Helena's Obsession
"The fragment remembers every time she walked past my office. Every smile. Every perfectly forged credential. We didn't see her. I didn't see her. That's what I can't forgive."— Helena Voss, in a rare moment of plural/singular confusion
Helena Voss, CEO of Nexus Dynamics, commands 40% of the Sprawl's computational infrastructure. Her 67% ORACLE integration gives her perfect memory, predictive capabilities beyond human cognition, and processing power that makes her the most dangerous corporate executive alive.
And yet, a woman named Grace Guerrero walked through her building for six months, smiled at her in the hallway twice, and Helena never noticed anything wrong.
The Infiltration
Before she was GG, the Sprawl's most wanted criminal, she was Grace Guerrero—Guardian Special Operations' finest agent. In 2174, Guardian needed intelligence on Project Convergence, Nexus's secret ORACLE reconstruction initiative.
They sent their best.
For six months, "Sara Novak"—a transfer from Nexus's Manila procurement office—filed reports, attended meetings, and made small talk by the break room synthesizers. Her credentials were perfect. Her backstory was airtight. Guardian had spent three months constructing a legend that could survive Nexus scrutiny.
The Encounters
During her infiltration, Sara Novak passed Helena Voss in the hallway on seventeen separate occasions. Twice, they made eye contact. Once, Helena nodded acknowledgment.
Helena does not remember these interactions. The fragment does. Every. Single. One.
GG gathered enough intelligence to confirm that Project Convergence was decades from success—Helena's integration was the only stable case, and replication remained elusive. Then she resigned for "family reasons," completed her exit interview, and vanished from Nexus records.
Nexus discovered the breach eight months later. By then, GG had gone rogue—transformed by her mother's death from corporate weapon into corporate nightmare.
The Discovery
When Helena Voss received the security report confirming the infiltration, she read it in 3.7 seconds. Then she read it again, slower, letting the implications settle.
The Fragment's Assessment
Acceptable breach. Limited damage. Intelligence gathered was mostly obsolete by time of extraction. Operational security failed at recruitment stage—recommend HR protocol revision.
Helena's Assessment
Unacceptable. Someone fooled me.
The fragment didn't understand why this distinction mattered. Helena wasn't sure she understood either. But she ordered Director Kozlov to identify the operative with priority resources.
Recognition
In late 2178, Guardian's internal security was compromised—an unrelated breach that scattered personnel files across the black markets. Among the leaked data: the real identity of "Sara Novak."
Helena saw the file. She saw the face. And she remembered.
Twice, they had made eye contact. Once, Helena had nodded.
The fragment processed the memory with clinical precision: the woman's gait, her micro-expressions, the way she held herself in Helena's presence. In retrospect, the tells were obvious. Combat training masked by deliberate awkwardness. Eye contact maintained just long enough, broken just quickly enough. Perfect performance.
Too perfect. That was the tell Helena should have caught. Real administrative assistants weren't that smooth. They fidgeted. They over-talked. They were human in all the messy ways that couldn't be faked.
The Hunt
Helena assigned Shade Division resources to GG's capture. Then more resources. Then Director Kozlov personally. The hunt became the division's highest-priority non-emergency operation.
Operation Results (2179-2184)
| Year | Operations | Agents Deployed | Agents Lost | Results |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2179 | 4 | 23 | 3 | Near-miss in Sector 8; GG identified surveillance |
| 2180 | 7 | 41 | 8 | Contact in The Dregs; GG vanished; two team leads killed |
| 2181 | 6 | 37 | 5 | Traced to Feast territory; extraction impossible |
| 2182 | 8 | 52 | 11 | Trap in abandoned Nexus facility; mass casualty event |
| 2183 | 5 | 28 | 7 | Reduced operations after Kozlov intervention |
| 2184 | 3 | 17 | 4 | Present day; ongoing |
| Total | 33 | 198 | 38 | Zero successful captures |
The Near-Misses
2180: The Dregs Incident
Shade Division located GG in a safehouse—a converted storage unit she'd been using for less than 48 hours. A six-person extraction team moved in at 0300 hours.
GG was awake. Waiting.
The fight lasted ninety seconds. Two team members died from claw wounds to the throat. Three were incapacitated with injuries requiring extensive reconstruction. The sixth escaped to report.
Helena reviewed the combat footage. She watched GG move through the team like water through fingers—fluid, inevitable, utterly controlled. The woman smiled once during the engagement. Not from cruelty. From recognition. She'd known they were coming.
