial. A single figure moving through it at a steady pace, not rushed, not cautious, not concerned about being seen. Their posture wasn’t defensive. It was deliberate.+That tracked.
  
-And on their arm — clearly visible, deliberately visible — was the symbol.+Rogue tapped the shard resting on the counter and, this time, pushed it forward without ceremony.
  
-A coiled serpent wrapped around an open hand.+Mai picked it up immediately.
  
-Mai didn’t comment on it immediately. She didn’t need to. Ace had already seen it.+No hesitation. No wasted motion.
  
-“Confirmed,” Mai said, her voice level.+The data unfolded fast across the surface—camera feeds, still frames, angles pulled from different systems, each one trying to give shape to the same absence of certainty. One sequence stood out from the rest almost immediately. Clearer. Cleaner. Useful.
  
-Rogue watched their reaction carefully, though she kept her expression neutral. “Yeah. Thought you might.”+A corridor.
  
-There was a brief silence, not empty but locked — the kind that settled when everyone in the room understood more than they were saying.+Dim. Industrial. Narrow in the way places became when they were built to be passed through, not occupied.
  
-“They wanted it seen,” Rogue continued. “That symbol wasn’t for me.”+A figure moved through it. 
 + 
 +No rush. No concealment. Nothing furtive about the motion at all. Whoever it was, they wanted to be seen—if not fully, then enough. 
 + 
 +The symbol was visible. 
 + 
 +Clean. Unhidden. 
 + 
 +Mai paused. Zoomed. Enhanced. 
 + 
 +There was no ambiguity after that. 
 + 
 +A coiled hand, open, with a serpent wrapped around it. 
 + 
 +She didn’t say it aloud. She didn’t have to. 
 + 
 +Ace had already seen it. 
 + 
 +“Confirmed,” Mai said, her voice flat and stripped of everything unnecessary. 
 + 
 +Rogue watched them for a moment. “Yeah,” she said. “Thought you might recognize that.” 
 + 
 +V shifted slightly beside them. “…Okay,” they muttered. “…that’s not great.” 
 + 
 +No one disagreed. 
 + 
 +Rogue leaned back just a little, eyes still on them. “They didn’t hide it,” she said. After a short pause, she added, “They wanted it seen.” 
 + 
 +That mattered.
  
 Ace didn’t look at the shard again. “Location.” Ace didn’t look at the shard again. “Location.”
  
-“Still in the city,” Rogue replied. “Didn’t leave the grid. No attempt to.”+Rogue tapped once against the counter. “Still in the city,” she said. “Didn’t leave the grid.”
  
-That made it worse.+Then, after another beat:
  
-Most people who stole something valuable in Night City tried to disappear. They cut signals, changed routes, vanished into layers of noise. This wasn’t that. Whoever had taken the skull hadn’t tried to hide because hiding hadn’t been part of the plan.+“Didn’t try to.”
  
-“Containment priority,” Mai said, closing the shard with deliberate care. “Unknown effect.”+That was worse.
  
-Rogue nodded once. “Client wants it back. Quiet. No headlines, no panic.”+Mai closed the shard with deliberate care, as though the act itself required precision. “Containment priority,” she said. A pause followed, thin and exact. “Unknown effect.” 
 + 
 +Rogue nodded once. “Yeah.” 
 + 
 +Another beat. 
 + 
 +“Client wants it back.”
  
 Of course they did. Of course they did.
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 “Value,” Ace said. “Value,” Ace said.
  
-“High.”+Rogue answered without hesitation. “High.”
  
-That was enough.+It always was. 
 + 
 +Silence followed, but only briefly—short, locked, functional. 
 + 
 +Ace turned. “We go.”
  
-Ace turned without another word. There was no need for negotiation, no need for clarification. The job had already resolved itself into something simple.+There was no delay after that. No negotiation. No further shaping of the problem into something smaller than it was.
  
-Find it. Take it back. Don’t ask the wrong questions unless they forced themselves into the answer.+As they moved, Rogue added one last thing.
  
-As she moved toward the exit, Rogue spoke again, just once.+“Hey.”
  
-“They knew you’d see it.”+Ace didn’t turn. “What.”
  
-Ace didn’t turn. “Yes.”+Rogue’s voice remained perfectly even. “They knew you’d see it.”
  
-Outside, Night City moved exactly the way it always did — lights shifting across wet pavement, traffic threading through impossible density, systems operating at a pace that never slowed for anything.+A beat.
  
-Nothing had changed.+“That symbol wasn’t for me.”
  
-And yet something inside that movement had shifted, just slightly, just enough to matter.+That tracked too well.
  
-Because somewhere in the city, something that didn’t belong had been placed deliberately — not hidden, not lost, but moved.+Ace stepped out into the city, and Night City met them the way it always did: lights bleeding through rain-slick surfaces, movement stacked on movement, noise layered so thick it became its own kind of weather. Everything looked normal. Everything kept moving exactly as it should.
  
-And it wasn’t waiting to be found.+Except now there was something inside it that wasn’t.
  
-It was waiting for them.+And somewhere in the city—in some place that should not have existed in quite the way it did—something that had been taken was already waiting to be found.