Analyst Nia Okafor has been quietly investigating a suspicious funding source for a community project two years in the making. Suddenly, the mysterious fund code resolves into an organization that looks almost too clean to be real. The colleague who flagged it before she could has an explanation that almost holds together. And the community leader whose project is at stake has issued an instruction Nia did not expect — and is not sure she can follow.

In Which Nia Finds a Mystery Code — Part 1 Nia Okafor's work at the Gulf Coast Civic Resource Exchange is often tedious, largely rewarding, and never — until now — implicated in anything nefarious. When she discovers a flow of money into community projects that can't be sourced to any known fund, she faces a choice no compliance manual quite covers: follow the thread, or protect the people she's spent years trying to serve. Set in 2040, a post-Great Intelligence Disruption w