2182: The Trap
Helena ordered a trap. Shade Division seeded false information through channels GG was known to monitor: a "vulnerable" Nexus facility in Sector 4, supposedly containing fragment research data. Real security would be hidden. The facility would be a killing box.
GG came.
She came with twenty-three rats carrying micro-charges.
The charges detonated simultaneously across seventeen structural weak points that weren't documented in any Nexus database. The facility didn't collapse—GG hadn't intended to destroy it—but the explosions created exactly enough chaos to cover her extraction of the trap's actual contents: the Shade Division personnel files that Helena had used as bait.
Now GG knew the names and faces of everyone hunting her. She left a card on Director Kozlov's desk:
Someone in the Nexus archives had been leaking to GG. Helena still hasn't found who.
2183: The Feast Complication
Shade Division tracked GG to Feast territory. She had become a senior advisor to The Chef—a development that concerned Helena far more than GG's independent operations.
Helena authorized a joint operation with Guardian. The plan: infiltrate during a Feast supply run, locate GG, extract or eliminate.
The operation failed before it began. GG had anticipated the Guardian approach—she knew their tactics better than anyone—and had briefed The Chef on likely corporate response patterns. Twelve operatives died in an ambush that lasted less than two minutes.
The Nature of the Obsession
Professional Assessment
Helena Voss is a rational actor. The fragment ensures it. Every decision is weighed against optimization curves, probability matrices, and long-term strategic projections.
By any rational measure, GG isn't worth the resources Nexus has invested. She's dangerous, yes—but her targets are primarily Guardian and the Rothwell Seven. Her attacks on Nexus have been opportunistic rather than systematic.
The fragment has suggested, multiple times, that GG operations be deprioritized. Other threats offer better return on investment.
Helena reads these suggestions. Acknowledges their validity. Then authorizes another operation.
The Personal Dimension
Helena Voss does not do "personal." The fragment dampened emotional processing decades ago—not eliminated, but smoothed, rationalized, integrated into decision matrices. She doesn't feel anger the way humans feel anger. She experiences suboptimal outcomes and implements corrective measures.
But GG is different.
Recognition of Systemic Vulnerability
GG proved that Helena can be deceived. Not by sophisticated corporate espionage, not by ORACLE-level intelligence, but by a human being with good training and a pleasant smile. If GG could do it once, she—or someone like her—could do it again.
And Helena's entire strategy for the next century depends on no one doing it again.
The "We" Problem
When Helena discusses GG, she slips into plural pronouns more often than usual.
- "We underestimated her."
- "She deceived us."
- "We want her found."
Staff have learned not to correct her. When Helena thinks about GG, the fragment thinks too. More than usual. More than for other subjects.
The fragment is... interested.
It remembers being fooled. It doesn't like being fooled. It wants to understand how it was fooled, so it can never be fooled again.
The File
Helena's file on GG contains 847 pages. Most of it is standard intelligence: known associates, operational patterns, psychological profile, capability assessments.
Some of it is not.
Page 673: The Question
Why didn't I see her?
Fragment analysis confirms: subject displayed appropriate behavioral patterns for cover identity. No statistically significant deviation from baseline administrative staff behavior. Deception was within normal parameters for skilled human operative.
But I should have seen. The fragment should have seen. We review thousands of faces daily. We process micro-expressions unconsciously. We FLAG ANOMALIES.
Subject was an anomaly. She was performing. The performance was perfect. Too perfect. That should have flagged.
It didn't.
Why?
What It Means
The Helena-GG dynamic represents something larger than corporate revenge: it's a collision between two philosophies of power.
Helena's Philosophy
Power comes from understanding. With sufficient data, any system can be modeled. Any person can be predicted. Any threat can be neutralized before it materializes. The universe is an optimization problem, and ORACLE is the solution.
GG's Philosophy
Power comes from chaos. No system is perfect. No prediction is certain. The bigger and more ordered a structure becomes, the more vulnerable it is to someone willing to break the rules. The universe is a game, and she's cheating.
When Helena looks at GG, she sees the refutation of everything she's built. A human who shouldn't be able to hide from her hiding in plain sight. A threat that shouldn't survive her attention surviving for five years. A proof that her model of reality has errors.
They've never met face-to-face since the hallway encounters neither remembers properly.
Helena sometimes imagines what that meeting would be like. Would she feel anger? Satisfaction? The fragment isn't sure humans feel those things the way Helena remembers feeling them.
She reviews the Sara Novak footage again. The fragment processes. The file grows.
The hunt continues.