"You bring chaos," the Scorekeeper droned. "The Megaload is entropy. It has no score. It has no value."

ScoreHD had one law: What is not scored, does not exist. The Megaload was its antithesis—a living archive that absorbed everything ScoreHD rejected: grainy home movies, failed artists' early works, deleted political speeches, the laughter of forgotten children. ScoreHD wanted it destroyed. But the Megaload couldn't be deleted. It could only be hidden .

Cache smiled, her red eye flickering. "That's why I need a remora. You don't crack locks. You slip through the cracks ScoreHD leaves behind."

His last score was a fragment: a corrupted audio file labeled "The Lullaby of the Unscored." Most remoras would have trashed it. But Kael heard something beneath the static—a rhythmic pulse that matched the heartbeat of the Megaload's dormant encryption key.

The Scorekeeper screeched, its logic collapsing. "But... how do I rank a lullaby?"

"That's the point," Kael said, plugging the Lullaby into a forgotten auxiliary port.